Official Highlight: Steve Stepanian

NASA SoCal Region’s Steve Stepanian got his start in racing on two wheels when he was just a kid. He raced BMX bikes in the San Fernando Valley, spending his summer days riding from his home in the Los Angeles basin up and over the Hollywood Hills to a track in Van Nuys. That’s a long ride in itself. His father would come up later in the day to watch him race, load up the bike in the back of the car and drive him home.

Stepanian raced karts for a bit, but once he got his driver’s license L.A.’s infamously curvy Mulholland Drive became his new playground. It was on that road, among others in the L.A. area, where Stepanian earned enough tickets and points on his license to have it suspended.

Fast forward a few years to about 2004 to find Stepanian in a rental car at his first event with NASA SoCal, where he worked his way up through HPDE to earn a racing license and begin racing in Spec E30. Now racing in Spec E46, Stepanian has fulfilled numerous roles with NASA SoCal and NASA National, from series leader in the region to race director at the NASA Championships and to his recurring role as the chief instructor for NASA SoCal’s competition school.

We caught up with Stepanian to ask him a few questions about the many NASA roles he has filled over the years, what he has learned, and to find out why he does it all.

Chief Instructor, NASA SoCal Competition School

Q: You are the chief instructor for the NASA SoCal competition school. What are your core responsibilities in designing and running the program?

A: I had the responsibility of creating a classroom program from the presentation side that would make sense and flow with the day of activities. The second part of the responsibilities was making sure that the on-track portions were commensurate with what the program was trying to accomplish and timing those two, and building the two to operate together. And then I guess another portion was staffing, trying to find instructors that were capable of accomplishing the classroom objective, but at the same time handling the on-track responsibilities.

As far as running it, my responsibilities were pretty much do everything. [Ryan Flaherty] needed to make this happen so he didn’t have to deal with it. This is going to be your baby, so to speak, was kind of what Ryan gave me. At first it was we’ll vet the people, and you get the program up and running and handle it all weekend and then come back with recommendations on whether the drivers candidates should have licenses. And it morphed into, ‘I’ll just send you the applications.’ So, I guess it became the program.

Q: Has it evolved over time? In what ways?

A: Definitely. Most of the evolution is rules because I’m very heavy on procedures and rules. We’re not teaching them how to drive. They should be well past that, obviously. We focus on everything other than their ability to drive. The exercises are not built to teach them something that they already know. It’s to show that they are capable of handling the situations.

I consider myself a student of racing. Lord knows I don’t know everything, but I want to, and I built a relationship with Ross Bentley, and Ross and I have had multiple conversations about being a student of racing, what you learn, how you learn, new things, new philosophies.

Q: How would you describe your teaching philosophy when it comes to preparing aspiring racers for competition? You only have two days with your students. What’s most important for them to grasp?

A: That question could take hours to answer, but if I’m shortening it …

Q: You’re going to have to.

A: My philosophy is more about mindset more than anything. Understand that when you’re racing in the NASA environment, it is an amateur racing series.

There are some people who graduate to do great things and are phenomenal drivers and some will go to the pro ranks. When you start out, you’re an amateur. You’re in the amateur ranks, and that’s what everybody’s doing. There are doctors, lawyers, insurance agents, salespeople, you name it, who are behind the wheel, and they all have day jobs for the most part, and they all want to go back to them. So, when people walk into my comp school for the first time, when they walk into the classroom, I already have a projector set up with a home screen. It says, “Welcome to SoCal NASA Competition Licensing School.”

And then underneath it, it says in big, obnoxiously bright green letters with a red outline, ‘Would you want to race with you?’ And it sits up there at every time that they walk back into the classroom on purpose. So, my philosophy is to get them to take on the mindset that people should want to race with you. And if you don’t want to race with you, I guarantee you nobody else does.

The second portion of the philosophy is competition. Healthy competition is good. It’s good to want to win. It’s not bad to be competitive. It’s when the competitive nature takes over your decision- making. Whenever they leave the classroom, I always try to end the classroom with the phrase, ‘Be safe. Make good choices.’

