By Rob Shumay
Recently, I was blessed with the chance to run some laps at the NASCAR Driving Experience at Homestead Speedway in Florida. Going in, all I thought about was the chance to drive an amazing machine as fast as I could. Mission Accomplished as far as the speed goes; but I got the added bonus of having two key business principles reinforced: Keep your emotions in check and listen to your teammate’s advice.
Before I go on: If you ever have the chance to go through the NASCAR Driving Experience, DO SO! You do not need to be a NASCAR fan to enjoy it.
We all know what we feel as we await something we are excited about. As you wait your turn, the excitement increases as the engines of the cars roar and other people finish and tell you how awesome it was. Finally, your turn is up. Your excitement is off the charts.
As you are waiting, at some point most of you will have the same thought I did: I getting into a rear wheel drive car with a manual transmission and 700 horsepower….I’d love to light up these tires when I take off.
Then you get into a NASCAR that is only vaguely familiar. The seat is much more confining and the steering wheel much smaller. There is no adjusting anything, so you have to make the best of how you can reach the pedals. Your head is in a helmet and HANS device to protect your neck. Then the pit chief starts giving instructions one after another. Then your spotter comes on the radio with even more instructions.
The cars are equipped with rev chips that allows the spotter to limit the speed of the car by capping the number of rpms the engine can reach. This means that the better you follow instructions, the faster you can go.
As you are waiting your turn, the spotter is telling you to shift at 2,000 rpm. Make sure you are in 4th by the end of pit row. Get to 3,200 rpm on the access road….and on and on.
NASCAR Driving Experience Rules
Then the rule I hated most: no burn outs.
So, your roller coaster ride of emotions takes another dip. You have to keep the rpms at 2,000, so now your attention shifts to making sure you don’t embarrass yourself and stall the car on the start in front of everyone.
When you finally get the car on the track, the feeling is awesome. I did 2 sessions of about 6 minutes each. During the first session, your mind is racing (pun intended) on getting a feel for how a NASCAR drives and putting into practice all of the instructions, like maintaining the right rpms and running the right line.
As you show success, two things happen. First, your spotter ups the max rpms you can reach and your speed increases. Second, as your speed increases, diving into the turns becomes more mentally and physically challenging.
Based on our years of experience, we would reasonably expect a car to give out when entering a turn at such a high rate of speed with some much force on the steering wheel. The natural inclination is to back off the throttle to protect one’s self.
I fell into this habit as the speed increased.can’t remember the exact words my spotter used, but he told, no, convinced me that he knows what a NASCAR can do and at the speeds we are going he reassured me that if I keep it on the line he told me that he was 100% certain the car would not slide an inch. Once I overcame my fear and trusted my teammate’s knowledge, my speeds went up dramatically.
I am happy to say that I reached speeds far beyond what was expected based on the laps I ran. I did so, not because I was a good driver, but because I was a good listener. I kept my emotions in check and listed to and trusted my teammate’s advice.
