There’s a popular saying that necessityis the mother of all invention. Well,racer David Podolsky didn’t invent tire

warmers, but it only took a few times goingout to practice on cold tires on 40-degreemornings before he felt compelled to comeup with a way to improve his situation. Butinstead of just rigging up something thatworked for him, Podolsky’s business train-ing and entrepreneurial spirit kicked in andhe created a product that has helped growChicken Hawk Racing (CHR) into one of thetop tire-warmer manufacturers in the world.

Like many of us, Podolsky remembersexactly when he fell in love with motorcy-cles. “My dad was into bikes. He rode aHonda CB350 back in 1971,” said Podol-sky, the founder and President of CHR. “Oneyear when I was four, we went upstate forthe summer and we went to Unadilla towatch the motocross races. Man, when Isaw those guys going over the jumps andstuff I was just enamored. I blew out a lotof birthday candles hoping I would get amini-bike or something.”

Podolsky’s parents did not want theiryoung son riding around on a motorcycle,especially considering they lived in the

Queens, a borough of New York City, andthere wasn’t exactly a lot of space to house—let alone ride—a dirt bike. So Podolsky hadto wait until he turned 16 and got his dri-ver’s license before he could buy his firstmotorcycle.

With so many years of build-up, Podol-sky’s love of motorcycles flourished as hegot older, and during college he stepped upfrom a scooter to a Suzuki GS550, a HondaNighthawk 650 and finally a Harley-David-son Sportster 883.

“That’s how new I was to it. I thought,‘883, that’s bigger than a 650. It’ll go faster,’”recalled Podolsky, who ended up fitting theHarley with a 1200cc big-bore kit, cams,bigger carburetors, sportier suspension andPerformance Machine brakes. “Many dol-lars later I realized you just couldn’t makea performance bike out of it.”

Taking two of Keith Code’s CaliforniaSuperbike School sessions on rentedKawasaki Ninja 600s at Watkins Glen only

further drove this point home. Then a mag-azine article opened Podolsky’s eyes tothe world of club racing.

“Instead of spending all this money andwaiting to ride once a year (with Califor-nia Superbike School) at Watkins Glen,”said Podolsky, “I could go riding on a race-track a lot more often. Plus, I realized rid-ing on the street I was gonna kill myself try-ing to put my knee down.”

After a day of telephone calls, Podolskyfinally reached his local road racing club,the Loudon Road Racing Series (LRRS), andhe signed up for his first race at Bridge-hampton Race Circuit.

“So the first time I ever saw a road racewas my own rookie race on that Saturdaymorning,” in 1992, said Podolsky, whobought a Honda Hawk for a racebike. “That’swhere I got the name from. My friend andI both raced Honda Hawks, and we thoughtHenery Hawk (a Looney Tunes characterthat often appeared opposite Foghorn

100——Roadracing World, November 2009

Chicken HawkRacing

By David Swarts

Shops:

After starting Chicken Hawk Racing in his apartment in New York City, founder David Podolsky nowoperates the company from a 100-year-old building in Red Hook, New York. Photo by David Swarts.

Leghorn) was the kind of anti-macho guy. We thought Hen-ery Hawk was this little pipsqueakwho was gonna kick everyone’sass. So we called ourselvesChicken Hawk Racing.”

Podolsky’s racing soon ledhim up to what was then calledNew Hampshire InternationalSpeedway, in Loudon, NewHampshire, where he found theinspiration that created his com-pany.

“Racing at Loudon in Aprilis just awful,” said Podolsky. “Iremember going out on slicksfor the first time during my prac-tice at 8:00 a.m. and it was maybe40 degrees F. The track was socold and without warmers thetires were bricks, so it was liketrying not to fall down more thananything else. I certainly wasn’tlearning anything riding six,

seven, eight seconds off the pace.”Later, Podolsky saw tire warmers being

used on a bike in a European motorcyclemagazine, “and I thought, ‘That’s exactlywhat we need. I can’t believe that’s not here.’So I contacted the tire warmer companyin Europe, and they wanted $1000 perset. At that time my total racing budget wasmaybe $4000-5000. So I said, ‘Forget it. I’lltry to build something.’”

After spending days doing research athis local public library (remember, this wasthe pre-Internet era, kids) and a few weeksto gather materials, Podolsky was build-ing two sets of tire warmers, for him and

his buddy, on the coffee table in his apart-ment in Queens. And the warmers worked.

“Sometimes I was able to get a two-sec-ond lead on the first lap,” said Podolsky,“and then win the race by two seconds.So it sometimes made a big difference. Itdidn’t take long for the faster guys at thetrack to get some. And little by little themost competitive guys started to get them.

