Breaking Down Barriers, Setting Records, and Winning Big!, with McKenna Haase

My guest is McKenna Hasse.  Mckenna is a 21 year old race car driver from my town, Des Moines, Iowa. She primarily races at the Knoxville raceway, which is known as the Sprint Car Capital of the World. Listen To The Podcast: Resources: http://www.mckennahaase.com/ Interview:  Now, get this, Mckenna is Knoxville's first and only female feature winner in over 100 years. She's got this incredible record and she's got her sights on NASCAR!. And her driving career is impressive in and of itself. But her record off the track is really what grabbed my attention. Again, did I mention she's 21? And she owns and operates her own sprint car team, which is a business, it's got to be in order to make this thing happen. So she's doing that. She also operates her own youth driver development program called Compass Racing Development LLC. So cool. She's a business student at Drake University where she's involved with a number of organizations ranging from the Drake Investment Club, to the Drake American Marketing Association, to the fellowship of Christian athletes. And as you hear from her, she is awesome and energetic and fun, but you should know she's also tougher than crap. In addition to driving a sprint car, she also has a second degree black belt in TaeKwonDo, and she does some Ninja Warrior training and gymnastics to boot. So she's gotten so much done in a short period of time, and I think once you hear from her, you'll hear why. But I think she's just getting started. And I wanted to have her on, especially since we're celebrating the beginning of the year, we're busting into 2019, we're all committed to making this our best year ever, I just wanted you to hear from more people like Mckenna. So let's get to this. Mitch Matthews: Mckenna Haase welcome to Dream.Think.Do. Mckenna Haase: Thank you for having me. Mitch Matthews: So I've been inspired by your story from afar for a while, and I've got so many questions for you. But just to kind of help Dream.Think.Doers from all over the world who maybe aren't familiar with sprint cars, give us a little explanation of sprint cars versus like a NASCAR car. Mckenna Haase: So sprint car racing is open wheel, open cockpit, and so it kind of looks like an Indy car, but the cage's a little bit taller and there's wings on top. And one on the top, that's really big, and then one smaller one on the front to help weigh it down for us. Mitch Matthews: We should just explain that. The wings aren't to make you fly, it's because you're going so fast, you could fly, the wings are actually meant to keep you on the track, right? Mckenna Haase: Yes, exactly. Mitch Matthews: Exactly. Mckenna Haase: And then they weigh about 1500 pounds or so, which is about like half the way of a normal vehicle. And then they have anywhere from 500 to 900 horsepower depending on what class you're in, which can range in speeds of 100 to 150 miles an hour. Mitch Matthews: So you're basically strapped into a rocket that is open. You've got a cage around you and stuff, but it's open. It's just got to be the adrenaline rush. Plus, you're on a track that's basically a mud track, but if I understand sprint cars, the longer the evening goes, the more races, the more the track basically becomes like ice, like driving on patches of ice? Mckenna Haase: Exactly. And the tracks are a lot shorter than NASCAR tracks. Mitch Matthews: Yeah. How short are they? What's the distance around in Knoxville? Mckenna Haase: Knox is the largest, or one of the largest sprint car tracks in the world. It's a half mile on the inside of the track and then the smaller tracks can go down to a quarter mile. Mitch Matthews: And is that tougher? Like is the smaller track tougher because you're just constantly turning, or? Mckenna Haase: Well, we turned right to go left because our cars drift, and so we're actually on certain tracks like early in the night, we're full throttle.