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ganymedesclock · 8 years ago

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Character Analysis: Coran

[ Shiro ] [ Lance ] [ Hunk ] [ Pidge ] [ Keith ] [ Allura ]

What kind of blogger would I be if I forgot about our man Coran? I’ll tell you, a bad one. Last but certainly not least in the metas on Team Voltron, it’s time for a post on everyone’s favorite redheaded spaceman-of-all-trades.

Coran is a bit of a frustrating case to overlook because for someone as open and sociable as he is, we know very little of his history- and he also happens to have a lot more history than anyone else on the team... by something of a long shot.

In an offhanded mention, Coran states that the Castle is actually 10,600 years old, because it was built by his grandfather. He later, in a different conversation, reminisces that he remembers his grandfather taking him to a Balmera... while said grandfather was building the Castle.

Thus confirming that Coran is over six hundred years old, not counting his time spent in cryostasis. And yet, at the same time- Coran doesn’t really look or act what we’d consider elderly- if anything, he’s more than a little aghast at the idea of contacting an “old people disease”- insecurity, I think, of someone in later middle ages who’s just starting to confront the idea they’re getting old.

This might well cast some aspersions on Allura’s age as well- she might be a teenager or young adult by Altean standards but we don’t know quite what those standards are.

But for Coran, he’s had certainly what our human sensibilities would consider a very long life, and has spent much of that life, seemingly, in service of the royal family. Said service is something that’s run in his own family line at least as far back as his grandfather, and Coran carries himself with the decorum of high society. He’s no mere servant- much more likely, an aristocrat himself, or possibly a member of the extended royal family considering the very personal way he relates to Alfor and Allura. His official title of Royal Advisor would suggest Alfor turned to him for counsel- but in regards to what specific topics, we aren’t sure. It’s certainly part of the role he plays to Allura.

And in practice- this is someone Alfor entrusted, seemingly alone, with the safety of his daughter and the Black Lion. As Allura was placed in stasis when the castle was still on Altea and Alfor still on the castle, this would tell us that Coran was the one to launch the castle and get it away from Zarkon’s fleet while Alfor, seemingly, held them off- it was Coran who landed the castle on Arus before entering suspension on his own.

We do not know much of Coran’s personal life- besides that seemingly, he’s been a fixture in Allura’s for a very long time, and that he was a very close friend and attendant of the late king. We see very few scenes of Alfor that do not feature Coran in some magnitude. This makes sense- because again, at the end of his life, Alfor trusted Coran with functionally the fate of the entire universe. Especially close on the heels of Zarkon’s betrayal, this tells us that Alfor trusted Coran absolutely.

Out of the spotlight

Coran virtually never takes center stage. This is the main reason he’s so much of an enigma despite being an incredibly open person and intensely prone to sharing stories at the slightest provocation. Coran is support in the purest sense- to the point that out of the team, he is the only one not paired to a unique vehicle that’s his and only his. For Allura, even the castle is uniquely connected to her power in many regards- Coran can’t use much of its higher functions.

And we do not feel like this is an uncomfortable position for Coran in the slightest. Rather, this seems to be the area he takes to and in fact thrives in, entirely of his own choice. It’s rare for Coran to command a scene- and the few times he does tend to be very memorable, and marked by something close to fury- his indignant “You do not yell at the princess!” in s1e2 and in the season 1 finale, Coran piloting the castle alone to assail entire fleets.

Coran is support- one who assists and facilitates- but he’s not passive in his role at all. His whole title of advisor can only possibly work if he’s someone who makes his thoughts and opinions heard, and he lives up to that. He will criticize, or even argue rather strongly with- anyone, including Allura, if pushed to it. And even without much impetus at all, he’s shown to kibitz on situations in a very honest- even unflattering manner- even on people that he cares about a lot.

Basically, Coran takes a backseat, but not remotely out of lack of confidence or devaluing himself. He’s an attendant but an incredibly outspoken one, and one with a sense of his own importance as well- reinforcing his quite possible noble background. We’ve even seen that Coran can be a touch condescending- consider his cheerful patronizing of Pidge’s “primitive synapses firing away in their little brain-cage.”

And really, Coran’s ostensibly passive position combined with his own certainty of self creates a truly terrifying combination, one that very rarely flexes itself. Simply, Coran is always the accompaniment to someone more interesting or important- King Alfor in the past, Allura and the Paladins at present. He’s set up perfectly in a blind spot, and his affable prattling makes him even more likely to overlook.

