July 11, 2025
Racing Beyond Limits: Lena Chin's Journey in Gridlife
Send us a text When six-year-old Lena Chin attended her first race at Sebring, something clicked—the sights, sounds, and energy of motorsport captured her imagination completely. Nearly two decades later, she's become a competitive force in the Gridlife Touring Cup Series, piloting her Honda S2000 against some of the best amateur racers in the country. In this illuminating conversation, Lena pulls back the curtain on the unique world of Gridlife racing—a grassroots series that blends competi...
When six-year-old Lena Chin attended her first race at Sebring, something clicked—the sights, sounds, and energy of motorsport captured her imagination completely. Nearly two decades later, she's become a competitive force in the Gridlife Touring Cup Series, piloting her Honda S2000 against some of the best amateur racers in the country.
In this illuminating conversation, Lena pulls back the curtain on the unique world of Gridlife racing—a grassroots series that blends competitive motorsports with music festival energy at iconic tracks across America. Far from the polished corporate atmosphere of professional racing, Gridlife offers an accessible yet fiercely competitive environment where drivers compete on street tires while building a tight-knit community that feels like family.
Lena's journey reveals the evolution of success in racing—from chasing trophies to measuring growth through consistent improvement, rising from 20th place to consistent top-10 finishes against fields of 50 cars. Her Honda S2000, built by AD Smedgard Motorsports with a transplanted K24 engine and full racing modifications, represents the technical side of the sport, while her interactions with young female fans highlight the human impact of representation in a traditionally male-dominated space.
Beyond the adrenaline of wheel-to-wheel competition, Lena shares how she balances racing with career and personal life, finding renewal through time spent at Chicago's lakefront and exploring the city's diverse neighborhoods. She offers listeners a glimpse into memorable racing moments—from night racing at Daytona to recent podium finishes at Mid-Ohio—and announces an upcoming women-only track day at Gingerman Raceway designed to welcome newcomers to the sport.
Whether you're a seasoned racing enthusiast or simply curious about the human stories behind motorsport, Lena's perspective offers a refreshing look at modern grassroots racing and the women proving they belong on track. Follow her journey on Instagram @oneLenaChin and YouTube at Lena Chin Racing, and discover why more fans and competitors are calling Gridlife racing home.
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00:00 - Welcome to Women's Motorsports Network
01:55 - Meet Racer Lena Chin
05:00 - Inside the Gridlife Racing Series
09:30 - Finding Competition and Community
15:24 - The Honda S2000 Build
19:39 - Life Balance and Racing Success
26:50 - Racing Memories and Future Plans
30:40 - Women's Track Day at Gingerman
WEBVTT
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Hello everyone, this is Melinda Russell with the Women's Motorsports Network podcast, and my guest today is Lena.
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Lena Chin is a race car driver and she drives in a series that we haven't really interviewed very many people about, so I'm excited to have her kind of share more about that.
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But first, lena, I want to welcome you to the show and would you tell us a little bit about yourself.
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Hi, thanks for having me.
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Yeah, so I'm Lena Chen.
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I drive a Honda S2000 in the Good Life Touring Cup Series and I've been racing probably for about 17 years now.
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But I've been into cars and motorsports most of my life.
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So I kind of got my start when I was younger.
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My dad took me to the 12 hours of Sebring when I was about six and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever.
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So I kind of got hooked there, watched a lot of Formula One, I played a ton of Gran Turismo and other racing games anything I could kind of get my hands on at the time, right TOCA racing and I'm kind of aging myself too when I'm saying it's like Rad Racer, but yeah, always really loved it.
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One of my favorite arcade games was Ferrari F355 Challenge.
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That was always a ton of fun because it actually had a clutch pedal.
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But yeah, the bug never really left me.
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It took me until my mid-20s to be able to afford to actually go racing and kind of been working my way up.
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That's very cool, so I'm going to go back a little bit.
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Do you have pets, kids, anything that you want to share about Sure?
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Yeah, I have my best little doggie.
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Her name is Foxy.
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She comes to the racetrack with me sometimes.
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She's a rescue dog that I got when she was about two or three in Florida where I used to live.
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She's, I believe, half corgi, half golden lab.
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I never got the DNA test, but she has short little lowered legs, which I love, and she has just the sweetest personality.
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She'll go up to anyone and just ask for belly rubs.
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Yeah, my dog's the same way.
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He loves belly rubs, he's a Shih Tzu, so yeah, he loves that.
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And you live in Chicago and so we're not too awfully far from each other.
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We couple hours at the most.
