Seven Tenths of a Second, page 6
And I work hard, too. Not in school. But the fact that I realize I am not destined for a glittering academic career makes me seek other challenges. I work in grocery stores, mainly bagging, sometimes on the till.
By then, I have got into karting and I need money to help pay for that. That is a huge motivating factor for me. I hold jobs to pay for my racing. I work at Fox Photo, helping with the instant photo booth. I work all around the neighbourhood. I am never fired but I often quit. I just lose interest. I am always looking ten years ahead, and if the job isn’t getting me there, I move on.
Back in 2008, when I’m selling part of JMI, I take part in that assessment of my attributes and weaknesses that’s part of the process, and I talk to them about my school days and what I learned.
I tell them I know I should have gone to school more and I worry that my indiscipline has contributed to the dysfunctionality in my family because of the stress it caused.
But I say that, in the end, I feel I ended up okay. I learn some things from my conventional schooling, but most of all, I learn from the school of hard knocks, and it serves me well.
‘Were it possible,’ the Spire Capital report reads, ‘we would vote Mr. Brown be awarded an MBA from this “school” based on how much he has learned and figured out along the way; his progress and ability to adapt and succeed is nothing short of amazing.’
In many ways, I suppose my school life is a failure, but it is hard for me to think of it with regret. If I did it differently, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, but I don’t regret it.
And if school is a failure for me, then the important thing is that I learn from my failures. I’m not afraid to make mistakes. I tell everyone in the factory, ‘Mistakes are okay, just don’t make the same one twice.’
Chapter 5
Green Flag
One thing high school does bring me is a friendship with Nick Aarons. He and I become great buddies and his family is very much into racing. Nick’s a year older than me and he drives the coolest 1959 Austin-Healey ‘Bugeye’ Sprite.
It is a beautiful thing, a small open-top sports car with prominent headlights on the front that give it its nickname. Nick is a total punk like me and so we ditch school all the time and drive around. I’ve been kicked off the baseball team, so now my passion becomes racing.
His family takes me to the Long Beach Grand Prix in April 1987, which is part of the IndyCar Series, and that is when the passion for racing really bites me. Nick’s dad is friends with Mario Andretti and they introduce me to him at the circuit.
Mario Andretti is a legend. He drives for a cool team, too. Paul Newman, the film star, is the co-owner. It’s the team that Nigel Mansell will race for when he drives in the series in the early 90s. And Andretti is one of the greatest American drivers there has ever been.
He is in the autumn of his career by then but he has won the IndyCar title four times, the first time in 1965, and the F1 drivers’ title in 1978. He is about to win the Long Beach race, too. So I am star-struck to find myself standing next to him. It’s a kind of Mickey Mantle moment for me.
We don’t have a long chat, but it still leaves a huge impression on me. I have time to ask him how a kid like me should get started in racing. And he says that the best way is to compete in karting. That’s all it takes. I am off and running.
There’s an advertisement in the race programme for the Jim Hall Kart Racing School under the headline ‘Flipping Out Over Kart Wheels’, and underneath that there is a subheading that says: ‘Start Racing’.
‘Jim Hall’s introduction to competition driving is the best way to start racing,’ it reads. ‘Imagine yourself at 80 miles-per-hour in a Proline race kart. Experience awesome acceleration, braking and cornering forces as you lap the track faster and faster. Feel the sensation of winning speed.’
I don’t hang around. I decide I want to commit to it. Nick does some racing, too, and I want to be all-in. So I have to try to buy a kart. I know my parents won’t give me any money because I am ditching school and generally behaving like a punk, so I can hardly blame them for not rushing to my aid.
I think of those ‘his and hers’ watches that I won on Wheel of Fortune, sitting in a drawer in my bedroom at home, and I decide that now is the time to cash them in and follow the dream.
I take the watches to a pawn shop in Van Nuys, cash them in for $2,420, and with the money I buy a kart at a kart shop called Pitts Performance on Woodley Avenue, next to a deli and a shoe repair shop.
That’s the start of my career in racing. It’s the first day of the rest of my life. It leads to everything else. I’ve found my passion.
It’s an Emmick racing kart and it is my pride and joy. It isn’t the best option out there but I make what I can out of it. I race for Pitts Performance, but the top karting team in California is Mike Manning Karting and they run on what is called a Kali Kart. That’s the European team, and we are the American team and we are often second best to them.
I’m a changed person. I have the odd blip, but I am no longer violent. I pretty much stop going to school, but I am karting every day and practically living at the shop and the track. They like me there. They don’t care that I’m not going to school. And I stop being a dick. I lock in on racing and it starts to consume me.
All my energy goes into karting and I become good at it. I start winning a lot of races, and the better I get, the easier it becomes to get better equipment, because I am working at the shop.
We live like crap while we are out on the road, racing. We stay at the cheapest places and sink all of our money into the karts. The closest thing I have to a boss is Chuck Pittinger, the owner of the shop. He is a great kart racer himself and very accomplished, and he and I have a good relationship.