When Coran attacks Zarkon’s fleet, he states that he’s been waiting ten thousand years for this. While we can guess he’d hold a grudge against Zarkon- for Altea, for Alfor, for everything he and Allura have suffered- this is literally the first time we’ve had any implication whatsoever it was there.

Coran, quite simply, took something very close to a murderous rage, folded it neatly, and tucked it up his sleeve until he had the opportunity to take his shot.

People have pointed out the downright brutal efficiency with which Coran intercepts an attack aimed at Allura and retaliates in a way that hits all five paladins, in a single movement- and how very seriously he does his, even if it’s a simple food fight. In particular, a comment I’ve heard on that scene that’s stuck with me a long time in regards to Coran: “Imagine how many times he’s done that for something that wasn’t food.”

Coran is an advisor, but he is not remotely a noncombatant. I would not be surprised at all, in fact, if this is our window of what an archetypal Altean soldier looks and acts like- someone whose first line of defense is not necessarily a suit of armor and a sword, but by convincing you first to not think they’re an opponent. Sure, it’s funny that Coran is completely ineffective at defeating Lance and they immediately engage in some kind of trash talking- but let’s not forget unlike Allura, who was mostly baffled by Lance and only turned aggressive when he didn’t answer her questions, Coran’s first response when confronted with foreign parties was to leap to the attack and his first line of dialogue besides identifying that there were intruders in the castle boiled down to “if I hadn’t just spent an incredible amount of time unconscious in suspended animation, I would’ve put you in a chokehold and knocked you out in a matter of seconds.”

Coran, to a degree, lives in the shadows of brighter people- but he does so voluntarily and intentionally- because as soon as someone tries to make a bid for those brighter people, Coran, already overlooked, is en route to intercept.

That said, while he has that angle, he doesn’t always act on it- his role as an observer means that he’s often quite willing to just see where this situation is going. He’s not nearly as proactive as, say, Shiro- who needs to feel in control of the situation. Coran is triggered to action or inaction by his personal assessment if the situation has, or will, turn immediately dangerous- and if he doesn’t feel like it’s dangerous, or that there’s a meaningful way to engage with it, he will in fact be alarmingly blase in the face of mortal peril- the embodiment of a stiff upper lip.

Another angle of his tendency to mask intense emotions if he doesn’t feel like they have a proper use at this point.

A man of a breathtaking number of hats

So Coran is an advisor, a helmsman, and the main person we see doing maintenance on the castle- and on top of all of that, he may well be some manner of bodyguard. It’s safe to say that Coran is one hell of a busybody, and lesser people would probably have just plain dropped under the weight of his workload and the number of disparate skills this requires.

At the same time, this is probably the biggest source of Coran’s goofy space dad vibe- he has so much varied life experience and skill sets that practically anything for Coran is fair game. History and nostalgia are very big things for him, and, overwhelmingly, what we learn about Coran and from Coran is anecdotal and sentimental in nature. Certainly, he’s quite smart, and likes to explain things, but how much he knows, and quite possibly to a degree just his personality itself, makes him spacey and a bit of a scatterbrain.

“Finger counting is more of an art than a science”- or, rather, sophisticated mental math (he was trying to crunch how long it would take a spaceship to reach them considering its speed, that is not elementary level addition) is very difficult if your brain goes in a lot of directions and you have a lot of places to lose stray decimals in.

Coran relates much more easily to things intuitively and emotionally than he does trying to attend to precise variables- though that gap is not as large as one would expect because he’s had a lot of time to practice. In general, Coran’s skill set is much more rounded and stable than any of the rest of the team’s- a testament, again, to how much time he’s had to pick things up. Regardless, he does show a pretty good aptitude for working with people, when not held back by heavily outdated information as he was in Space Mall.

When he is, though, he may be slow to admit his initial judgment call was wrong- as mentioned, Coran is rather prideful. He’s quite certain of himself and other people need to impress him- and even in season 2, he has no problems verbally tearing the paladins to shreds if he doesn’t think they’re living up to expectations. Cheerfully.

High energy

You’d think someone past his six hundredth birthday would slow down a little, even if that might be the Altean equivalent of late fifties. You would think wrong in Coran’s case. Probably why this guy has so many odd jobs, aptitudes, and experiences is that he can be almost restless in his energy levels. “Restless” is not how he comes across- but mostly because, as a mature character who’s had a lot of his development already, Coran knows himself and his inclinations.