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And, lena, I actually was at grid life at ginger man recently, and so you know, I, you got started at Lamon, which is or no, sebring, which is a little different than grid life, but in a lot of ways it's kind of the same to the road course in that.
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So why don't you share with us a little bit about how you got going like in grid life, or maybe a little bit more about grid life, because a lot of people probably don't know what that is.
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Yeah, so grid life is kind of a it was a grassroots competition.
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It actually started as a track day for people in the Midwest and kind of grew and they decided to switch it up and add time trial.
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And then, I believe in about 2017, 2018, they decided to add this like wheel to wheel component, which is the Gridlife Touring Cup, and it happened to attract some of the best amateur racers in the country, people who've won championships through other series that exist.
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I'm sure you know some of your fans or you know listeners, might've heard of NASA and SCCA and everything.
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So you know we've had former champions come in, we've had IMSA drivers come race with us in GLTC, so it kind of spanned from that.
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Prior to me joining Gridlife I was racing NASA Florida, kind of doing regional stuff and then like the national championship and I was looking for maybe a little more competition than I was getting at the time and I did my first race with Gridlife at Atlanta Motorsports Park with this Honda Prelude I had it was an old X racer IMSA Prelude with an H23 and you know I'd always been kind of podiuming and the fields were a little bit smaller in Florida and I go to this grid life event and I placed 14th and I was like this is ridiculous.
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Like oh my gosh, I've never had competition like this before and you know, the goal of racing, at least for me, is always to be improving myself.
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So I kind of made that decision at that point.
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I was like, ok, like this is a series I want to be in.
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It's full of young people, they have a wonderful kind of family aspect to it, they have a musical aspect to it.
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So it's definitely kind of the up and coming race organization race series.
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So I'm excited to kind of be a part of it now and also be able to hone my my racing skills.
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Yeah, absolutely, and my husband and I drove over.
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They were at Ginger man a few weeks ago, three or four weeks ago, and we drove over because it's not far from Kalamazoo and, wow, I couldn't believe how many people were there.
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Now I've been to Ginger man a couple of times for events, but it was never grid life and there were just people everywhere and cars and it was just amazing, so fun to watch.
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And you know, I'm glad that we took the time to go, because it's not a series that I think people hear a lot about, not like a lot of the other series, and so I wanted to make sure that we could, you know, promote it a little more and get the word out.
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And there's quite a few women that race in the different classes, which was kind of cool.
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So tell me about that.
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Have you always raced in the same you know class or what?
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How has that gone in Gridlife?
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Yeah, so within grid life I've always raised within the touring cup class because I'm very much a wheel to wheel racer.
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I'm friends with a lot of the women, the other women that come and race.
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You know Natalie, who I know you interviewed.
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She's a great friend of mine and it's been great to kind of see her blossom within the class Devin Alexander.
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She races Time Attack with her Subaru another amazing female racer.
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So really, really fun to have that.
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You know us as a group working together to kind of promote women in motorsports and, and I think Good Life does a really good job of that.
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So definitely definitely exciting to see that Good Life definitely has a kind of like an early IMSA feel to it.
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So if you, if you remember IMSA from like the 80s and it was a lot of street stock cars and stuff it wasn't like the big money kind of stuff that's happening now yeah, I see a lot of similarities between where Good Life is now and where IMSA was back in, maybe like the 80s and stuff.
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So it's really cool to see.
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Yeah, and it's just grown so much.
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That's the thing that's really cool about it.
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I love that part of it.
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So what's your favorite part?
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You know you've been racing quite a number of years.
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What keeps you going back every weekend?
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Or you know, I know you don't race every weekend, but what keeps you going back instead of, you know, hanging out or doing other things?
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You know, if I could afford to go racing every weekend, I probably would.
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I think that there's nothing else like it.
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It is, like I said, kind of like an extended family we love that we all have, and it takes so much to process that.
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I think it's really special to be able to do that.
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And there's not many other things within my life that I can say requires that amount of mental capacity.
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So being able to focus on not only your line, not only who's around you, your speed, your breaking points, the flag stations, like there's so much going on, and being able to manage it all, it's like this massive sense of accomplishment every time you get out there, and especially when you do well right.
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Right, right, you know when you when I hear you say about you know how you're handling all these things though it's kind of what we do as women, isn't it?
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You know, we, we have a lot of plates in the air or we're juggling a lot of balls, or whatever you want to say.
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You know between life and the things that we have to do, and then racing's got a lot of similarities to that as well.
