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