As a result, he will often seem quiet- but if you’re paying attention, Coran is virtually always doing something, and usually multitasking as he does. While this could well be a stress-inducing byproduct of being effectively the sole staff of a castle probably designed for a lot more people than that, I think to a degree, Coran is simply someone who does not keep idle very easily at all. When his workload is lightened or alleviated, he’s more inclined to engage in whimsy and curiosity instead.

Another product of this is Coran does very little in half measures, if he’s committed to it.

Theatrics and their absence

Coran certainly has some very dramatic reactions, but it’s almost more noteworthy when he doesn’t. I’ve mentioned that Coran has a major case of stiff upper lip in the face of sometimes even mortal peril- but that’s basically it. Coran’s spectrum of emotional expression oscillates from “politely interested or indifferent” to the melodramatic screaming he put on in s1e2.

In general, Coran’s more mellow expressions of emotion tend to be positive. Frustration is a quick way to get him to more dramatic expressions, and even that varies. It isn’t even a simple game of how intensely Coran feels something, either- some of his most scathing lines are delivered quietly. If anything, it would seem that Coran is more expressive and ebullient in times of levity- if the situation feels serious, then even shouting, there’s a composed sternness to him.

He can also flip between the two multiple times within the course of a single scene and practically at the drop of a hat. In this sense, it would suggest that Coran never really has wild or uncontrolled emotions- simply, he can, and tends to be, fairly lenient in their expression.

This seems to be the product of a lot of work throughout Coran’s life by our glimpses of his younger selves. From a very moody teenage Coran who claims he can only express himself through music to his wildly over-dramatic ebullient young adult self- Coran has pretty much always had a lot of feelings, and it’s only as he’s gotten older that he’s mellowed to a degree and successfully established a certain layer of calm that can exist either over or under them.

And it’s very notable that just because Coran emotes a lot doesn’t mean he’s incapable of duplicity. Because Coran is carrying some emotional giants, and they’re simply things that you do not see at all unless something prompts him to mention them.

His quiet mention that he can’t lose Allura is basically the only admission he has made, at all in the seasons, that much like Allura herself, Coran is nearly alone in the universe- one of a trace handful of surviving Alteans. And after that, his comment that he’s been waiting for a shot at Zarkon acknowledges that possibly even more than Allura, Coran has a driving grudge- one that he buries just as quickly as he acknowledges it to tell Keith to step back and preserve himself rather than engage Zarkon.

Supportive

I’ve mentioned that Coran tends to be a part of someone else’s backdrop, but I think it’s worth noticing- especially as he can be sometimes condescending or flippant with the team- that there is a very affectionate and warm side of Coran. While he is unflinchingly observant of formal titles, it’s also very clear his relationship with Alfor and Allura has been deeply personal and rather familial- and this is much of how he takes to the paladins. Coran is never really so formal with people as to really feel stiff- his proper courtly manners juxtapose with a very flippant and sincere attitude.

A lot of people joke about Shiro being team dad, but honestly- I stand by, Shiro is the perfectionist oldest child that everyone jokes acts like another parent. Coran, though- even when the objective goal was to drive the paladins as hard as possible and make them unite against a single goal, Coran was still giving them breaks and telling them not to push it too hard. (And his praise of Allura’s methods after the fact is incredibly backhanded, almost certainly on purpose)

In Summary

Coran is a person very motivated by memories and sentimentality, but also, for all of his bouncy high-energy persona, there is a really impressive amount of emotional control under his surface, to the point that he can easily hide very powerful sentiments indeed.

Multi-talented and very inclined to working behind the scenes to support others, but also somewhat haughty, and both genuinely deeply fond of the rest of his team and utterly unafraid to take them all down a peg if he feels that’s appropriate.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Coran #Voltron character study #readmore

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itsworn · 6 years ago

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Take 5: Leah Pritchett – Full NHRA Winternationals Interview

Leah Pritchett has made a name for herself with a hard-knock but fun-loving perspective on drag racing. The day she turned eight years old, she began racing Jr. Dragsters with her older sister under the eye of her father (a Bonneville 200 MPH Club Member) before claiming Division 7 championships in 2000 and 2001. She eventually moved into a family-built, 7-second altered Bantam. The family sold it and built their own nostalgia Funny Car, in which Leah earned her fuel license, before she stumbled into Steve Plueger’s 1972 Mustang Mach I, a bodacious and nitro-thirsty vintage Funny Car that gave the Redmonds, California-native an addiction she couldn’t shake (winning the 2010 March Meet and NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series) until she had found a seat in Top Fuel. That chance would come down from Don Schumacher himself, who incidentally signed off on her nitro Funny Car license a decade prior before piloting the NHRA’s purest and most maniacal machines. Since then, she’s set records in several nitro burners, claimed world championships (in NHRA Factory Stock), and has laid it all on the line to get there while grinding her knuckles to the bone to make ends meet.

