In the last Science of Winning column here in National Dragster, I did my best to relive the drama of the NHRA Finals and the closing weeks of the season in the Lucas Oil sportsman ranks. At the end of that recap, I shared a glimpse of my own experience – in an effort to provide a little insight to what it’s like to contend for an NHRA national championship under the bright lights of the season-ending stretch, and ultimately what it’s like to come up just short.
At the end of the cult-classic movie Tin Cup, after earning a most unlikely berth in the US Open, having a chance to win the Open, and then failing to do so in the most dramatic and transparent way possible, Roy McAvoy (played by a young Kevin Costner) is lying on the couch and says humorously, “A man goes through what I’ve gone through, he’s supposed to learn something… I’m trying to figure out what I learned.”
I think that best describes my headspace in the weeks following Pomona – and specifically in the moments that I penned that story. I had an intuition that I couldn’t completely articulate. It’s a difficult thing to put into words.
I don’t often use this platform to discuss my own racing; I think there are better things to write about. This column is different. A couple months removed from the most intense days I’ve ever spent at a race track, my takeaways are a bit clearer. Admittedly, sharing them is more for me than it is for you, but here we go…
As much as I’d like to downplay the importance of an NHRA national championship (we can all agree, there are more noble pursuits!), I find it very easy to get swept up in – I would go so far as to say it’s difficult not to. I woke up every morning for over a month thinking about something related to the pursuit of the championship. I went to bed the same way. It’s raw, and real. And as much as I hate to admit it, it’s pretty consuming.
Combine that level of consumption with the manner in which I committed to the pursuit of a championship: traveling 4,000+ miles, flying back and forth multiple times to attend the three final (and arguably, biggest) events of the season – only to come up one round short of the goal… You’d assume that outcome would be devastating.
Except, I didn’t feel that way.
Really!
I know, it honestly surprised even me. And so I began to wonder why.
I’m not a very religious person. I wasn’t raised in the church. My father lost his battle with cancer when I was twenty – at a time when I was struggling to define my own identity. The bitterness of my grief admittedly soured me on the traditional sense of God. My outlook – however selfish it may be – became cynical. That has been my spiritual identity (or lack thereof) for my adult life. That said, I have to admit that when I let down that egotistical guard, I do find myself clinging to the notion that there’s something greater than me and you out there. Call it God, or a Muse, or the Cosmos. Often, I find myself thinking of divine intervention in the form of my father – somehow pulling some strings for me to help the stars align (and allowing me to think that I was “in control”).
One of my favorite quotes from my father was one that he repeated often, and in a humorous tone: “Experience is what you get… When you don’t get what you want.”
If that’s the case, then my trip to Las Vegas and Pomona certainly provided plenty of experience!
The truth is, what I want isn’t always what I need. I wanted to win a world championship. I wanted my wife and our sons to share that moment with me. I wanted to join the ranks of 4-time NHRA world champions (there aren’t many – and it’s an illustrious list!). I wanted to become the first racer to win three Super Gas championships. In retrospect, it’s so clear. What I was lacking, what I needed was the loss… to appreciate the wins.
It’s why, even immediately after crossing the finish line opposite Val Torres in round three of the NHRA Finals, I didn’t feel devastated when I saw his win light. It’s why, despite losing perhaps the single most impactful round of my career, I didn’t feel like a failure.
The championship that I thought was the bar by which I’d measure myself, my performance, my identity – in and of itself wasn’t actually that important after all. What was important was the feeling of a worthy pursuit.
In a brief conversation I had with Peter Biondo en route to Pomona, he told me that his experiences in those late-season, pressure-cooker situations made him “feel alive.” I couldn’t hope – and won’t attempt – to give a better description. Living in that moment, committing (in every sense of the word) to a worthy pursuit, competing (directly) with the best racers vying for the same worthy pursuit… And the peace of knowing, in retrospect, that I went all-in, and truly put my best foot forward… Even though in the end it wasn’t enough to win the title, it was enough to define me as a competitor. A flawed competitor, to be sure, but a capable competitor who leaned into the moment rather than shying away from it.
And if I walk away from the experience with any better grasp of my identity as a competitor, it’s not shaped by 3 national championships. It’s not shaped by this third place finish. It’s shaped by that performance – flawed, and ultimately futile as it may have been. It’s shaped by that pursuit, and the way it lit me up. It’s shaped by my willingness and ability to commit to fearlessly striving toward that pursuit.
I’ve often told the story recently of a brief interaction I had with young Kade Renoll. He’s a great Jr. Dragster driver who fell one round short of his second Eastern Conference Finals championship last summer in Bristol. I sought him out in the post-race winner’s circle – I assumed he was devastated. He wasn’t. As we spoke, he glanced at the young man who defeated him – that racer was giving his winner circle speech into the microphone, holding his Wally. Kade looked back to me and said “I know how it feels to stand there. And I’m genuinely happy that he gets to feel that.” Pretty heavy coming from a 16-year-old, huh?
That conversation was the first thing that hit me in the shutdown area opposite Val. And it became even stronger a day later when I watched him triumph in the final round to win his championship in the most dramatic fashion possible. Disney would reject the script – it was almost too perfect!
I think back to my day on that championship stage. That was the pinnacle in my mind. It was the culmination of a life’s pursuit. I never dreamed that there could be a way to transcend beyond that identity. And in retrospect, I’m not sure that I ever could have, had I not actually come up a little bit short. Would I have liked to have won the championship? Of course. But I’m not sure that getting what I wanted could have taught me as much as the experience of coming up short.
Perhaps sometimes God, or the Muses, or the Cosmo’s, or my Dad have a bigger lesson in store after all.
