The following article was originally published at TheShootingCars.com on April 4, 2016.

As a new autocross season starts up in the muggy reaches of Louisiana I feel its time to have a little self reflection and honesty about, well, my skill.

This week’s motto- “You are not Ayrton Senna incarnate. You are not God’s gift to driving. You…basically, you suck.”

I usually deal heavy handedly in self deprecation but this is more truth than humor.

Ok, before anyone reads this and does the knee jerk reaction of “Dude, quit feeling sorry for yourself, pity parties are for (insert slang term here)” I think it needs to be clear that this is more an abject lesson than a pity party.

There are two kinds of autocross racers; those who will admit going into their first event thinking that they are going to demolish everyone because they are just naturally that good and liars.

O.k., there are others who come in with realistic ideals but for the most part an amateur racer believes more in their skill than warranted and generally ends up blaming it on their car not being ideal for the race or a plethora of other reasons.

I was that guy. I talked to everyone about racing lines, heel toe braking and shift points. I had absolutely no clue what in the world I was even talking about. The crew that worked a corner with me deserves some sort of award because I had to be in the top ten crap talking newbies to ever stand up a cone.

In my first ever event, to put it lightly, I sucked it up monumentally. If being generally terrible at something had a Mount Everest I would have set records for quickest assent without guide or oxygen. I was terrible with a vengeance. I was the Usain Bolt of driving like an idiot in a parking lot.

This is where we get deep.

When I was young I was a tiny kid, when everyone else hit their growth spurt I was still the same size as kids two and three years younger than me. At the time it was exactly as fun as it sounds.

Its in this brief era my father taught me a valuable lesson that has stuck with me to this day- Everyone is terrible in the beginning. You just have to keep trying even when others give up.

This lesson has resonated with me for well over a decade and a half now and is applicable to so many different things, autocross, fighting and even writing.

All of them are difficult in the beginning and take more time than you think to master. It takes patience and practice to achieve greatness and recognition in any of these fields.

Its this lesson that I find my self falling back on after years.

In the inaugural event of the 2016 season I  swapped cars with a friend, I drove his 2015 Ford Focus ST while he drove my solstice. I was excited because the ST is one of those cars that is so extremely under classed that I should have no issue winning HS class and secondly I wanted to see if Brennan, an incredibly skilled driver, could get something out of my car that I couldn’t.

And…He did. He made the solstice dance and move better than I ever did. He was extremely fast and even out running a particularly skilled EVO in his first heats, something I could never do.

I realized then that I am, in fact, a crap driver. It dawned on me that I still have an incredibly long way to go to be a fast and effective driver.

So if you’re reading this and you’re either going to your first race, already been and accidentally found this looking up new suspension bushings or just feel like you are constantly at the back of the pack you need to remember this…

You are going to be terrible and that is perfectly fine.

Then one day…you won’t be.

I’m still waiting for that day but I’ll keep coming until…I drive faster, shrink down my lap times. . . . And one fine morning —

So we beat on, cars against the cones, borne back ceaselessly onto the track.

Republished with permission from The Shooting Cars. To read more articles like this one, visit their website here. To see their video content, visit their YouTube Channel here.