HRM] New Year, new season; what are some of the things you wanted to work on? What’s new, any kind of resolutions for this season?

LP] I would say for sure our resolution is to have a better 2019 than we had in 2018, which is pretty difficult to do. We set a couple of track records. We had two national event wins, and we finished fourth in the world. We always strive to be better, but there are a couple of things that are new this year. One would be our new co-crew chief Neal Strausbaugh. [Former co-crew chief] Joe Barlam was with us — I’ve been with him for three years and he moved back to Vandergrift, and we got to adopt Neal. [He’s] a proven world champion with two world championships to Tony Schumacher, and he’s been working with Guido and [John] Medlen over on the Infinite Hero car. So he’s back on a dragster, and I’ll tell you what, there’s nothing like the first day of school. That’s what I would consider today- the first time back in the car for the first time ever.

We entered the race season without going to a test session, and I know we love to make everything sound like it’s roses and daisies, but ultimately it’s no secret, the sport’s extremely expensive to run and a test session is actually more expensive to run than an actual race. So we weren’t able to test in the off season. So, Mopar has had a ton of involvement with Funny Cars and brought body designs and aerodynamics, and, in this off season, we worked with aero and in CAD and through engineering. We think that we’ve come up with the best chassis for flex. Additionally, we had changed our fuel system to cut weight and have better flow, and on top of that, we designed a new throttle pedal for geometry to open butterflies quicker for a better reaction time.

Those are three major things that we did in the off-season with our car that we decided, within 72 hours of starting the Winternationals, not to move forward with. What we decided to do was take our tried and true spare car, that we have right up here, that we knew. We know what it’s about; we’re familiar with it. We’re familiar with that fuel system, and we know last year that we had a hot rod with it. The question is asked all the time, “How important is momentum from one season to the other? We had awesome momentum in Vegas and were low qualifiers in 2018 and [we] want to take that momentum into 2019. So wrapping all that up, we did a lot in the off season, but that doesn’t mean that we started off 2019 with it. What we’re going to do is bring those changes out when we need to.

HRM] You have an awesome relationship with your crew. You’re mixing nitro, you’re with boxing each other while pulling pins on parachutes and everything else, but you’re also one of most hands on drivers we’ve seen in any motorsport. Where does that come from with you?

LP] So the reason I’m as hands on as I am is because I don’t know any different coming from junior drag racing to nostalgia cars, and then into Pro Mod. I did not go racing if I didn’t load the trailer, if I didn’t tie the car down, if I didn’t service the transmission. So I had to do all those things just to race. As I progressed into the professional driver category, there are times when I don’t need to do those things, but I feel like I feel like I’m not racing anymore. Like if I’m just driving that race car, that is a small portion of why I love racing. It is the camaraderie, and I feel if I’m not progressing then I’m plateauing, and nobody in this extreme sport plateaus. So for me, being hands-on is important so that I can continue to learn, so I can continue to be a better driver and actually understand.

From a fuel perspective, one of the reasons I love it is it has a ton to do with timing. Not just the scientific factors of dialing in a tenth of a percent and how it fluctuates with temperature. It’s how much fuel you put in the car based on who you’re going to run, how much fuel you burn idling, and how much weight that takes away the distribution of your launch. All of those are factors that I’m at the nucleus of; all of those pieces I get to communicate with and understand. If we’ve got a fresh new pair of slicks, we may need a half-gallon more fuel, I’ve got to do a longer burn out. Since that’s going to take more time, we’re going to burn more fuel, so that way you stay consistent with your minimum weight — car and driver — at the end of the run, so you don’t get disqualified. They’re just all the little tiny pieces I enjoy because I’m not able to do any large jobs here, from a time perspective. I maximize the ones that: A) I understand [laughing] and B), contribute to and feel like I’m feel like a cohesive part of the team more than just the driver.

