Kentucky Racing
As Student Manager of Kentucky Racing, I led a collaborative effort between Formula Kentucky and the UK Solar Car Team in order to further promote motorsports at the University of Kentucky.
The University of Kentucky is one of about 20-30 universities in the USA that has both an active FSAE and solar car team. Naturally, to me, this is one of the most unique facts about UK, yet for nearly all of my college career at UK, I have been the only student to be heavily involved with both Formula Kentucky and the UK Solar Car Team simultaneously. By being in both garages regularly, I started to realize that there were many common ideas and issues that both teams had and needed assistance with. It was seen that with some collaboration between the teams, they could benefit each other in fundraising, marketing, and creating a larger name for themselves.
Thus, at the beginning of my sophomore year, I became the Student Manager of Kentucky Racing - a collaborative effort out of the College of Engineering in order to further develop both Formula Kentucky and the UK Solar Car Team. In this role, I primarily acted as an ambassador between the teams, the College of Engineering, and the University of Kentucky as a whole in order to further promote and showcase what both teams were truly capable of. My main mission was to bring much more awareness to both teams and to assist in making the teams collaborate on more longevity-based projects.
Our first Kentucky Racing group photo. Taken at a Lexington Cars and Coffee event in Fall 2016.
By working together, the teams were able to successfully attract more attention and support than previously. This collaboration significantly helped with new member recruitment, funding and donations from existing and new supporters, and overall awareness for both student organizations. The Kentucky Racing brand also helped host some unique events with the teams, such a visit from NASCAR driver Ben Rhodes back in 2017, our own annual K Week Kentucky Racing Open House, and partnering Kentucky Speedway for our own private testing sessions. By working together and showcasing both motorsports teams, we were able to paint a larger picture for many people at UK, some of whom did not even know the teams existed beforehand. Most importantly, Kentucky Racing was able to demonstrate how significant of a learning experience the teams can be to students such as myself.
One of the largest successful projects I had was forming a partnership between our teams and Kentucky Speedway. This was a result of our collaboration and relationship management over a number of years.
I have been extremely delighted to be able to work alongside both racing teams at UK - the Kentucky Racing brand encompasses everything that I have loved about our programs and has allowed me to develop myself alongside my peers and teammates. Kentucky Racing proved that in order to continue to succeed, collaboration is key. I am immensely proud to have been able to see how this collaborative mindset has improved between the teams over the years, and I cannot wait to see what continues to happen in the future.
For more information about Kentucky Racing, please click here. Please also visit my pages on Formula Kentucky and the UK Solar Car Team to learn about my involvement specific to each team.
