Nizer

analogmike

Awesome, I didn't realize what a huge turning point in his career our win at Lime Rock was. He's been winning ever since.

Gary R.

Love to see a spreadsheet on what mumsy and daddy spent to get him there.. I'm not impressed, but maybe the 16 people in the audience are. Has this kid worked (I mean a job) a day in his life?

Nizer

Yeah, a bit overdone. I just thought it was cool that there was 1) a TED Talk on auto racing and 2) it wasn't about NASCAR....

analogmike

Did Senna work? Dion was in college when he got his first pro racing seats. Why work a meaningless job if you want to be a pro race car driver? You gotta start young, and having parents who are into it is only a good thing.

Gary R.

No idea, but I liked Senna....

br911

Senna practiced and practiced and practiced before he could make any money as a professional racer. He spent many hours in the rain in his go kart until he felt he was good enough, for example. Not too different than some of us who studied, studied and studied before we could get a job that we saw fit for us and our skills.

Alexandrius

I have to agree with gary.
Acting like working out every day and "trying hard" and "not partying before races" is a sacrifice or secret to success is kind of out of touch with reality. The whole point of Ted talks are to give some sort of smart insight to success. Seems pretty bland. I think if senna made a Ted talk it would be much more inspiring. He always admitted he was extremely fortunate to be where he was, but what set him apart was his inner focus. Winning was all there was; he was in the zone and he was racing. Fear of collision, death, etc. didn't enter his mind. He was driving on perfect instinct. I feel like sennas Ted talk would have been about how to achieve the focus required to enter "the zone."

I may be rusty but I watched this a year ago or so.

The best answer to "why not go for it when you are young and put everything you have into it?" Is because for that to work you are essentially all in, gambling on your success as a professional racecar driver when many many many insane and stupid variables can un-seat you.

You were a faster driver? Well xtreme bromigo was a little bit slower and gave his team $10 million dollars to play pro racecar driver. So many other variables you can't control.

It's all just opportunity cost.
Essentially you will have thrown away any time and money that any reasonable person could have used to become independently rich or well off at least down the line if that energy had gone to something else with racing as a side peice.

Thus, what family money offers an aspiring racer is options and a fall back plan. It's much riskier without that.

I knew a guy who was racing Porsche cup cars professionally at age 15. His rich father deemed him too slow/too poor of a performer, and after having homeschooled him and telling him he would be a professional racer one day, pulled the rug out from under his feet and said fend for yourself. That dude went from extremely cocky *cough* to pathetic as hell.

So anyways, rant over but yea I saw this Ted talk and it was yawn inducing.

Then again, there's even pay drivers in formula 1 so why do we take this stuff that seriously anyways ?

Cory M

I think you guys are being a little tough on Dion comparing him to Senna, and no one has even noticed that he's the most successful African American racing in IMSA..

ProCoach

Umm, he's from South Africa. He's not African-American...

Veloce Raptor

Lol exactly
And he was born in Texas

Cory M

It was a joke... he has both South African and American nationalities on his Wikipedia page..

Ritter v4.0

Among the least memorable TED talks I've heard. I find most of the better ones induce a sense of wonder. Despite my connection to the subject, I didn't.