Having two days with them is tough, because there’s so much to learn. The most common thing I hear is, ‘Wow, this is way more than I thought it would be,’ or ‘It’s like drinking from the fire hose.’ I have had people leave after the first day saying I had no idea what I didn’t know. I’m not ready for this. And instead of leaving actually leaving, I tell them, ‘Well why don’t you sit for the rest of it and learn more? At least you get to see everything and you can make you a decent decision for when you are ready to go racing.’

I don’t know if it’s the way I say it or if it’s their curiosity, most of them will stay for the weekend and learn even though they’ll tell me ‘I’m not ready.’ That’s fine. You don’t need to be ready, but this is information you’re going to need when you are.

Q: What instances from your racing history do you use to teach valuable lessons?

A: Well, this may sound odd, but I have learned way more from my failures than my successes.

I’ll take situations where I either let myself down, let another racer down, wasn’t prepared properly, or some things that I see now that I’ve been doing this almost 20 years: things that I commonly see from newbies and guys that have been racing for years; I would be surprised if you don’t see this; here’s a common mistake; here’s a an easy-to-make error; when this happens, here’s the typical result and here is a method that you can use to avoid this.

Q: I’ve seen classroom sessions at licensing schools become little more than story time. What do you do to keep that from happening?

A: That was a challenge because I found at first telling stories of the past were examples, yes, but I had way too many long examples. So, as the class has evolved the presentation, with feedback from instructors and students … I have little cues in the presentation I use for their visuals.

I find if I ever start the sentence with, ‘In this one race,’ it’s kind of a trigger for me to shorten that to, ‘Let me give you an example of this situation and why I’m telling you about it.’ So, I may give a specific example, but I make sure that any story I give is brief and to the point.

Q: Being chief instructor for comp school seems like a thankless job. Why do you bother?

A: In some ways it is, but not to the new people. It’s mostly thankless because some people will take it for granted, and those are usually the racers that are racing already.

When that new racer comes out with the R on the back of his car and they went to my school, I believe most of the SoCal racers have faith in the fact that nobody was rubber-stamped. They can actually do what they are out there to do.

So, the thankless part to me tells me I’m doing my job from the racer standpoint. From the new folks, at the end of the class, there’s a line of people that walk up to shake your hand and say, ‘Hey, thank you,’ and they have their own individual comments. So, it actually isn’t thankless. There are people who appreciate it. The students seem to always appreciate it.

Why do I bother? One, I was asked by someone I respect and treasure as a friend and a racing colleague in Ryan Flaherty. I bother because I’ve made some great friendships in racing especially with NASA. I look forward to it. I love teaching.

Q: Have you actually had to send people back to repeat the school? How many have you had over the years? And what were some of the reasons they didn’t more common reasons they didn’t pass?

A: One of the things that I thought my version needed to have was, yes, a recommendation for your license or, no, not a recommendation at this time, but not just take the class again. They needed, I think, a path to say here’s what I see. Here are the shortcomings. Here’s where I see you are ready. Here’s where I see you’re not. And the feedback wasn’t just yes or no. It’s ‘You’re almost there’ or ‘I need to be able to see this to recommend you,’ and giving them a few options of how to accomplish it.

So, the ones that were not given recommendations were either repeated safety violations that were major, and they usually had to be repeated. Showing no situational awareness, or very little. Showing a lack of preparedness or seriousness about what we were doing over the course of two days.

Q: What are the most effective ways to keep tabs on everyone during drills on track?

A: I will usually stay in the tower because I can see most of the track, but for the parts that I can’t, there are different people that I’ve worked with, fellow racers that are willing to help me and be my eyes and ears.

Being in the tower, I can hear the calls from the corner workers. But what they don’t see, the corner workers will help me with. And I’ve worked with guys who have helped out like Chuck Sharp or Andrew Clark or Dennis Caco. They all have plenty of racing experience, situational awareness that I respect to no end. They know what we’re looking for or what I specifically want to know about, but they also know what to look for. Those names that I gave you, I couldn’t respect their opinions more, and they’ve never let me down. So, I use experienced racers to help.

Officiating at the NASA Championships

Q: OK, we’re going to change gears a little bit here to the roles we’ve seen you fulfilling as an official at many NASA Championships. What are what are some of the jobs that you have done at any of the NASA championships you’ve been to?