“At first, I thought of it as a way to sup-plement my own racing costs. I thought, ‘I’llbring them to the track. I’ll sell some at thetrack. It’ll help pay for some of my racing.That’s all it was in the beginning. I still hada full-time job with my family’s business (in

industrial hydraulic machinery).”Taking CHR from a side business that

supplemented his racing budget to the small-but-thriving enterprise it is today didn’thappen overnight, according to Podolsky.“We really had to sell the concept,” he said.“Most guys were racing without tire warm-ers. They thought, ‘Ah, one lap (to heat upthe tires), no big deal.’

“And the tire warmers at the time wouldonly go up to 120 degree F. If the tires wantto be 175 degrees F out on the track, whyare people using tire warmers that onlygo up to 120? There’s a big difference betweensomething that gets hot and something thatis specifically designed to heat up a tire ina manner you want to heat a tire, mean-ing how fast it gets hot, being able to makeheat evenly and being able to heat up thecarcass thoroughly.”

From the beginning, Podolsky chose to

Roadracing World, November 2009——101

(Above) Within this 2000-square-feet operatesone of the world’s most successful tire warmer

companies. Tire warmers are designed, manu-factured, tested and shipped worldwide fromthis small space. Photo by David Swarts. (Left)

David Podolsky (71), seen here racing his Ducati1198 this season, got the inspiration for his com-

pany when he found himself running coldmorning practices in New England and the only

tire warmers he could find at the time cost$1000 per set. Photo by VHS Photography.

continued on page 102

go with the best components and materialshe could find, which resulted in a productthat proved to be capable, durable and mostimportantly safe.

“We’ve always known we were makinga product that was building heat and thatwas going to be very close to gasoline. Sowe were always very concerned with safety,”he said. “DuPont had this small businessinnovative development section, and theywere one of the first places we went thathelped us. That’s how we ended up usingNomex, Cordura and all these DuPont prod-ucts that we still use today.

“And we’ve worked really hard on mak-ing an element pattern that creates full cov-erage heat and is durable. If you take a pieceof metal and bend it back and forth overand over again it’s gonna break. We gotsmart about using types of alloys that willgive us flexibility and at the same timethe kind of power and heat we want, becausea tire warmer gets rolled up, unrolled, steppedon, run over—that’s the life of a tire warmer.

“And we had to be smart about the insu-lation materials. We needed something goodthat would still fit inside of fenders andchains and would still drive the heat downinto the tire, because achieving hot pres-sure is such a big deal.”

Improving its products, however, is anever-ending process at CHR. “The producthas gone through probably 20 steps of inno-vation, but it looks pretty much the sameso people don’t perceive a giant advance,” saidPodolsky. “But every single year we makesome change to improve our product. And wetest them ourselves (on the bench and atthe track) and with the riders and teams wesupport to make sure they are better beforewe put them on the market.”

Podolsky is also capable of testing theproduct personally, as he has won 11 NationalChampionships over his years as a club-level racer.

“We’re small,” continued Podolsky. “Wejust want to spend all of our time buildingnew products. We do repairs as a customerservice, but we don’t want to be drowningin customer repairs. Then again, I thinkdoing our own repairs and repairs on othercompanies’ products and brands has beena tremendous asset, because we’re con-stantly learning how things break and usingthat to improve the product.”

That’s also the reason why CHR offersdiscounts to racers who trade in their oldwarmers, so the company can study themand learn from them.

At a glance, CHR tire warmers are rel-atively simple products. They have a heat-

ing element encased in fabric, but the keyto the soup is in the ingredients, as theysay. As Podolsky mentioned, the heatingelement used in each CHR tire warmer ismade of a premium alloy chosen for heat-ing ability and durability, and this element(with its electrical connections alreadyattached) is heat-sealed between two lay-ers of high-temperature fabric using a spe-cial press to ensure that the heating ele-ment stays perfectly in place when it iswrapped around a tire over and over again.

These “heaters” are made and stockedup until an order is taken. Then the heateris sewn to an exterior, which is made oftough Nylon Cordura (the tear and abra-sion-resistant material used in riding cloth-ing) and can be customized with a teamor sponsor name or color.

Originally, Podolsky assembled his ownheaters on nights and weekends in his apart-ment and paid a seamstress to sew them intothe exteriors. He ran CHR that way for yearswhile still working full-time for the family busi-ness. And as sales grew, Podolsky hired employ-ees, who also worked in his apartment.

In 1999, Podolsky noticed that Apriliawas looking to enter the U.S. streetbike mar-ket, so he sent in a resume seeking racingsponsorship. Instead of support for his rac-ing, Aprilia USA offered him a job as Dis-trict Sales Manager for the Mid-Atlanta andNew England regions. Podolsky acceptedthe position and started racing an Aprilia.

“Then I got married, and it was nuts allof a sudden,” said Podolsky. “My whole,

four-room apartment was filled with stockand inventory. I had a desk and a work spacein my living room. The kitchenette startedto get taken over. When you’re a youngguy and people come over you don’t care.‘Pretty cool, huh?’ But it’s different whenyou’re married.”