HRM] When you make such a big change, like a co-crewchief — especially with someone who was prevalent during the last three years which were very turbulent, but ultimately successful — how do you kind of re-approach a situation? You mentioned it was going back to Day 1 at school — what was that like?

LP] Literally we have our huddle team and everyone figures out, ‘What position are you, what position are you?’ When it comes to starting line procedure, communication throughout the day, who’s doing just the smallest, mundane things like who’s wiping the tire, or who’s going to the top end? We have one less crew guy than last year, so that means every one of us picks up a job that was otherwise done by somebody else, but you all have to do it in the same amount time. When you work with a team for a certain amount of time, you understand their communication style, so our new co-crew chief is behind the car, communicates to the person in front of my car of how to maneuver back enough to make sure we’re on the right tracks. There’s a lot of different ways that you could do that- from quick little hand gestures, to all the way over the head. So you actually have to predict what the driver’s going to do, to give that signal so that the delayed to the driver is actually on time. These are things you can’t do until you’ve learned somebody’s style. And today was about learning that style and everybody got an A-plus.

HRM] The background that a lot of people don’t know is that your family was prevalent out at Bonneville Salt Flats. What were some of the memories that kind of hooked you on racing with your time out there on the salt?

LP] One of my very first memories is being two years old and having salt water up to my knees. I’m like scratching and itching it, and there’s nowhere to go. I mean, when it rains- it’s the salt flats, right? You know it’s not going anywhere. Watching my dad work a whole year for one event, Speed Week, the dedication… it was almost like the Olympics. I would drive with him, it’d be 16 hours one-way, and then you go race that one run- a five-mile run. Then, the car needed to go to impound and be turned around and make that backup run to get that record. That’s what we spent that week doing. Then you have another whole year to prepare for that very next week.

That’s like the extended version of drag racing to me. People don’t understand why so much work goes into 3.6 second runs. I look at it and I think, ‘Man, I saw the most important man in my life working entire year for one week. So we get the better end of the deal.’ Yes, my daddy’s a 13-time land speed world record holder, a world’s fastest Ford-powered Thunderbird, naturally aspirated and that thing’s heavy. It’s 7,500 pounds. I had made it a dream to eventually find that car, get it back, and race it myself, retrofitted. That would be a cool, close connection. I know where it is, Jim Han has it. We tried to hook up and make it happen, but there’s only so many hours in the day. Hopefully,someday, I get to go back out in the salt and actually beat one of my dad’s records.

HRM] Were there any particular cars he had or that you worked on that stuck out to you?

LP] Yes, for sure. So I grew up with 1978 Ford truck. It was a mustard yellow, and I love them to death now. My Dad said that he had 18 Mustangs throughout his life. He just found them at a junkyard, bought them as scrap, fixed them up, and sold them. One thing he told me that I remember for life is, ‘Don’t ever get connected to a car.’ You hear people all the time: “That’s my Suzy, that’s my girl, that’s whatever.’ He was able to get past that and either find a better one, or build a better one, but Mustangs were his jam. I grew up in a Ford world, but actually, I never really latched onto them. I felt like that was my dad’s thing and people would make fun of us because he had a Chevy dually pulling his Ford race car. I think one of my- I don’t want to say dream sports cars, but a car I have special feelings for is the De Tomaso Pantera.

HRM] Young racers learn the hard way that racing is really expensive, and that never changes. So with your career, coming up from grassroots, what kind of advice would you pass along to a young racer seeking sponsorship?

LP] I wish I would’ve learned more about business-to-business earlier. In this sport you become a business person and you become a race car driver. So learning to create marketing budgets for a company is a very specialized job. It’s not just about slapping a sticker on the side of a car and being like, ‘Sponsor me!’ There’s way too much noise in advertisement for that to really stand out. Go to a company, ask them what their needs are, where are they hurting in business, or where would they like to grow. Then reflect on your own network and how you can put two companies together to do business: benefit from each other, create a marketing budget and boom- you have some cash to go racing.

HRM] In motorsports you always have different kinds of characters, so we’ll ask about three different characters who may have had an influence on you. The first person is: Who would you always want to bring good news too- who you don’t want to disappoint?

LP] Don Schumacher. Yeah, the person that I always want to break good news to and I don’t want to disappoint is by far Don Schumacher. Not just because he’s my boss. He’s like the dad I never had. So yeah, I don’t want to disappoint him because he will let you know, he’s not shy to let you know when you mess up. To impress somebody who has done so much, so many great things- it’s hard to impress him. It’s hard to impress Schumacher, so if you impress him, you’re having a good day.