A: I don’t think there’s a job I haven’t done. I typically play the role of race director for a couple of different classes or at least one race group. I have taken role of series leader. I have I played errand boy at one of the first one I ever did just to get some experience and to be exposed to it.

Besides being a racer, besides being a crew chief for a racer and for I have done everything from being a pit crew and or pit person to a race team director or I guess crew chief to a racer. Then on the management side, I played series leader and I now act as a race director as well.

Q: Did you ever try to work as an official and race?

A: I did once. Never again. The days were long. The times in between did not allow me to focus on racing. Race directing would have been impossible because I couldn’t adjudicate things and spend the time that I needed to, and still be a racer. So, I tried, seriously. It’s very demanding, and it took away from my racing. So, I don’t think it’s a good idea. You can do it. I just wouldn’t.

Q: Would you say that taking part in NASA Championships is like a bucket list item?

A: A Championship has to be a goal. It’s just a natural progression. You want to measure yourself up against some other racers. You want to you want to see how good you are. You also want to race against new people, go to an area you might not be familiar with, or maybe you just want the competition because it’s on a larger scale. It’s got to be a bucket-list item. I mean, you have to do it once and once you do it once, you’ll never stop. After my first one, I don’t think I’ve missed a Championship as a driver until I started working as a race director.

Q: Finally, can you share one of your favorite moments or experiences from a past NASA Championships event?

A: I remember showing up at COTA (2018) and pulling out of the pits and in Spec E30 there were guys from across the country. Some of them I read about in Speed News. You always read about the races themselves and you see the racers’ names. You get to hear the same names quite often.

And I remember passing a few of them, or getting up side by side and thinking, ‘How cool is this? I’m on a world-class F1 qualified track with some of the top racers in this class in the country.’ I didn’t care where I was. I just remember just thinking, ‘Holy cow, you know, you couldn’t have told me at age 16 I’d be here today.’

It was probably the coolest moment that I’ve had in in racing other than when I got onto the podium at one of the champs events. I didn’t win, but I got on the podium and that was a kind of a validation or the crescendo of your racing moments. I don’t think I’ll forget that either.

Series Leader

Q: You were the Spec E30 series leader in SoCal for a nearly a decade. So, to what would you attribute its success regionally and nationally?

A: The answer, I think, is kind of the same, nationally and for SoCal.

In SoCal specifically, the class has been going along because the racers, plain and simple, they enjoy being on track together. It’s as much about getting a pit space together, what we’re going to barbecue at the end of the day, what kind of fun we’re going to have in the pits or in the garages or paddock over the weekend. It’s as much about the social part as the racing. The guys truly enjoy each other’s company. They will do just about anything to help each other.

Some of the racing is so tight. I mean, tight within a thousandth, sometimes. But at the end of the day, the leadership cares, both when I did it and the current leader. They care immensely about the class. There’s knowledge in the leadership, so they’re able to help just about anybody. They believe in the class, so they promote very well. But at the core in SoCal, racers are what make that class.

Q: What do you think is the future of Spec E30?

A: I don’t see it going away. The only thing that’ll make that series go away could be the age of the cars and parts if they become, you know, impossible to find or very difficult. But as far as the racing goes, it is a nostalgic, very simple, fun car that is difficult to master because it’s a momentum car. And every single guy who races in that series has a relationship with their car and each other.

It’s not a fabulous race car by any means. It’s heavy. It’s lanky. It leans quite a bit. Guys would refer to their racecars as her, in the female sense. And somebody asked me once, why do you call it a her? It’s such a masculine, testosterone-filled sport. For an E30, it’s real simple. You treat this car like a man and it will kick your lily-white butt. You want it to do what you want it to do, you treat it like a woman. You ask the car to work with you. You play to its strengths, and you respect it when it says, ‘Uh-uh, that’s not the way it’s going to be.’ Then you’ll get fast in Spec E30. Ask the car. Don’t tell it.

Q: What are the biggest challenges to its continued success?

A: Probably longevity of the availability of parts because the class won’t go anywhere with racers or the cars themselves. As long as there are racers out there, there are people who will jump in that class. I’m just hoping that there’s support for the series by parts and availability of things.