Member Spotlight: Michael Shumway

Any racer at the 2024 NASA National Championships at Utah Motorsports Campus likely spent some time in the LVRY space for driver meetings, to attend the welcome party or to pick up a new piece of equipment in the pro shop.

The space with tall ceilings and glass-paneled roll-up doors once had acoustic drop ceilings and gym carpeting. The transformation is the vision of Michael Shumway, the principal behind LVRY brand, which manufactures premium motorsports safety equipment including helmets, suits and gloves.

NASA members also know Shumway as a fellow racer in the NASA Utah Region. Founder of the Riot marketing agency and the full-service Riot Motorsport race shop, Shumway is credited with bringing new energy to the sprawling track built by the late Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller.

“When the Miller family sold the track, a lot of people assumed that the track was going away and I don’t know if it’s ever recovered from that,” Shumway said. “The track is still an amazing place to race. I think the National Championships was an awesome event and really showcased the facility.”

Shumway joined the racing boom during the pandemic in 2020, starting out in HPDE1 with a Porsche Turbo. Realizing it was too heavy of a car, Shumway moved into a Porsche GT3 and finished out the HPDE program to earn his competition license.

“I wanted to go into Time Trial, and I didn’t really want to keep driving a streetcar, so I ended up getting a GT3 Cup factory-prepared Porsche racecar,” Shumway said.

As Shumway was learning to race, he rented a day garage for track days and appreciated the convenience. Eventually a year-round, single-bay garage came open and Shumway rented it with a friend. At one point Shumway had rented more than 10 garages at Utah Motorsports Complex, filling it with friends’ cars from the track.

When a large Porsche team left the track, it was the catalyst to take it to the next level.

“They had a massive building, and in essence, we merged all of our 11 separate units into one building,” he said. “That was the birth of Riot Motorsport.”

The move allowed Shumway to hire mechanics, engineers and techs to support the roughly 40 cars running under the Riot Motorsport banner. In addition to car services, Riot offers track support, driver development services and sim racing.

Riot Motorsport has been expanding quickly, but not everyone is invited to be part of the program.

“We don’t have any room for a**holes, to be as blunt as possible,” Shumway said. “Every single person that’s in the building is there to support each other.”

In tandem with the race shop, Shumway opened the LVRY Lounge + Shop at the entrance to UMC in late 2023. The open space has a luxurious feel with couches, televisions and racecars on display. The pro shop is LVRY’s first physical store, having been launched as an online brand.

LVRY  — pronounced “livery”— recently hosted the first RWB Porsche build ever done in Utah. Noted tuner Japanese Akira Nakai flew in and drew large crowds to the public event, continuing to invigorate the track, which opened in 2006.

Shumway said the race shop and lounge are a natural evolution of the brand. Riot Motorsport’s Tyler Brown said Shumway’s business ventures have been good for UMC too.

“The ones and zeros that tick through his head are incredible, and he just has tremendous foresight,” said Brown, Riot’s director of operations. “Each new venture is wildly ambitious, but to see it come to fruition and how calm he is throughout it.”

Shumway has a lot on his plate running his main business Riot Marketing as well as LVRY and Riot Motorsport, but he still finds time to get out on the track racing with NASA Utah. Shumway has been racing less than four years, and it has been an adventure.

Leading the ST1 group during a qualifying race at the 2022 NASA National Championships at Laguna Seca, Shumway dropped a tire off the track and went into a wall. The accident didn’t initially appear to be serious, but Shumway discovered a month later during a visit to the doctor that he had broken a vertebrae in his neck and lower back.

“Looking back, I always wonder if I had been the driver I am now, would I have been able to catch it?” said Shumway, 41. “There’s a lot of what ifs, but it happened. I learned from it and it’s an awakening when this stuff happens. You can’t let it dictate your choices, and you have to get back on the horse.”

Shumway got back on the horse, building a new Cup car and continuing to improve as a driver. He finished third in GTSU at the 2024 NASA National Championships on his home UMC track.

“It’s all just been very exciting to me and something I’ve really latched onto,” Shumway said. “I love that there’s always somebody faster, and there’s always more time in yourself and in the car. It never ends.”

Brown sees it firsthand, noting Shumway doesn’t use an expensive pro coach or go into a weekend with multiple sets of fresh tires.

“He diligently works on himself, and I think a big contributor to his success as a driver is that he has an incredible mental bandwidth,” Brown said. “He’s gotten to extracting nearly the maximum amount of that car in a short period of time.”

Salt Lake City has a blossoming car scene, and Shumway is tapping into that market to help build the LVRY brand. The Riot teams serve as a testbed for new prototypes from racing suits to pit equipment. Since most motorsports racing brands are based in Italy, Shumway thinks there is a market for U.S-designed racing apparel.

“The U.S. has been kind of a bastard stepchild for these motorsport brands,” Shumway said. “We’re really trying to support U.S. drivers and U.S. teams to take it to the next phase.”

Riot Motorsport’s Brown said he wouldn’t bet against Shumway as he builds the motorsports brands.

“(Michael) started with a blank slate that he can mold into a bunch of different things,” Brown said. “I can’t wait to see where he takes it.”