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Yeah, absolutely, you know life, career, friends, family, like yes, absolutely, it is a lot of juggling.
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The sense of urgency I think you get with motorsports is special.
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With that little kick of adrenaline it's like a drug right.
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Yeah, for sure.
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I always say you only have to get somebody to the track once, and then they're usually hooked.
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And so that's our goal, isn't it To bring new people to the track, expose them to're usually hooked?
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And, and so that's our goal, isn't it to bring new people to the track, expose them to whatever kind of racing it is, and, and then our job is usually done.
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They'll.
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They'll keep coming back on their own because they're going to get hooked on it for sure.
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Yeah, I love that part, yeah, so tell me about your car so my car is a Honda S2000 built by AD Smedgard Motorsports.
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Previously I'd built my own cars, ran my own teams.
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I really want to concentrate more on like the driving aspect versus the build aspect.
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2022 GLTC max build car.
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It has a K24, which is a motor out of a TSX.
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It's not the original motor.
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It has all the suspension goodies you know, like remote reservoir shocks.
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It's got differential full roll cage.
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The interior has been removed.
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It's you know, very few parts are original on it, but it was all designed to be able to be fixed quickly at the track so we don't have a ton of time sometimes between sessions.
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So that ability to kind of swap out differentials, transmissions, any of the suspension beds, real quick is kind of vital for our racing.
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So we do run a square setup.
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That's pretty common in our series.
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I run a 255, 35 18-inch tire and everyone in the series runs 200 tread wear street tires.
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So I think a lot of people are pretty impressed with our lap times that we're able to accomplish with that, because we've definitely had lap times that we're able to accomplish with that, because we've definitely had lap times that seem to match or even beat some other people with slick tires.
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So that's pretty exciting it is exciting.
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Yeah, for sure.
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Now tell me a little bit about um.
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You know, I know that, uh, grid life goes to a lot of different tracks.
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I think you mentioned to me you love Gingerman, so um, is that your favorite track?
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Or what other tracks do you go to?
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I if people wanted to follow?
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Or you know people listen from all over the country, so where, where else will you be racing that they could maybe come out and see a race.
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Yeah, so this year, um, I'll be out at um.
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My my all time favorite track right now is Lime Rock In Connecticut.
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Love that track.
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It's tiny, it's very fast paced, I've done very well there, so I definitely enjoy that track.
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I'll also be at Pittsburgh International Raceway, okay.
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And then Autobahn in Illinois.
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I think that's in August, september, september, excuse me, okay.
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And then there's a possibility I might do Road America next month in July.
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So that's another big one for good life.
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You know we race all over the country.
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Yeah, we were at Road Atlanta earlier this year.
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We go to Mid-Ohio.
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Some of my competitors are going to be racing there this weekend, so that's pretty exciting.
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We jokingly call ourselves Dirtbag IMSA just because we do follow and go to a lot of the major tracks.
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But our.
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Super Bowl, like you said, is Gingerman Raceway.
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That's kind of where it all started, so the crowds are huge.
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We got 10 000 plus fans coming.
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you know um getting to meet the young fans, like you said, um was so special and and talking to them and and getting them excited about racing was was um definitely a highlight of of the weekend for me there there were a lot, of, a lot of kids there, but I mean there was old people like me, little kids and everybody in between, Because you know, it was just, it's just fun and Michigan's a hotbed for racing, and so as soon as you hear there's a race and on a Saturday I was there on a Saturday, but for a weekend and then, you know, I also heard that some people come just for the music.
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So they have excellent entertainment, I'm told.
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Yeah, yeah, it's something pretty exciting about a good life.
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It's like you know, you race all day and then you give yourself you know an hour, a couple hours to kind of decompress, and then you get to go to this amazing concert, right?
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So we've gotten to see some really, really cool artists and just hang out and and um.
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Being able to dance and and decompress that way after a race is truly, truly special.
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It is for sure, and you know the thing is, lena, not just race car drivers, but but fans.
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They want more than just racing nowadays.
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You know they want to be entertained, and especially when it's a weekend.
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You know NASCAR is similar to that, where you know they try to provide some kind of entertainment and different things, because when they come to the races they want more than just that.
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And it used to be.
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The racing was enough, but it's just not anymore.
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There's too much else fighting for their attention, for sure, for sure, I can tell you real quick.
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I had a story.
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I forgot what year it was, but I went to the F1 race in Austin and you would never believe it, but Taylor Swift was playing for the concert after.
