14 Things Stock Car Racing Taught Me About Life
Going to war with 2,500 pounds of metal will teach you a lot about yourself
I grew up in rural Vermont painting my father’s race cars. I watched him tame the high banks of the aptly named local track Thunder Road. A win at T-Road was a feat unlike any other, and it attracted everybody from NASCAR-bound young guns to veteran racers to the current state governor.
I was lucky enough to know the cracks in Victory Lane’s concrete — what the little bits of rubber that flew off winning tires felt like in my small hands — but it had always been my father’s victories I was celebrating. Through his half-working Camaros, dirt road upbringing, and mechanical farm knowledge, my dad made taming 2500 pounds of metal look effortless. But I had to get a taste of it myself. Everything from engine-fumed breakfasts to burned hands and reputations — I wanted it all.
My girlfriend at the time wasn’t pleased; she was the Dr. Claire Lewicki to my Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder. All I wanted to do was tell her I wanted to “control something that was out of control,” but I knew she would reply with a lecture explaining that control is an illusion, and that I was an infantile egomaniac. Perhaps I was.
Racing cars didn’t come naturally to me. I loved reading, piano, John Mayer, and romance novels. I wasn’t particularly daring, talented or lucky. But racing isn’t just a way of life. In many ways, it is life. Here are some lessons that I’ve learned from the unforgiving concrete of a quarter-mile oval.
1. You don’t know who you are until you’ve gone to war
I don’t mean literal war here, but a personal one. You really find out what you’re made of when you decide to go out to battle surrounded by a few thousand pounds of metal and hundreds of horsepower beneath you.
If you’re not scared, you’re stupid. The driver’s seat makes anyone god-fearing — you’ll see heads bowed that don’t bow on any other day. There’s too much luck involved to leave it all to chance. Facing danger — and facing fears — makes you review your life in a way not many other emotions can. It strips you of excuses and bravado. It makes you thankful for what you have, proud of who you are and what you’ve accomplished, and sometimes it takes genuine fear to know you’re truly alive.
Battles are hard and anxiety-inducing, but a life without battles isn’t living at all.
2. If you’re happy with being good, you’re not good at all
My old boss and mentor Tom Curley once told me he doesn’t like it when people are comfortable around him. He said to be comfortable is to be complacent. In racing, it’s unequivocally true. If you’re winning multiple championships in a division, it’s time to move up. If you’re good one year and think you can keep everything the same the next year, you’re going to get smoked. Racing, and life, isn’t about getting good — it’s a constant progression towards a perfection you’ll never reach.
You have to always be moving, grinding, going for the next thing, and it’s hard. It’s difficult to not just enjoy something and be good at it for a little while. When you’re good at pushing your own limits, it can feel like you’re terrible at everything. Every time you move up you’re at the bottom of the rung.
But let that be a life lesson: Sometimes you’re on the bottom because you’re moving up, and improving, and progressing at exactly the right pace. If you’re struggling, remember it’s because you were daring enough to try. You didn’t sit and beat on the rookies in the entry-level division, you have bigger dreams than that. Bigger dreams are scarier and harder dreams. They’re more worthwhile too.
3. Wrecks are what make winning feel so good
Wrecking a race car is one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever experienced in my life. I’ve had all four wheels off the ground, I’ve been in multi-car pileups that slung all the body panels off my car and left me sitting in the roll cage in the infield. I’ve been spun around and hit head-on with such force I was knocked unconscious behind the wheel.
All of these situations are scary, stressful, and hard. They’re also the only things that make winning worth it. Your wins are the sum of your losses. Every time you suffer a blow, remember you’re only adding to how sweet those wins will taste.
4. Stand up for yourself without ruining your reputation
Three races in a row during the second summer that I raced, the same driver came across my nose. I would drive up to pass him during the race, and he would come down on me and drive me into the grass. The first time, I assumed the best and figured it was a mistake I could brush off. After the second race, I warned him I would send him into the infield if he did it again. He laughed.
Earning respect is important, but there’s a balance to getting it. I always try to list the first bad deed as a mistake — life, and racing, is really hard.
When it happened during the third race, I stayed true to my word and sent him careening sideways into the infield. He showed up at my car afterwards, furious. This time it was me laughing.
Earning respect is important, but there’s a balance to getting it. I always try to list the first bad deed as a mistake—life, and racing, is really hard. It’s important to give people the benefit of the doubt. But if they do it to you over and over again, part of respect isn’t just giving it, it’s demanding it in return. A three-strikes-you’re-out rule struck the balance for me inside the race car, and so far it’s done just fine for me outside the race car too.
5. Sometimes it’s better to finish last and live to fight another day
Some days just aren’t your day. Those who can accept it, live to bring their steed home to pick a better opportunity. This happened most often when you were getting lapped on the race track.
If you’re last, and the leader is coming around to pass you, I have some news to break to you—you’re probably not going to win. You can fight like hell and risk destroying your race car, but all you’ll stand to gain is finishing last with a destroyed race car.
If you race them with respect you get two things: You’ll have a base to improve on (instead of just trying to fix your wrecked race car), and more than likely when it’s your day and you go to lap that person, they’ll remember what you did — or didn’t — do. Pick your battles carefully, it’s a long season.
6. Making friends is the only way to get by
You can be the fastest car on the track, but if you have no pit crew, you aren’t going anywhere. You can be the most talented racer, with the best equipment, but if your fellow racers don’t respect you that wall comes awfully fast.
