From as young as I could remember, I was drawn to anything that involved risk-taking speed. While "Fail hard, fail fast" was the official startup mantra of the 2010's, I'm sure I was living by this the majority of my childhood! From my teenage years I learned how modern cars operated, mostly by offering to help friends and family and learning along the way. Racing has always been a passion, including get togethers to watch races even in the middle of the night (for example when Formula 1 and MotoGP schedule takes the races to Asia), and it was only a matter of time before I graduated to modifying my own car.
While in college, I started to draw immense commonalities between the problem-solving required to diagnose automotive and software issues, which pushed me to learn everything I could until I was able to take apart and build the entire engine in my head. My desire to build a race car pushed me to start heavily modifying my own car, sometimes pulling and replacing an engine entirely alone! Writing, testing, and adapting (rinse, repeat!) tens of engine calibrations in a single day was not an uncommon weekend activity throughout college and my young career.
At the end of 2019, I even got to attend a Formula 1 race for the first time (and at the same track I took my final motorcycle runs at 3 years prior), which was a total blast!
While racing is a hobby to me, it has still taught me immensely valuable life lessons. And, believe it or not you can often find me explaining the vast commonalities between cars and software - the way the engineer diagnoses, enhances, and tests are virtually identical in process!
Before I knew it, racing even impacted my business aspirations. Modifying and upgrading motorcycles / cars turned into quite a profitable small business that I ran in my free time (Career -> Side Projects). After a decade of highs, lows, and countless hours... no sports get my attention quite like racing.