FRANK HAWLEY

drive the car again , but they ’ re practicing how to settle down , get into what we call the zone . Everything we spend time on is getting rid of emotions , one way or another . Right in the center is where you need to be : calm , controlled , confident . Now , doing any of these activities is going to have you in a heightened state of awareness : your blood pressure is going to be up , heart rate up a little bit . That ’ s natural . You just don ’ t want to go beyond that .”

For professional drivers it ’ s a weighty balance of putting forth every effort to match their cars in terms of mechanical regularity and execution , and then flipping a switch for interviews and fan interaction immediately following the run to become personable , expressive , and , yes , emotional figures .

For novice drivers , Hawley says one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is usually one of the most unexpected . “ We see a lot of people who may have raced a passenger car before but never been in a car with a full roll cage and driving equipment or in a dragster ,” he explained . “ The environment is new to them - being closed up , lack of visibility , getting used to how loud the cars are . All of those issues are something new drivers overlook . It ’ s something I think a lot of people don ’ t really consider .”

The learning curve for a driver is steep in the beginning , and , as one might expect , it begins to even out as the driver gets more experienced . But , Hawley tells , it never completely flatlines . There is always room for improvement .

“ Everybody has ups and downs . The fewer bad days and bad runs you have , the better . Inherently , some people are going to be better at things than others . There ’ s going to be better football players and golfers and doctors and attorneys and mechanics and drivers than other people , no matter how hard any of them try . One of the philosophies

we ’ ve always had with our racing school is to never talk about ‘ We ’ re going to win this race today ’ or ‘ We ’ re going to win a championship ’ because that ’ s not anything we can really control , because the other guys are trying real hard , too . If you set yourself up with that as a mission then you fail more often than you win . We try and get people to agree to asking themselves , ‘ Is there any aspect of your life , your driving , your interaction with the other racers , anything at all you can get better at ?’ That ’ s what we ’ ll spend time talking about and working on . We don ’ t spend time talking about winning races . We spend time talking about improving your ability to do anything you want to be better at . The result of improving the