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And, oh my, my gosh, it was so special because, um, these daughters and mothers were there at the race, right, and then, you know, originally they were kind of there for Taylor Swift, but I could see how excited so many of them were to see the race cars before the concert.
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You know, like that was huge that they sold out.
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Of course it's Taylor Swift, right, yeah, and um, and so, like that's a great way to get more fans in, right, there's definitely a crossover between um, music and and racing, so it's really cool to see because yeah, you know we need that.
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It really is cool to see.
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So, um, what would you say?
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You know some people think success has to be getting the trophy.
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I don't necessarily think that that's really.
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Success can be a lot of things.
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It can be improving from the start of the year to the next.
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It can be all kinds of things.
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How do you look at being successful If you look back on your?
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You know at the end of this year you're going to look back.
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What's going to be the things that make you feel like you were successful.
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So there's a few things I always look at for success.
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Certainly I used to run into the camp of I need the trophies, but now that you know I'm against better competitors, I kind of have taken a step back and really kind of changed how I feel about what success means to me.
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For one, like you said, improvement is huge.
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So I've been racing with Gridlife in the GLTC field with this car specifically for about three years now and each year I've kind of been improving, I've been moving up the field.
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I kind of started around 20th out of 50.
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And you know, the next year is kind of up to 15th um and now, like my goal of being within the top 10 um, within, you know, about 50 cars um is generally where I'm at.
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So I do see that improvement and that's huge um.
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The other is just being a good steward for um, for women in motorsports and to kind of get the children and the kids interested and be a good steward in that sense.
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So those are kind of the main goals I look for and what success kind of looks like for me.
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That's important and then also just in terms of being a good competitor to everyone around me, you know, and making sure that we all want to continue to race together.
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You know there's not a ton of women in motorsports, as I'm sure you're very aware of.
00:19:17.032 --> 00:19:25.125
So just being that good steward and showcasing, hey, we can be here, we can be very competitive, you know.
00:19:25.125 --> 00:19:27.468
Is is so, so important to me.
00:19:28.228 --> 00:19:39.497
Yeah, it is because, you know, some of the, I'm going to say, older men that have been in racing are harder to win over than the younger.
00:19:39.497 --> 00:19:46.365
The younger men seem to be way more accepting of women, but I think they're they've grown up kind of with that.
00:19:46.365 --> 00:19:50.982
From, maybe, quarter midgets or carding, there was a lot more girls maybe.
00:19:50.982 --> 00:19:55.270
And so, um, yeah, we have to, we have to hold our own.
00:19:55.270 --> 00:20:05.074
And yet, um, you know, make sure that they understand those around us that we're there to race and have a good time and be successful, just like they are.
00:20:05.074 --> 00:20:15.494
You're all there for the same reason, and so, you know, you want to make sure that when you come to the next race there's not somebody that's out to get you or whatever.
00:20:15.494 --> 00:20:20.571
We're all going to be looking out for each other a little bit, I would think for sure.
00:20:20.571 --> 00:20:26.123
Out for each other a little bit, I would think for sure.
00:20:26.143 --> 00:20:29.711
So, as a woman, I know you have a dog, that you know that you have to take care of, just like having a child or worse.
00:20:29.711 --> 00:20:41.484
Sometimes I had four kids and so then now I have this dog, who's my child, and sometimes they take more work than having the kids.
00:20:41.484 --> 00:20:44.412
So how do you balance life?
00:20:44.412 --> 00:20:47.404
You know all the things that you have to do in a normal.
00:20:47.404 --> 00:20:52.114
I'm sure you have a normal job, some kind of work that funds your racing.
00:20:52.114 --> 00:20:53.905
How do you manage all that?
00:20:53.905 --> 00:20:55.547
What do you do to take care of yourself?
00:20:57.641 --> 00:21:10.249
Well, I'm very thankful that I have a great support group of friends around me and you know, that's certainly helpful.
00:21:10.249 --> 00:21:15.165
Managing life it's not always easy, you know.
00:21:15.165 --> 00:21:17.612
Thankfully, foxy, my dog, is very chill.
00:21:17.612 --> 00:21:25.709
She does help me get out of the house sometimes when I'm just feeling lazy or overwhelmed and she's like, hey, no, we have to go for a walk.
00:21:25.709 --> 00:21:29.185
Um, that's nice, she actually helps me in that sense.
00:21:29.185 --> 00:21:36.554
Um, but yeah, I think I just, um, I have to take it one day at a time.
00:21:36.554 --> 00:21:47.559
I try to plan out my racing, but I try not to plan too too much because then it can kind of become overwhelming racing but, I try not to plan too too much, because then it can kind of become overwhelming.
