Teenage sensation emerges on the race track

Inside the race car simulator on his bedroom floor, 15-year-old Gabby Chaves takes on the road. Trees rush by. The wheel shimmies. Dodging other vehicles and negotiating corners that come impossibly fast, Gabby is the essence of concentration.

Gone are the banter and easy smile evidenced earlier as he downed an after-school snack of chicken with rice. Instead there are laserlike intensity and reflexes so fast you can't follow the motion of his hand from steering wheel to gearshift.

But what happens in the simulator is nothing compared with what goes on inside his formula race car, at speeds as high as 150 m.p.h. There, gravity is tripled and the effort of keeping his car on the track makes Gabby's shoulders ache.

He's up for it. Currently in second place in the Formula BMW Americas series, Gabby is the youngest driver ever to win a Formula BMW race. He was the undefeated champion of the 2007-08 Skip Barber Southern Regional Series and has raced vehicles throughout North America and in Asia, Europe, and South America.

Formula 1 TV commentator Peter Windsor, who co-owns the nascent US-based Formula 1 team, puts Gabby on a "shortlist of guys we are looking at" as drivers. Noting Gabby's BMW wins, Mr. Windsor calls him "very young and very talented."

Others concur. "Gabby has the qualities to be the best driver in the world," says Daniel Villa, Gabby's longtime coach and adviser, who accompanies him to races. "Natural speed, unbelievable focus, and precision. And he's really smart, on and off the track."

Underpinning all this is Gabby's nature. Earlier, as he was working his way through the plate of chicken in the family's great room, his mother, Pilar, looked on. "Even when he was small he was like a little man," she said. "Very centered. Calm and quiet." Gabby's father, Gabriel, a pilot for Jet Blue, leaned in to comment. "Good mental discipline," he said.

Gabby shrugged at their descriptions. "That's how they see me." He lifted the family's Shih Tzu, FedEx, onto his lap and scratched beneath its chin. "I'm like that when it's necessary," he said. "But when it's time to be outgoing and have fun, I can do that, too."

For starters there's his girlfriend, Juanita, whose touches can be found in Gabby's trophy-laden bedroom – a stuffed bear and a pillow inscribed, "I love you." "Anything that seems out of the ordinary for a boy – that's from Juanis," Gabby says, clearly pleased by the evidence of her affection.

1 | 2 | 3

Next