Latest / In The Driver's Seat / I Was Terrified Every Race. Here's Why I Kept Getting in the Car.
Transcript
- Lisa: When made the announcement that I was leaving my job, my place of employment of eleven years, I loved, it was a very secure job. To go somewhere I had never been before and didn't know anyone. People kept asking me how I was so brave or how I had the courage to do such a thing by myself. And all I could say think of was a huge factor in that was my background in racing and all the stages of me doing things on the edge of being scared. The first time I buckled into a quarter-midget race car, was only eleven years old. ⁓ I terrified. My dad had nearly died in smit car when I was in kindergarten and I spent years watching him have to rehabilitate from that. So while I still loved racing and going to the races watching the cars, I had zero desire of watching someone I loved race. For you know, the fear of going through that again, of watching someone I loved have But there I was talked into trying it out and I got in the car despite the fact I was scared. This episode is about all the years of my racing and how I was scared through parts, ⁓ different parts and stages of my racing career, you would call it that. How despite being scared, I did it anyway. And more importantly, what I carry forward in my life, the lessons that I learned, taught me about self-doubt that I still use today. The saying that ⁓ courage isn't the of fear, but the choice to do it in spite of it. That is very much what I was doing through my racing. So the backstory with my dad was he had started racing sprint cars when my parents divorced. Which again, I was in kindergarten when he started, and he early on was mostly traveling into different tracks, and therefore my brother and I always went with him. ⁓ on this particular night, he was racing like an hour north of where we lived. And so he got us a babysitter instead. But he was running late to the track. And in his hustle trying to not miss qualifications, he did not put on a lot of his safety equipment. Goes out, had it set in his mind. The track record had been broken for the first time in several years. ⁓ he had it in his mind that he was going to break it again. And apparently he was very close to that, but instead he ends up ⁓ bicycling on two wheels the car catches like a rut or something in the track that then sends it, the sends the car barrel rolling. And he hits the wall. His he didn't have his arm, ⁓ what they call arm strengths, which keep your arms close into you ⁓ versus flopping around. ⁓ So arm went up over the roll cage. The car roll cage went came down on his car ⁓ arm, crushing it. His helmet hit ⁓ The wall and I believe the roll cage. And it busted out part of his helmet. ⁓ the hospital wanted to amputate his arm, which they were not able to get ⁓ a hold of his parents get permission to do that. ⁓ So they put plates in his arm his elbow to his wrist, his ⁓ in the his head ⁓ from the thrash, you know, beating ⁓ around. on things he had double vision, which there were several operations from that trying to correct his double vision. ⁓ But in the after the accident, he was in a coma for like six weeks. ⁓ So was, like I said, there was just lots of ⁓ things he to go through as far as ⁓ in the aftermath the accident, once he did come to back to consciousness. and of which, you know, I watched them. he had a open wound in ⁓ the inside his elbow that then they had a skin graft from his leg to then close that up to heal the in the the big open ⁓ spot at inside of his elbow. ⁓ So as young child that was very impressionable to me. So I'm a couple years older than my brother. And when my brother was six, so not very far down the down the timeline, my brother starts racing go-karts. And ⁓ go-karts are just flat floorboard of some sort. I don't know how I explain if you don't know what a go-kart is, but it's just like four tires, a seat. You're sitting on that. There's no seatbelt. There's no protection around the driver. And ⁓ was incredibly scared to watch him race. I didn't even want to go to the track when my dad made me go ⁓ to support him. Then one night he was my brother was doing well. He's running second in the race and a car bumps him and they they had put a tire out on the track because it had rained and so there was like ⁓ water and I don't know if there was staying water, if it was just as muddy or what, but they put a tire there and he ends up hitting that and goes straight into the air. And I I lost it. I just started screaming. But Thankfully he was okay nobody ran him over, the car didn't land on him. ⁓ but that really shook up my dad too. In my dad's hometown, there's a quarter midget track and he must have kind of relayed his concerns to some of his friends there, which then said, Why don't you have him race a quarter midget? 