The Racer's Mentality

The following is not a new revelation, but it needs to be said every now and then; Racers are an awesome group of people. I’m not necessarily talking about just anyone who drives a race car, or limiting that description to only people who drive race cars. I’m talking about racers, those folks who are possessed with a mentality that is all consumed with racing at least a significant amount of time.

Racers spend time thinking about chassis set ups, ignition timing, travel schedules and gear ratios. They need to give attention to sponsorship meetings, rule changes, tire stagger, PR events and budget constraints. Racers minds revolve around spring rates, camber, caster and weather forecasts. All of these factors weigh on the mind, hopefully culminating in a win occasionally or, at the very least, a weekend where they at least break even. And this racers mentality is all about beating the other guy. And, Lord, what they’ll do on the track to beat each other! A racer will cheat, dump a competitor, sand bag, drive it in way too deep ‘cause, after all, eight tires work better than four along with a thousand other things....just to beat those around him. But out of the car, that same racers mentality will drive these same people to bend over backwards to help to the Nth degree the very people he’s trying to destroy on the track.

This past weekend is the perfect example of my point. As we’ve moved from karts to bandoleros this season, it’s no secret that our little race team has struggled to find speed. If the cars have been good, then the new circumstances that TW and Logan were experiencing would be obvious in the form of spins, inconsistent lap times and just poor showings in general. In contrast, whenever the boys were doing a decent job on the track, we would give them a car that couldn’t fall out of a tree. Which brings us to the subject at hand. During the first practice session Saturday at Highland Rim, Logan felt his car was pretty good. However, as he kept searching for speed, he spun a couple of times.

Once the session was over, Logan went out to find some of his competitors to pick their brains. Now keep in mind, these are kids! But, they are also racers. They took Logan to the edge of the track and began showing him where to lift and where to get back in the throttle. They told him how much to arc each turn, and the similarities and differences to Huntsville Speedway, which Logan had run more frequently. Moreover, once we had mechanical issues during qualifying, these same kids as well as some of their parents were offering both assistance as well as the parts to get us back on the track. No one was obligated to give any of the assistance mentioned above; but they’re racers, and that’s the difference. We’ve experienced assistance many times over the seasons, going all the way back to when the boys were in karts. I only hope we’ve done our part to help others when they were in a jam. Hopefully, others recognize us as racers, too.