I work hard, I show up early, I win my share of races, and so he likes me. I see him chewing out plenty of people he feels have let him down, but he generally leaves me alone to get on with it.
I race predominantly in California, but California is a big place and we race all over the state. I win tons of races and I win championships. I remember winning my first big kart race like it’s yesterday. It’s a nationals race in San Diego and even though I don’t know what it’s like to win a Formula 1 race as a driver, I can’t imagine feeling much happier than when I win that race.
In that moment, I know I am the best at what I’m doing, and I know that it is a competitive level and that it is the kind of result and the kind of performance I need to move up to the next rung.
If you watch the 2010 Ayrton Senna documentary that was directed by Asif Kapadia, they use some footage near the end of the film that was taken after what was to be Senna’s last Grand Prix win, at the Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide in 1993.
In a press conference someone asks him who he considers his greatest rival, and his mind takes him back fifteen years to a time when his racing career was really just beginning and he had a teammate called Terry Fullerton.
‘I’d have to go back to 1978, 1979, 1980,’ Senna says, ‘when I drove go-karts. I had a teammate, Fullerton – his name was Fullerton. He had a lot of experience, and I loved racing against him. He was so fast and consistent.
‘To me, he was a well-rounded driver. And it was racing, pure racing. There was no politics, no money involved. I have fond memories of that time.’
I love it, too. In the same way that the best memories I have of playing baseball are playing Little League. I love the purity of karting and the happiness of it. It is a release for me from all the trouble I have been getting into. I have finally found something that interests me and that I can pour all my energy into. I become immersed in it, totally immersed.
Maybe part of the lesson here is: don’t grow up too fast. I know, when you’re a kid, you want to get to the next level and grow up. But if I could go back and play Little League baseball and start out in karting all over again today, that would be a dream come true. Don’t grow up too fast because you can’t get it back.
Once I get into karting, I want to learn all the time. I devote myself to understanding everything I can about it, everything that might make me go faster, the technical elements, getting the best equipment. I know that my talent will only take me so far. If your equipment isn’t good or you’re not with the best team, then it’s an uphill struggle.
In those days, I have five teammates at Pitts Performance. And you race in different classes. So your teammates are generally supportive because the norm is you are not racing against them. You are all in different classes. There are maybe fifteen different classes in total.
I’m in what’s called ‘stock light’, which is for people that have a combined weight with the kart of, say, 280 pounds, and then there’s ‘stock heavy’, which would be 320 pounds. And so a team is made up of four or five drivers in different classes and you all cheer each other on.
It takes great preparation to be a good kart driver. You have to be very dedicated to your role and your equipment. You can’t wing it or fake it and expect to win. I have to take care of everything: maintenance, driving – it is all up to me.
And it gets to the point where I have everything just right with the kart. I have so much attention to detail. My kart is set up perfectly. I just fine-tune it at each different track. I don’t mess with it once I get the kart to where I like it.
When I start winning, I get a high level of self-confidence. I’m not cocky. I know I can still lose. I’m not overconfident, because that’s when you get screwed. That’s when you start overlooking things. But I believe I am unbeatable if I am on my game.
I win Region 7, which is Southern California, when I’m sixteen. By then, racing karts is my life and I pour my soul into it. That gives me a huge confidence boost and I win the National IKF race in 1989.
I know I want to move on and make the step to cars. I know I can’t be thirty-five and still racing karts if I want to progress in motorsports. Ultimately, my dedication and feeling that failure is not an option differentiate me from the competition.
I struggle with losing in the karting ranks. I am hard on myself and always have been. I blame myself when I screw up, so you don’t talk to me when I’m in the zone in racing – I don’t like the distractions.
You learn from each other. It is as if you are playing in different positions in a team. And I think, for the first time, more than when I played baseball, I learn teamwork from that, I learn about the need to surround yourself with good people and get yourself the best equipment.
Once in a while, you have a teammate in the same category as you because the kart shop wants to double down because the class is really important. But for the most part, you aren’t racing your teammates, you are racing competitors who have similar set-ups.
Karting teaches me so much. So I don’t have fear any more. I have an immense amount of determination and passion and capacity for study. What’s the set-up? What are the other people doing? What am I seeing on restarts?
At school, I had no focus. Now, I have total focus. I’m still like that to this day when I’m in the zone – a bomb could go off to the right of me and I wouldn’t notice. I am absolutely laser-focused. I don’t care about anything else.
Fernando Alonso has many, many times more talent than me as a racing driver and he has that same laser focus, too. It is one of the reasons he is still so good at what he does. Some of the best athletes in the world, when you look at how they have extended their careers, they’re freaks of nature.
It’s their mental focus – they’re just in the zone. And, of course, they stay away from injuries. When you talk to Fernando, he’s not out on Friday night. He’s still in that zone of being a twenty-year-old. When Fernando’s not at an F1 track, he’s at a racetrack.