'Cause our grandparents still lived in Lincoln Illinois, where this track was. And so then therefore my brother started racing quarter There the interesting thing with quarter midgets is a chunk of the kids that race are girls. ⁓ And every Sunday we would go to a the one track that was in Iowa, which was actually asphalt. So Lincoln was a dirt track. We go every other week ⁓ race northern And they had what they called a club car where it was to help kind of recruit families or kids to race. If the people would show up to watch, it was a way to let people try it out and see like what see what it was like. And they kept asking me, why don't you race? Why don't you raise? I'm like, I don't want to race. And we know I want to race. ⁓ They so they start telling me how safe it was, how more kids get hurt playing normal sports like football and baseball versus quarter midget racing. And so I thought, ⁓ well, if it's really that safe, you know, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. And it would be kind of fun to just do it with my, you know, with my brother, you know, kind of a family event versus me just going and watching. And so they just said, why don't you take out this club car and try it? And I won my first six races. Now granted there wasn't a whole lot of competition there, but once that happened, my dad was ecstatic and he's buying me my he's buying me a car. So obviously at this stage winning those races made it much easier for me to continue to get back into the car. So while the fear didn't completely disappear, it was very much tampered down a lot a by the fact that the stats of how safe the races were and I'm doing it and winning and having fun. So that all allowed me to continue to move forward. So at that the early stages of racing, my fear was instilled in me before I ever even took a lap on the track because of what I saw my dad go through. that was information to me that racing is dangerous. So in order for me to get into a race car, ⁓ what I do with this information inside my head that I know about racing and ⁓ kind of balance that out. Like, you know, like I said, with I knew ⁓ stats about that particular racine was pretty safe. but I knew danger wasn't zero. So I started off racing. I have my rookie, like they don't really do rookies, but they call novice, I guess, in quarter midgets. ⁓ And went that. the car my dad bought me, I wasn't doing real great. ⁓ I we did really in the club car at the track in Iowa, but ⁓ the track we were racing in in Lincoln. I was struggling and it all kind of came to a head when we went to a nationals race in Kokomo, Indiana, and I was spinning out all the time. I just kept spinning out and spinning out. And I couldn't tell my dad what was wrong. Like, I don't know what's wrong with it. The car, it just is very hard to handle. he was frustrated, I was frustrated. And he put my brother in the car to take it out and try to figure out what was going on. When my brother said, I don't know how she drives that thing. Like it's terrible. So all that time up to then, I just thought maybe I'm not that good. I'm not gonna be that good. I'm not as good as my brother, I'm not good as good as other ⁓ drivers or other or ⁓ whatever, ⁓ I really on myself that this maybe this isn't my thing. But then once my dad realized it well wasn't me, he buys a brand new car. And the builder was in California. We actually fly to California for the last kind of stages of getting fitted in the car. So what was really kind of cool was that when we got there, not only did he, take some measurements or whatever for the custom fitting ⁓ to the car, but Ken sit and we we would have dinner, and after dinner, we were watching old race films of like his son and other drivers. And he had a chalkboard in the kitchen and he would draw a track and he would Tell me different racing lines, how to line up, how to, you know, be fast when the green flag drops, all these things. And I'm soaking it up like a sponge. There we were supposed to go race at a track in Sacramento. And we get there, and unbeknownst to Ken, they weren't racing that day. So Ken says, Well, I guess it's practice day. ⁓ I go out there and I'm taking these laps and ⁓ not doing very well. Ken does not think I'm going as fast as I should be. And ⁓ He's on me. Like he's really riding me and getting on me. And like you're not gonna be that good. You're not gonna be good if you can't do XYZ. Whatever. Whatever I the marks I was not hitting, probably g backing out of the gas too soon, heading into the corner, whatever. probably wasn't even supposed to let off the gas, and I probably was. so he would stand on the track, ⁓ trying to get me to get to the point of where I was supposed to be, you know. So out of frustration, because again, I have it in my head that I'm not that good. And I go sit in the car and I start crying. And my dad came and sat in the car and he said, do you want me to make him stop? You know, and ⁓ I said, ⁓ And I just of gather myself together and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna freaking do this. And so I go out there and I start hitting the marks and doing the things that he wants me to do, and I was much faster. So it was kind of an analogy to that be like you driving with the parking brake on, and then you're blaming yourself because you're going so slow. But once someone shows you that the parking brake's on and you release it ⁓ then the car's now all of a sudden driving normally. ⁓ You realize ⁓ I really can drive. So I get the car the new car is back home with us ⁓ and of a sudden I'm ⁓ winning. my is really high. ⁓ I start winning a with this car to the point I don't know why I have this core memory of me being on the track that it was almost not even a challenge anymore. That I implemented all the Tricks that I mean, there weren't like illegal tricks by any means, but the the lining up and how you do all the things that Ken had taught me. Now I'm back and doing that, and everything felt just so easy. I distinctly remember the song, the Guns N' Roses song, It's So Easy, would play in my head when I was racing. I was going around the track. 