HRM] Next up, who is the person who gave you a chance you think you may not have deserved?

LP] That’s a great question. I would give Roger Burgess the credit for giving me an opportunity I probably didn’t deserve- to have that elite of a team and operation, because I was an unproven driver, and also because there were so many other people at that time [who were] deserving. So they say don’t compare yourself to everybody else. No, that’s, that’s exactly what you do. I felt I wasn’t mechanically knowledgeable enough, yet I’m racing that car knowing that there were people who probably deserved to be in that car more than I did. That drove me then to be that person who deserved to be in that car. So Roger Burgess is probably not ever going to see this, but thank you for that opportunity, and I definitely would not be here without you.

HRM] And last, especially since you were so involved in sport so young, who is a role model that you looked up to?

LP] So that’s always a super difficult question to answer because there was not. I saw the void. I was here at this race, at the Winternationals, and looking around and I think, ‘There’s not a young female professional driver that’s out here winning and somebody that I can relate to.’ So I saw a void and I thought I could fill that void. It wasn’t six months later that Ashley Force came out, and what Ashley did was exactly what I wanted to do. I was heartbroken — and I mean, I was young. I was like 14 years old and she was 18 or 19, and I thought, ‘I’m done, like she is filling this void that this sport really, desperately needed. My opportunity is now going to be gone.’ And I let that get me down, until I thought more about it and decided, ‘Well, you know, not really. She has a much different path than I have. I can get there on my path, and we can inspire people two different ways.’

HRM] Do you have any advice for other females in your position, coming up through the ranks?

LP] I wish I would’ve known more about street cars. I mean I was with my dad and I’m in the garage and I know race cars, but I didn’t have my own hot rod growing up because I knew that I would be in trouble with it. And if I got in trouble, I wasn’t allowed to race- plain and simple, that was it. My dad didn’t want me to be like him and get 18 tickets and be in jail. So he made sure that I wasn’t that, and then that means I also missed out on a really awesome car culture as a young. So I would say if you want to do something, do it responsibly. I was afraid to ask questions to my dad about cars, like how turbos work, and the differences of superchargers, because I felt stupid. I don’t ever want a little girl out there who has interest in cars to not further her interest because she’s was afraid to ask questions. That is one thing I’ll tell a little girl: ask questions. Don’t be afraid to sound stupid, because you know what you think you sound stupid now, just wait until you’re 10 years down the road and you wish that you knew more. Thats what I love about that guy, Todd Okuhara, my crew chief: he doesn’t make me sound stupid. I have learned more in the last 28 months, being Todd Okuhara’s driver, than I think I ever have in any of my career, because he educates me and I don’t feel stupid. I don’t want to say it’s a gender thing, but it kind of is a little bit in the sense that girls feel like they’re not operating in the same sphere of understanding and afraid of rejection by guys. When you have a super alpha leader, that’s when everybody grows.

HRM] You know, something people don’t explain a lot is that this kind of racing career comes with a lot of failure and hard lessons learned. How have you learned to deal with it?

LP] So I’m not the most outgoing person in the world, so I had to teach myself to be one in order to get to that next step. What I mean by that is when I raced with my family until I was 17 years old, we built a nostalgia funny car, partnered with somebody else and we got to a stopping point because we ran out of money. We didn’t realize how much money it took to run a nostalgia funny car, and we were dead broke. That’s when I learned, ‘Leah, if you really want to race, you’re going to have to learn how to market what you’re doing with partners that want to help.’ So I put myself out there, found Dickies Girl, my first major partner ever. And from there, I failed them. I mean we did a great job, but I didn’t really know how to do major media, and that was a failure because they didn’t renew for 2010.

At that point, I looked at myself in the mirror and reassessed. I was in my last year of college, I was working for a law firm, and I was racing, like I know nothing else in life. I put it out there, thanked everybody for racing, to that point, 10 to 12 years? I thought, ‘I’m going to focus on school and focus on business, and either build a business or learn how to do business for other companies so we can go racing.’ And at that point in 2010, I wasn’t able to race with my family anymore, but I had developed a great rapport with the racing team and paid to drive Steve Plueger’s car. Like that’s how it worked. Right? We hauled ass with it, did great. I was totally hooked and addicted, and I thought, ‘I want to drive for you, Steve, for 2010.’ But I wasn’t able to secure sponsorship, and, oh man, we were like eight days away from the March Meet! Should I call Steve and say, ‘I don’t have the money. I thank you for hanging on with me this far?’ I didn’t know what to do.’