There have been many such racers over the years at Thunder Road. Like clockwork, you see them win a handful of races at the year’s beginning, shoving their way past veterans and taking their competitors to the edge of their ropes, and every year — one by one — they start to feel what a lack of respect does. Nobody’s fast when they’re getting blocked and spun on the track, and anyone can do it regardless of their skill level.
7. Run your race, nobody else’s
One of the best pieces of advice I got from my dad was to run my own race, no matter what was happening around me. Lots of people “mirror drive” when they get to the lead, which essentially means they are staring in their rearview mirror so they can block whoever is coming up behind them.
You got to the lead for a reason. Look ahead, hit your marks, and go as fast as you possibly can without distraction. If you’re always looking behind you for problems, problems you shall have. Look forward to your goals, not behind you at your worries.
8. It’s a long season; don’t get caught up in one race
A rough start to a season or even a mid-season wreck at an inopportune time can feel like the end of the world. But remember if it can happen to you, it can happen to anyone. All is not lost on any one race.
Always remember that you, and everyone else, will be suiting back up next week. And when you do, what happened last week won’t matter. One race, one decision, one day will not define you. Your racing career will never be remembered by one night, but by the body of work you’ve left on that track.
9. Take the words “should,” “would,” and “could” out of your vocabulary.
After every race, many of the drivers would wait for the traffic to die down and crack a few cold ones in the pits. It was a great time to bond with your crew and other racers, but it was also the time many of them told stories of how they could have won the race.
Herein lies one of the biggest difference between drivers and champions: Champions understand that there is no “could” and “should.” There is did and didn’t. There is always a reason you could have done something, but here’s the thing — you didn’t. That’s exactly why actually getting it feels so damn good. Listening to the stories let you know who was ready for the next battle, and who was still making excuses.
10. Build your community
Life can be competitive, but it’s important to have a family that supports you. Even in the thick of the most intense racetrack battles, we all had something in common — a bond that no competition could break. It was a sibling rivalry of sorts, an I-can-make-fun-of-my-fellow-racers-but-you-better-not kind of mentality.
I remember nights where a point leader would wreck in a tight championship battle — all but handing the title to the second place team — but as that car limped it’s way onto the pit road, you’d see the swarm descend upon it. That competing team, and five other teams, would rally around that car to get it back on the track to give them a fair fight. Even in the heat of the battle they supported each other.
That’s the kind of friends that are hard to find, but even more important to keep. Those are the friends that will keep your car rolling through all the ups and downs.
11. You’ll need luck, but you can make your own
I think in anything — life, racing, or otherwise — you’re going to need some luck. Some will come from the universe or from the deity of your choice, but some of it comes from you.
If you’re meticulously preparing your car every week, it’s not luck that it doesn’t break down. If you’re making smart, safe decisions on the track, you’re not lucky you don’t wreck every week. Inevitably there will be some things that are out of your hands, but for everything else it’s up to you to create your own.
12. Listen to your gut sometimes, not just your friends and family
It helps if your parents support it, but they don’t have to. In my case, my mother wasn’t thrilled, but she showed up to the races every week yelling things from the stands like “Anytime my kid has to wear a fire suit and a helmet, I’m going to be there” and “Stop jostling him!” when I got hit on the track.
If you love it, do it. Your friends and family’s opinions should always be considered, but they’re not meant to dictate your path. The beautiful thing about being surrounded by people who love you is they’ll get behind you, even if they don’t fully agree. My friends from my liberal arts college came in full force. My mother, my grandmother, and many who had never been to a race before showed up proudly wearing #78 shirts.
All of your good friends and family will find a way to support what you love in a way that’s unique to them. Define your own life, and let your support system do what it’s built to do.
13. Be careful with what you say—you never know who is watching
You don’t have to be a celebrity to be in the public eye. Most things you do are visible by others, and for every piece of actual feedback you get there are ten others who are thinking something they aren’t saying. Racing was a blast, but it was also a responsibility. We had fans in the stands, fans who paid attention to how we talked about our fellow racers, the decisions we made on the track, and how we reacted when we had a bad day.
If you want to make the world a better place, you can start with the people who are already paying attention to you. Give them a role model to look up to, be something they want to be. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.
14. It’s not about the accolades you collect, but the people who make them worthwhile
There were many awards to be won, but presenting my dad with the Sportsman of the Year trophy was one of my life’s most wonderful moments.
Many think racing is about getting to victory lane, but there’s so much more than that. There are championships to be won, awards like Most Popular Driver and Rookie of the Year, but there’s also respect, memories, and relationships to be won.
The crowning moment of my racing career wasn’t winning Most Popular Driver or my humble collection of race day trophies, it was when I presented my Dad with the Sportsman of the Year award. He told me from the beginning that everything is about the people, and that anybody who didn’t see that had no business racing. He had to balance the fear and fury of being a race car driver while serving as a role model to his wide-eyed son. I knew how special that award was to him, and he didn’t have to say it. His race trophies spill out of one room in his house and sprawl into the basement, but that one stands proudly on its own in his living room.
The trophies? They’re just metal and plastic. But they’re a tangible frozen story, one that means nothing without the relationships and memories forged inside them.
Ultimately, I found that the real moments of truth did not happen in the shine of a flash bulb or in the taste of sprayed champagne. They happened with the people who made it taste so sweet. You, and those people, are the only people in the universe who know that taste, and it’s something that can never be taken away from you.
When your life’s work ends, the memory of whom you shared it with will be all that remains. Time is the most precious currency of all, how you spend it — and who you spend it on — may very well be what tells your life story when the checkered flag flies.