'Cause almost like I was bored 'cause I'm out there leading the race and I was like, this is so easy now. So then the following year, which would have been the last year, so corner midgets you only race till you're fifteen. But there is another class out right after that called the half midget, which has the same cars, but they just use, you know, bigger engines. in a guy named Jim had a daughter who no longer wanted to race. So he but he wanted to continue to race. So he asked my dad if I would race his half midget. And I remember thinking again I'm still thinking I'm not that good. Tracy was really good. She won a lot of races. The boys were I wouldn't say necessarily scared of her, but they knew that she was going to be a handful on the track. And I thought, now I'm moving up, I'm moving up to a different class. I don't know anything about it. There's a clutch. There's other things I got to do with the with the car. I know it's going to handle different. It's going to be faster. ⁓ And I thought, if go out there and I don't perform A now, I mean I'm can win in the quarter midget. Tracy could win in the half midget. If I don't do as well as Tracy, everybody's like, yeah, she isn't really that good. And I told my dad that I'm like, I don't think I want to do it because everybody's gonna compare my skills to Tracy's. What if I'm not that good? And so my dad told Jim what I had said, and he said, You tell her if she if I didn't think she was as good, if not better than Tracy, that I would not have asked her to race my car. So while I didn't have the belief yet that I could do it, I showed up to the track because Jim believed in me. And then I did it. I borrowed his belief in my skills to make it happen. And that was just enough for me to get rolling and definitely earn my own space in ⁓ class. So that's I mean it that appears like fear, but it was really more like self-doubt. Where I didn't have enough evidence yet for myself to believe that I could do the thing. So the fix isn't always more confidence because the confidence doesn't come until often on the other side of it. It's to get better information about what's going on, such as, you know, the bad car wasn't it wasn't my lack of skills, was I didn't have a good car. A bad car isn't doesn't equate to a bad driver, as well as someone else's belief can carry you until you can build your own. So at the end of my quarter midget slash half midget year, I had told my dad I do not want to move up. there's a full midget class, which is a four-cylinder engine. They race ⁓ quarter and half mile tracks all over. at the time there were very few tracks that raced on a on a weekly schedule. So we would have to travel. ⁓ But I told my dad I did not want to spend time doing that. I wanted to focus ⁓ on getting for college. I was in high school, ⁓ and that's I wanted to ⁓ put my into. Well, despite me saying that, my dad buys a midget and I was mad. ⁓ And so put my brother, again, who was younger than me. In the midget. But back then, you had to be 16 to race. There was rules about ages and racing. My brother at the time was only 14. And they raced a few races, but there was a family there with the organization that they were racing with, who knew ⁓ how my brother was because they raised quartermen, they had raced quarter midgets at the track we raced in in Illinois. And so they said. He's not old enough, which then put the kibosh to them being able to raise. My dad comes to me again and asks me, please just try it. ⁓ of like the quarterback thing ⁓ with the car. Just try it. If you don't like it, I promise I will sell the car. So I raced the very last couple races with this organization ⁓ the end of 88. It didn't do anything spectacular by any means. But my dad decides he's going to buy me a brand new midget. Have it built again to my spec ⁓ part of my problem with the midget I was racing was it was big me in the sea and I was not super comfortable with where the steering landed for me. And I raced a full season then with the new car in '89. Then basically other than I graduated in ninety and went to college. But every summer I come home, my midgets just sitting in the shop. ⁓ My brother's racing now at this point, racing in ⁓ ⁓ Knoxville, Iowa, So every weekend we were going to Knoxville. After a couple years of that, I said to my dad, because my guys again, there was no midget racing really in Iowa. We'd have to travel to Illinois or wherever elsewhere to catch a midget race. And that wasn't gonna happen when we were just going 10 miles up the road to race a sprint car for my with my brother. So I said, okay, put me together a sprint car. Which was crazy talk. When I began racing, I was of it. And now ⁓ I'm going to get in the very type of race car that nearly killed my dad. Other than obviously they had progressed a lot the years with different safety features You know, the r the wings w we raced winged smart cars. But I wanted to race the smaller engine class. I wanted to race the three sixty. And my brother was racing four ten cubic inch engine. ⁓ And had everything already. That was the goal. We painted the smaller wing for the three sixty car. And at the very last, at the end, my dad says, No, if you want to race a sprint car, you're gonna race a four ten, because then you won't learn poor race like different different racing habits as far that are required with the small wing and the harder tire in the 360 class. You're going to properly learn how to drive this car. So my very first sprint car race was with the Royal of Outlaws, which is at the time was the biggest or the ⁓ the premier top dog ⁓ organization for the sprint car world. ⁓ they travel in ⁓ They were the the ones that you wanted to be. You weren't they were the ones that got the sponsorship money. They were the ones that would come and kick everyone's butt usually when whatever truck they showed up at. So people said to my dad, like you're going to kill your daughter. we what they call hot laps, which is kind of feeling ⁓ the