00:21:49.940 --> 00:21:51.844
You know, me and my friends get to do this thing we call following the goose.
00:21:51.844 --> 00:21:57.865
So some weekends when I'm not racing and I don't have any prior commitments, just being in the city of Chicago, we'll just go out and explore a neighborhood.
00:21:57.865 --> 00:22:00.130
You know, and that's decompressing.
00:22:00.130 --> 00:22:04.891
We have the lake over here on this side right and it's a 10-minute walk for me.
00:22:05.819 --> 00:22:23.067
So I use the lake to kind of reset, kind of reorder and determine you know kind of what's important, what I need to do next in terms of motor sports or my life, work or what have you, and it just kind of gets me away from the screen time, right.
00:22:23.067 --> 00:22:30.571
So my day job is, you know, lots of meetings, lots of PowerPoints and computer-based things.
00:22:30.571 --> 00:22:36.792
So being able to go to the lake and just kind of recharge is so vitally important for me.
00:22:37.500 --> 00:22:55.114
Well, and there's so many cool little neighborhoods and like little restaurants tucked in places where you wouldn't expect them, and you know you could spend a long time doing that, just finding all the cool little restaurants alone, so that's, that's probably kind of a lot of fun to do, Exactly.
00:22:55.559 --> 00:22:55.800
Yeah.
00:22:57.084 --> 00:23:08.643
So if somebody came up to you a mom or a dad at a race and said you know, my little girl saw you racing and she wants to race, what would you say to them?
00:23:10.359 --> 00:23:15.171
You know, I would give them all the encouragement they needed to be able to do it.
00:23:16.220 --> 00:23:27.005
I think that's kind of what we're out there for is for the next generation and to have the confidence to tell them hey, you can absolutely be out here doing this.
00:23:27.005 --> 00:23:29.852
You know, that actually happened to me at Gingerman.
00:23:29.852 --> 00:23:37.567
A little girl came up to me and she was so, so sweet and at the end, after we talked and she asked for my autograph.
00:23:37.567 --> 00:23:40.039
You know, she was like what's your favorite part about racing?
00:23:40.039 --> 00:23:42.964
And I kind of jokingly said it was like beating the boys.
00:23:43.265 --> 00:23:45.368
And she just loved it.
00:23:45.469 --> 00:23:47.112
Yeah, so she's.
00:23:47.112 --> 00:23:47.973
She saw the little.
00:23:47.973 --> 00:23:54.593
You know, one of the other series we have in good life is called the rush series and it's a smaller car and she was.
00:23:54.593 --> 00:24:09.436
She was a younger, smaller girl and I think that just really spoke to her and just the same, when I was young, you know, the first time I saw a racing go-kart, I was like, oh my gosh, I need to have one of these, I can fit into it and I can race right so yeah, yeah, that's fun.
00:24:10.161 --> 00:24:12.365
So do you have a favorite memory?
00:24:12.365 --> 00:24:14.769
Uh, you've raced 17 years.
00:24:14.769 --> 00:24:16.953
A favorite memory good or bad?
00:24:16.953 --> 00:24:28.336
That if somebody said you know what's, what's the best thing that's happened for you in racing, what would be something you would always look at and say that's my favorite memory.
00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:31.489
Gosh, there are so many.
00:24:31.489 --> 00:24:48.051
I think one of them was I got to race this RX-7 in a I think it was a 14-hour race at Daytona and it was nighttime and I was just in the groove and everything was just right, like it wasn't too hot in the car.
00:24:48.051 --> 00:24:50.285
We were doing really well.
00:24:50.285 --> 00:24:52.050
The car was handling beautifully.
00:24:52.050 --> 00:24:54.324
That was amazing.
00:24:54.324 --> 00:25:09.222
Another one was I was doing an endurance race at mid Ohio earlier this year in WRL and we actually had another woman racer in the team and we did really well.
00:25:09.222 --> 00:25:21.083
It was a brand new team We've never been together, brand new car and we managed to podium third place on Saturday and we got second place on Sunday, which was outstanding.
00:25:21.203 --> 00:25:27.928
So that was really special to see a brand new team kind of come together and do so well together.
00:25:28.409 --> 00:25:30.276
So I love mid Ohio.
00:25:30.276 --> 00:25:33.683
Been there many times to see the motorcycle races back in the day.
00:25:33.683 --> 00:25:44.711
My husband is a biker and we would go there and get up at oh dark 30 to put our blanket down on the key at the keyhole.
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