Literally, a phone book had just been dropped off- you know, slamming against the door like once a year. I started thumbing through it and thinking who’s got cash? Who’d be down; what’s the fit? I was like Deja Vu Showgirls- that’s a great fit. We’re fast cars, I’m a young, pretty chick who knows how to work on cars, and we have a great male demographic that likes to have a good time. I literally cold-called them and asked for the manager. I said, ‘Hey, we’ve got the March Meet coming up. We’ve got 30,000 people coming out. What do you think about sponsoring me for this one race? So I drove up to Bakersfield, met them on my own. I’m a 19 year-old girl going to a strip club, in the middle of the day, to meet with these executives.

They were all-in and we won that race. From there I’m thought, ‘Hey, you know, there’s a whole series, and every spot we go in the nostalgia circuit, there’s basically a club there.’ I was able to put my first major deal together based on Larry Flynt’s Hustler Deja Vu clubs. What I loved is it was super classy, super tasteful. They didn’t make us run the logo, just ‘Deja Vu.’ If you didn’t know what Deja Vu was, you didn’t know [that it was a club]. From there, I learned to put myself out there. That was very uncomfortable for me to do, but I said, screw it, that’s all I’ve got, you know what I mean? That’s all the cards I was dealt. So I owned it.

So from trials and tribulations, I was able to progress with help from many people, and by not being too proud to ask for help. A perfect example is when Vandergriff shut the doors in April- I think April 9th, 2016. People in that room literally got up in the middle of the phone call, walked out the door. Other people sat there with their hands in their face. We’re trying to figure out how to feed their families. I thought ‘ My guys are going to keep a job somehow, I’m going to find us a race car to race.’ And we won our first race. Dom Laganda, a small time independent fuel team, said, ‘I entered Charlotte. Leah, you can drive my car, it costs this amount of money.’ And I had eight days — again, magic number eight — eight days to basically raise $45,000.

I took my guys who were unemployed. We worked on that car and we qualified it because we had the hope and dream of keeping in the points. At that race I was able to work with FireAide. [They] said, ‘Leah, we got dropped too. You know, we planned to run a Vandergriff at Atlanta.’ I had also been talking with Don Schumacher, who I’ve been dying to drive for [during] my whole career. I’m like, ‘Don think I’ve got a sponsor for one race for Atlanta.’ And he said, ‘You know, I just ordered two new trailers. They get delivered next week. We can put a team together and in about two weeks. We can make it happen.’ And it was Don believing in me because I believed in my team and myself, and we made it happen.

We threw it together and qualified in Atlanta. It was my first race in a canopy car- I had never even tested [in one]. The first time I hit the throttle, my helmet was actually too loose. What a lot of people don’t know is, in these cars, you don’t go back with the G-forces, you go back, and you go up. With my chin restraints tight like I like to have it, I went back and I went up, and my helmet came down over my eyes, down to my nose, and I couldn’t see. So at this point we’re at the 330 — and it was Atlanta, so the sun was glaring in your face — and about half-track, I’m just like, ‘This is not going to be good!’ There’s so many really cool stories, but the trials and tribulations…

I have to give credit to the Lord for giving me opportunities. Give credit to my dad for showing me how to take advantage of opportunities or see them through, and I guess I’m just really stupid and I don’t give up. Honestly, I think that’s what it is.

After we won the championship in 2010 with Plueger in Nostalgia Funny Car, I put out a Facebook post and said, ‘Thank you to everybody for this amazing support. We won a championship, and I really need to finish school. I really need to get my degree, so I’m not going to be racing anymore. I ran out of stripper money.”

That’s when Roger Burgess contacted me and said, ‘Leah, would you be interested in driving a Pro Mod? I have a company that’s interested in a female driver.’ I kid you not, I was so scared. I’ve been around a lot of Pro Mods in Sacramento they’d always be so squirrelly, and I’d think, ‘Man, those guys are insane. These guys are crazy!’ I decided, ‘Yeah, I’ll go drive a door car with suspension. I don’t know what it’s going to do but I’m going to learn how to do that.’