Fernando has his own karting track, he has his own karting company. He’s got one thing on his mind. He’s not married, he doesn’t have kids. He just thinks about racing. And that’s why, at forty-four years old, he’s still a mega-talent.
For me, back in my teens, karting is a sanctuary. It is a school that I love and adore and that I want to spend every hour of every day studying in. It definitely channels my anger and attention-seeking into something a lot more positive.
I am able to turn all that energy, that negative, aggressive, damaging energy, into something that is very positive, very satisfying. I got a fraction of that feeling once in a blue moon in school. Hardly ever. Perhaps when I got an A, but I hardly ever got an A. Even then, I never felt awesome about it. It was like ‘oh, yeah, okay’.
It didn’t really feel like an accomplishment in school. I just didn’t care. When I win a race, I care immensely. I am unbelievably proud of myself and the situation. And then, when I start winning, I want to go to the next level. I want to challenge myself more. I want to race, eventually, in Formula 1.
So I don’t just work for the kart shop. I start working at Simpson Race Products, which is a race helmet and race suit manufacturer. Again, it is total immersion. If I’m not at the racetrack, I’m at the kart shop. And if I’m not at the kart shop, I’m at Simpson Race Products.
We are doing the race suits and equipment for the big, famous racing drivers. So it makes me feel I am a step closer to Michael Andretti and Al Unser Jr and Nigel Mansell. I know I want to be like them. I just have to figure out a way to get there.
Chapter 6
Hustle
I’ve always been used to being an outsider. It’s part of who I am. It’s part of what underpins my alienation at school. I’m not picked on, but I’m never really part of any of the cliques that form in high schools. I always feel I’m on the margins.
I feel like an outsider again later in my business career when I come into Formula 1 as the boss of JMI, and then, later, with McLaren, and I know that a lot of people perceive me as a marketing guy who doesn’t really know anything about this sophisticated European sport.
I feel as though people regard me as an impostor coming in to lead such a revered team in such a technical sport.
It’s healthy. Being an outsider is a motivation. It drives me. And I certainly feel like an outsider when I arrive in England in 1990 as an eighteen-year-old, determined to pursue a racing career in single-seaters on the back of my successful years in karting in California.
I don’t have a lot of backing, but my mom talks to my dad and, when I’m wrestling with how I can get any funding, she comes to me and says that she will give me her entire salary, which is $40,000 a year, to give me a foothold in England.
It is unbelievably generous of them to do that for me. We know that there will be other racers in the series I am aiming for who will be on many multiples of that, but I figure it will get me through perhaps a third of the season.
After that, it’ll be down to me to raise what money I can, and hope that results go in my favour and that I begin to make a bit of a name for myself in England.
My first foray into racing in England is a Formula Ford race at Donington Park. I get a racing instructor called Richard Dean to help me adjust to that level of single-seaters. It turns out to be one of the most significant moments of my life.
Richard is much more than a racing instructor. He does that for a bit of spare cash. But he is an incredibly accomplished driver. He is moving up the junior formulas and winning a lot of races against very talented drivers. He has the ability to be an F1 driver, for sure.
Not many people believe in me at this point, but Richard sees something in me that others do not. He takes to me, and he is the only person that does. Sorry if it’s a cliché, but I wouldn’t be where I am today without Richard Dean. I can only say that about a handful of people, and it’s something I’ll always be grateful for. He is one of the closest friends I have.
Not everyone is that welcoming. Being an American doesn’t help. Especially not in junior formulas. Being American seems to dial up the hostility. It’s so competitive that people really seem to have very little interest in getting to know you.
So I race in that Formula Ford race at Donington Park when I am just shy of my nineteenth birthday; I qualify sixth in my first European race. I get into second on the back straight and then overcook it going into the last chicane. But I recover from that and take the lead. Once I’m in the lead, I don’t let anyone get by me, and I end up winning by a big margin.
Everyone has tried to convince me I am going to be terrible – that Americans have always done poorly in Europe. But I have confidence in my driving. I just don’t have confidence in the environment. But after I win that race, I believe I am going to make it. I believe I really have a shot at being a Formula 1 driver.
But I don’t really have any clear idea how that is actually going to work, how I am actually going to bring it about. I am very naïve about the world of sponsorship. I know nothing about it. Do you just cold-call people? How do you do it?
At that time, the guru of sports sponsorship is a former racer called Guy Edwards, who everyone knows for an act of singular heroism when he pulls Niki Lauda from the burning wreck of his Ferrari at the old Nürburgring during the 1976 German Grand Prix and saves his life.
After he retires from Formula 1, Edwards writes a book called Sponsorship and the World of Motor Racing, a comprehensive guide to securing backing in the world that I am intent on conquering. I devour that book.
I go back to Los Angeles after that race at Donington Park and set about finding sponsorship for the 1991 season in Europe. I have the money my mom has promised me to start me off and I begin to make a lot of phone calls.
I still have a binder with every phone number I call at that time. I am very meticulous about my record-keeping in terms of the numbers I collect, but it is still hard to make progress in terms of raising the money I need.