setup of your car, getting everything warmed See what the tracks like, yada yada yada. And I'm in hot laps. My very first time at Knoxville, other than we did have practice night. And ⁓ Steve Kinzer, which they call him king the king. He had multiple championships, And he drove by me so fast it felt like I was sitting still on the track. ⁓ And thought, ⁓ gosh, maybe I am in a little over my head here. But then these people started showing up for me at the track, one of which was the dad of a local champion. He would take me down to the corners and show me different lines, show me how to read the track the dirt, the track, you know, what different colors meant in the in the dirt. that felt good, you know, to have somebody who was actually a very important person or, ⁓ you a well-known name at the track to take that interest in me ⁓ and want help me meant that he saw something in me. Like if he thought I was just not gonna ever be anything, why would he take the time to try to develop my skills? Then again, the World of Outlaws at the time had a driver who would come and work on their card or track when they were in town. ⁓ And his driver's dad said to me, he said, You are one of the smoothest drivers I've ever seen on the track. At the time I would only have been like 20 years old. Which is a twenty-year-old girl doesn't know what she's doing. And these sprint cars were fast. Like it's a eight over eight hundred horsepower to ⁓ just say don't know what they are they were back then, but let's just say twelve hundred pound race car, ⁓ So ⁓ I maybe was a hundred and ten or the cars are hitting a hundred and ten miles an hour the of the straightway. I was definitely getting in the car every night. Like there was butterflies, I was nervous. One thing I haven't mentioned that I carried from the very beginning quarter minute days throughout up to Srint Cars. Every every time I sat in the car ⁓ and I was ready to go on the track, I said prayer. Prayed for my safety, for everyone's safety. And I think that kind of also helped calm my nerves a little bit. So I was always on the edge of this fear, right? I had you know, fear of crashing, never completely disappeared. But it was more of tapping into that a little bit to make it part of the experience, a little bit of a r adrenaline rush, maybe, knowing that I was conquering this. I was out there, I was doing it. At the time I was one of very, very few females that were racing sprint cars at that, you know, that level of racing. So in a race car, you can't wait until you're not a you're not scared anymore to go fast. In fact, in a smart car, you have to go fast in order for the car to handle the way it's designed to handle. You go slow, you're just making it harder for yourself because the car doesn't load right, the the suspension doesn't load right. And not to mention, you could be in driver's way like ⁓ was with Steve Kins, sir. You're just in people's way or that's very dangerous too to be just kind of out there as someone they gotta drive around really fast when they're going when they're going really fast. So basically it becomes a skill in some ways to tamper down the fear and just do it anyway. And that skill is something that I have been able to carry off the track as well. doing the thing despite being scared. that was almost kind of a competition to myself in a way. ⁓ was trying to make myself better and getting through it. So when I look back to my time in racing, there are a few things that I wish I had known back then. One bad equipment does not mean lack of ability. So when you translate to that to real life, when results aren't coming in, you start analyzing what's going on. Is it a lack of tools? Is it a lack of support to help you? Are you in the right environment? They'll just realize sometimes it's not you when things aren't going right. Two, borrowing someone else's belief in your skills when you lack the belief in yourself is absolutely fuel for what you're trying to accomplish. You don't have to feel confident to start. You just need someone who has certainty bigger than your doubt. So for me, Ken Rice had it, Jim had it, the dads ⁓ of other had it. Find your mentors Who in your life sees what you can't see quite see yet? Then run on their belief in you while you're working to build your own belief. And finally, fear does not have to be completely gone before you start. I was scared nearly every time I strapped myself into the car and drove onto the racetrack. So what didn't change, ⁓ even though I would conquer a part of racing, I then I would go to a next stage of racing. I would realize that the fear was still there. But what did change was my relationship with the fear. It became something that I just carried Self-doubt told me I wasn't brave enough, wasn't ⁓ enough, wasn't fast enough. And for a while I almost believed it. What I know now is that cars can be fixed, belief can be borrowed, and you can do it scared. Fear does not need to be gone, just needs to get the heck out of the driver's seat and let you drive. If you want more encouragement, knowing that things are possible in live and seeing what things are possible in life, I do have a newsletter called Hello Possibility. ⁓ you can subscribe to that at LisaFrench.rocks forward slash ⁓ The link will also be in the show notes. That comes out once a week ⁓ Also if you are ⁓ catching this on youtube please subscribe if you're catching it else please follow. ⁓ I really appreciate it and then you won't miss an episode Thank you so much for spending time with me. I really appreciate you being here. Until the next time, know that you are always in the driver's seat of your own life.