From there, Roger gave me an opportunity to then work for him as a liaison between ProCare RX and the NHRA; at that time they were a sponsor in the series. So I learned business development while developing my skills to drive a Pro Mod, and I felt like I was on top of the world. It was my first job outside of the law firm or any automotive repair shop, and I packed up, moved to Atlanta by myself, and put all my eggs in that basket of being that pro race car driver. I remember picking Roger up from the airport on the way to the track one day, and he told me, ‘Leah, this is my last race. I’m gonna shut the door on the Funny Car team, on the three Pro Mods, everything.’ I thought, ‘Okay, well everybody out here knows I had been wanting to drive a fuel car. I had my nitro license. It reverts back to: don’t be afraid to let people know what your dreams are, because they have an opportunity you might not know about. That’s when Dotes [Racing] said, ‘Hey, we’re looking for new female racer, would you be interested in crossing over Funny Car license to Top Fuel? I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely, but I don’t have any money.’ Dote Racing said, we can do six races a year. So I learned to grow a program from six races a year and in three years’ time to 18 races a year.

HRM] At least for us, learning from failure comes from: prior-you wasn’t going to fit into what future-you has to be to make something succeed.

LP] Those are the exact words. Yes! The prior you isn’t good enough to get you to where you want to be. So you need to mold into what you think will take you there. At the end of the day, if you get there and you’re not really you, is that really success? I think one cool saying that we had for this team was that we don’t need all the fans in the world, we just need the right ones. I think that should apply to everybody. You just need the right ones that think the same way that you do, and enjoy the same things and grow together.

So, talking about that, I hate the fact that this is so money driven that when you come to the races and you’re thinking about how is it even going to sustain? You’re focusing on sustaining and not thriving. How do you thrive and survive at the same time? That is what 2019 for us is going to be. It will be super challenging; it won’t be like, ‘Hey, we’ve got everything in the world. Let’s go kick everyone’s butt and go get a championship!’ We need to stay here and beat them on a lower budget. When we pull this off, and I’m telling you we will, it’s going to be one hell of a season, and it’s probably going to be the most proud, honored, and humbling season, but this is probably going to be the hardest working season.

HRM] A lot of people have these moments in life where you’re hanging on by a thread- short term planning for survival with the vision of the long term safety net? I don’t know if it’s right word, but…

LP] Security. The thing that doesn’t exist out here. So in the pillars of life, the foundation starts with food, water, and basically the second or the third one up is security. That means a roof over your head. Those are things that, by nature, you need. In almost every industry, everyone’s after that security, that long-term commitment. So if you don’t have that sense of security, that’s uh, that’s what makes you crazy. All the uncertainties and question marks in the off season — I don’t know how it was for anybody else out here — but coming here to Pomona, the rigs had made it. We made it, I have a sponsor for that first race. We are racing for a living and putting on one of the baddest shows in the world. Like it’s literally [taking] a pencil, and erasing that question mark from a feeling standpoint. I don’t know how to explain it. I was so happy to be here. You could have all the trials and tribulations, but the end of the day, we get to do one of the coolest jobs in the world. That’s why we fight so hard to try and keep it that way.

HRM] I’ll leave you on this simple question. What’s on your mind: People to thank, any kind of closure on that.

LP] Things that are on my mind: Our team, who has stuck with me through those question marks. My crew chief, who hasn’t left because he believes in this team, Don Schumacher, the partners that have stayed with us and grown with us. Also, thanks to Mopar, Pennzoil, Dodge, and Sparkling Ice- those are the ones that we had that we are thriving. And my mom because she thinks I can do anything. And I can’t leave out the competition, which would be my husband over there on Torrance’s team. In the off season, I spent more time in the chassis shop than I ever had before. Our big changes were developed there, and those are the guys who don’t get to go to the track- they are the shop-based crew. I feel like I’m doing this for us, like there’s literally eight of us and our partners. The amount of excitement and success I guess that they feel, even though they’re not at the track, it’s like we’re doing it for that. We’re doing it for us, but we’re doing it for them too, like the team is so big. I’d like to thank the fans for being like the coolest. Wwe don’t fit for everybody, but the ones that like what we’re doing, that gather at the ropes when we’re mixing fuel and wait to the end of the night. It’s the Mopar fans. I guess that makes me more proud to represent them — for the people that live, breathe, eat, die, and tattoo them — to win for them. For parents and my fans and my husband. And that’s not even including the factory car! That’s another planet too.

The post Take 5: Leah Pritchett – Full NHRA Winternationals Interview appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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