So Podolsky started looking for a newhome for himself, his wife and CHR northof New York City along the Hudson River,and in 2001 they rented an old, six-bed-room roadhouse to test the waters. Thingswent well at the new location, so Podolskybought 23 acres of land, built a houseand asked the local government for per-mission to run CHR out of a second build-ing on his property. That plan was not

102——Roadracing World, November 2009

(Above) Chicken Hawk Racing warmers areessentially a special heating element (white

material on bench) encased between two high-temperature fabrics and sewn into a durable

Cordura exterior (Right). Photo by David Swarts.

Shops—Chicken Hawk Racingcontinued from page 101

approved, but CHR eventually found its cur-rent home, a 2000-square-foot industrialoffice located on the second floor of a 100-plus-year-old former chocolate factory, inthe small community of Red Hook.

Here, Podolsky (who left Aprilia in 2004to focus solely on CHR) and his seven employ-ees build most of CHR’s core products com-pletely in-house, starting with raw materi-als held in a first-floor storage area andbuilt into finished products.

CHR’s current product line includesPlastic Knee Sliders; Mechanic Style Gloves;Fog Buster Breath Guards; Cool Fuel TankCovers (like the aluminized fuel tank cov-ers seen in use on factory AMA Superbikes);Cool Fuel Jug Covers (similar to the fueltank covers but meant to keep the fuel in

a fuel jug cool to preventevaporation of all the goodstuff); wall-mounted, ad-justable, folding tire racks;custom heating elementsfor industrial projects (likea heater for a digital bar codereader that must live andwork in a refrigerated area);and, of course, tire warm-ers.

CHR also makes tirewarmers for auto and go-kart racing, but many four-wheel sanctioning bodies,including NASCAR, have out-lawed their use. Even then,CHR has sold warmers to JoeGibbs Racing, Richard Chil-dress Racing, Chip GanassiRacing and many othersbecause the warmers areextremely use-ful during pri-vate testing,

which must be done very effi-ciently because it is extremelyexpensive, restricted or both—and waiting for tires to come upto temperature wastes tracktime. Plus, car tires are muchmore sensitive to heat cyclingthan motorcycle tires, accord-ing to Podolsky.

But the majority of CHR’sbusiness is still selling threedifferent models of motorcycleroad racing tire warmers. Thewarmers are also made in 100-volt (for Japan) and 220-volt (formost of the rest of the world) ver-sions with plugs to fit outletsin almost any country in the

world. Andthe inter-national market isCHR’s biggest area ofgrowth.

“We do a lot of busi-ness in Europe,” Podol-sky said. “Car tirewarmers cost twiceas much in Europethan what we can sellthem for. So now wehave a distributor inHolland, which is abig deal for us. Theycan hold inventoryand ship directly tocustomers, who canpay in Euros and getthe product immedi-ately. Plus, we alsohave a deal with Mat

Mladin Imports to distribute our productsin Australia.”

To help promote this international expan-sion, CHR has just signed a three-year dealto sponsor Yamaha’s official SupersportWorld Championship team and it may alsobe sponsoring the Superbike World Cham-pionship team, as well.

But as it is for other American manu-facturers, the international community isalso the source of CHR’s biggest problems—cheap Chinese knock-offs.

“It’s a real shame that Americans havesent our products to China to try and copyit, to make a Hyundai look like a Honda,and sell it,” said Podolsky, who addedhe even had a Chinese manufacturer con-tact him wanting to build cheaper, infe-rior copies of CHR products that he couldmarket and sell at a greater profit. “Butwe saw some riders were buying inex-pensive tire warmers that the nicest thing

you could say about them is they gethot. They don’t know the difference. They’renew to the market. They don’t understand.They just know that they want somethingto make their tires hot.

“So that’s why we took over the Suzukaline of tire warmers, so we could have amore entry-level product using our meth-ods to build it with less-quality materials.It’s kind of like Yamaha has two 600ccsportbikes. One has a steel frame, andone has an aluminum frame. What pricepoint do you want? The Suzuka line givespeople that option.”

But challenges are nothing new to Podol-sky, who, like any successful entrepreneuror racer, usually finds a way to do what isnecessary to accomplish the mission. Andsometimes all it takes is getting some heatinto the tires. RW

Roadracing World, November 2009——103

While his warmers have looked relatively similar over the years, DavidPodolsky and his associates have worked hard to constantly improve

them in every way. Part of that process includes in-house bench testing.

Chicken Hawk Racing’s ability to produce durable products that pre-cisely control heat landed the company jobs producing warmers for

specialized industrial applications, like this heater for winter timehigh-voltage electrical cable repairs. As a result, David Podolsky

started a new business, Custom Heaters & Research.

David Podolsky has used what he has learned about insulationto create some of Chicken Hawk Racing’s newest products,

aluminized fuel tank and fuel jug covers to reduce fuel heatingand resultant evaporation on hot days. Photos by David Swarts.