QuestionHello, my name is Danielle.
I have been involved with cars for a very long time. I have done some work on cars before, but not enough to take a car apart and put it back together. I was planning on going into car restoration, until I figured out that not only do I love working on cars, but I strongly believe that racing would be the best thing for me.
Unfortunately, there are some problems that I am encountering. The first thing is that I have a below basic knowledge in cars. Next, I am only 17 and graduating from high school at the end on 2009. Finally, I don’t know where to really start.
I started doing more research when I found out that my school has a program called “career study” where I will be able to go to different businesses of any sort and be an intern to see what happens in that general area. This is to help us (school body) know if what we are thinking of doing when we grow up is appropriate for us. This is when I figured out that I really want to race cars. Just the thought of it made my heart race.
If you have any suggestion to get me started, or places that I could go for my career study, please email me back and your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you very much for your time,
Danielle Pilacik
AnswerHi Danielle !
You may wish to change your high school focus to college preperatory with an emphasis on engineering. Mechanical engineering espceially, or aerodynamics, maybe even maaterials and metal science engineering. There is always a demand for metals that are lighter, stronger, and tougher than what we have now. But go ahead and sign up for the work experience classes, there is no such thing as too much education, or too much experience.
Sunday night on Wind Tunnel , (Speed Channel 9PM EST Sundays) The featured guest was Steve Letart, crew chief for Jeff Gordon of NASCAR fame. Steve started at Hendrick MotorSports at age 16 sweeping floors, worked hard and always gave a little extra, and at age 30 he's fantastically successful.
Some of us are not meant to be race drivers, and occasionally some are. Most of todays professional drivers started racing Go Karts when they were age 6 or 7. There are some that started later, but it takes a LOT of talent. That's not to say you can't race cars. but you may be involved as an amateur driver for a long time before you get a paid ride. The other thing is the expense. I hate to say it, but most professional race drivers either got very very lucky, or they started with a lot of money behind them. It takes HUGE amounts of money to field a race car like you see on TV. NASCAR race cars cost about $300.000.00 to build and that's cheap compared to many others like Indy Cars and the like.
This is not meant to discourage you, but you should know the facts before you hang your hopes on only one star!
Now then - - - if you'd like to get involved in real amateur racing now, go to www.scca.com and check out the largest body of amateur racers in the US. If you will click on the region locator, you'll find that if you live in the US , there's some racing activity fairly close. You can join for $75.00 and start attending fairly soon.
A lot of pro drivers do start racing real cars in SCCA. Plus you can start nearly right away working on a corner during a race, or with the fire crew, there are a number of trackside jobs. All volunteer of course, you won't be paid, but you will have a LOT of fun ! , and you'll learn a lot about racing from the ground up.
That's about all I can think of at the moment, but feel free to write back with more questions, and you may want to let me know where you live
Good luck
Dan Liddy
Sarasota, Florida
