The 2012 National Hot Rod Association Champion, Antron Brown, spoke to Renton Technical College students and community members Thursday morning, encouraging them to pursue their passion.
The race car driver is in the area through Sunday, competing in the NHRA’s “Mello Yello Drag Race,” which starts Friday at Pacific Raceways in Kent. Brown is the 2012 NHRA Top Fuel world champion and will race for the 2013 title in the “Mello Yello” competition this weekend. He was the first African American to win a major U.S. auto racing season championship. His best career speed is 328.78 mph.
“There’s no rocket science to doing anything in life; you have to put yourself around it,” Brown said to the audience.
He played a video of his career highlights, asking the crowd to pay attention to what they viewed. When it was over, Brown acknowledge students who picked up on the team work and wins portrayed in the video. He noted it takes his team 35 minutes to completely tear down and rebuild an engine.
“Everything we do, it’s all to a ‘T,'” Brown said. “It’s very meticulous.”
He explained to the attendees in the college’s Harry Blencoe Auditorium that it’s a matter of integrity, respect and customer service that lead to personal success.
“If you surround yourself with great people, great things happen,” he said. “If you surround yourself with knuckleheads, knucklehead things will happen.”
Brown also amazed the crowd with his racing statistics. The New Jersey native can take his car from zero to 100 mph in 60 feet, pulling six times the gravitational pull of the earth or “6Gs.”
Brown currently lives in Pittsboro, Ind. with his wife, Billie Jo, and their three children.
Although Brett Anderson hadn’t heard of Brown before, he came to the speech, interested in what the race car driver had to say. Anderson is an RTC student in the Ford Auto Student Service Education Training program or ASSET. He said the appearance and insight from Brown was relevant because his class just finished learning about base engine performance.
“It feels good, I mean, I don’t think it’s a waste of time,” Anderson said. “It’s good to know the whole world that we’re getting in and all the different aspects.”
RTC’s Ford ASSET Program takes two years to complete and places students at Ford Motor Company dealerships for mentoring throughout the program and a job at the end.
“It’s good to see people who say we were just like you not too long ago and all you got to do is take the steps that it takes,” said Brian Thompson, program instructor.
Thompson has taught the course at the college since 1997. His class is typically between 15 to 20 students. Students go directly into a job at a dealership after the program, but some automotive enthusiasts, like Thompson, also find themselves on speedways.
“If you’re passionate about what you do, you don’t only do it during the week, you do it on the weekends too,” Thompson said.
The instructor will also be at Pacific Raceways this weekend, racing two of his cars. For more information about the “Mello Yello Drag Race,” Aug. 2 to 3, at Pacific Raceways, visit the track website.
