Winding roads

This weekend represents so much more than, “I finally got a race car!”  The journey to owning this

Spec E46 — at this time — has been full of grit and grace, perseverance and peace, sweat and tears, and a whole lot of the S word.

 In 2022, I was already behind to get a race car based on my impatient expectations. I had sunk my teeth into tracking my BMW M5 and my dad’s old E46 (a 2004 BMW 330i), and I knew from people way smarter than I am that I needed to move into a fully caged car with a racing seat and six-point harness.

-----------------For safety reasons.------------------

I’ll never forget when Chris Cobetto, National Autosport Association Mid-Atlantic Director, looked at me with all the seriousness that man is capable of, and said, “Look, I know we like to joke around, but you’ve got three kids. You’re getting too fast to be in this 3-point harness, flying all around in your seat without a cage around you.”

But also, I like to think it was time for a race car because it was evident to everyone (okay a select few people) who saw me at the track that racing was in my future. I’ll never forget when I asked for feedback from one instructor named Brian, and he looked at me with a deadpan face after a session he coached me through. We had spent an eternity (two laps) riding the bumper of a slower driver who refused to give me a pass. And he said, “I think you need to be more aggressive.” I cocked my head, raised my eyebrow, and with confusion, asked, “Really?” He burst out laughing.

But life. Life has a way of getting in the way of our best laid plans. It was around the time I hoped to get a race car when my divorce began. Then just weeks later, the engine in my M5 seized while coming out of famed Oak Tree onto the back straight at Virginia International Raceway. Both the diagnosis and the very expensive cure took months. While that was happening, my dad found out he needed open heart surgery, which he maneuvered through successfully in the Spring of 2023. My priorities shifted, and rightly so.

The past two years have been simultaneously breathtaking and terrible. They’ve been both the most difficult of my life and the most bountiful. Anyone who has truly gone through hardship and sorrow of any kind knows the tension between what isn’t and what is — how paradoxically beauty and ashes hold hands and space together.

In May of this year, a conversation that began very casually the fall before turned serious: Matt Eastling was ready to sell his pristinely-maintained Spec E46. And he was offering it to me. Matt has been an absolute saint prepping this car. His favorite pictures from this weekend are of me cleaning the morning session’s mud from the car like he would. (He reminds me of the Ferrari F1 teams at the Watkins Glen event I attended, constantly wiping in an endless loop of what I would call insanity. I mean, uh, dedication.)

I keep wondering what I’ve done to deserve such treatment, and then remind myself that this hobby — and all the helpful, kind, and generous people I’ve met at the track — are part of the reason I began believing in myself again. This is simply the right car at the right time. It is a gift. Buying a race car two years ago would have been irresponsible, perhaps even dangerous. It took so much longer than I wanted it to take in order to get here, but I made it by way of winding roads. I am so excited about learning this car so I can squeeze every last tenth of a second out of her. I’ve named her Carla, which means “free woman.” My new car number? My birthday just so happens to match Richard Petty’s famed No. 43. I'll race as Elliott, which is my maiden name and I am 97.8% certain that Bill Elliott is a distant relative, so I'm hoping to channel my great racing genes. To make it happen, I’m selling Lorelei the M5, the “alluring enchantress” who got me hooked on this sport. (If you’re interested, DM me!) She is a relic of a past life, and it is fitting for me to release her to her next chapter while I enter mine.

Godspeed to me. Like, actually, God-please-be-with-me-as-I-speed-in-this-car. Thankfully, Carla’s only capable of about 130 mph. And she also isn’t street legal. 😉