Andy Lally: From club racer to Rolex 24 at Daytona champion

Just how did five-time Rolex 24 winner Andy Lally start out his career in motorsports? Well, he made some sacrifices.

“When I quit soccer and told my coach, he asked why, and I said, ‘I'm going to be race car driver,’” Lally shares. “He smiled, laughed a little bit and asked my plan. I had no plan. That was when he told me that he was a crew chief on a local race team.”

Just like that, Andy’s journey began.

SCCA, EMRA, go-karting: You name it, Andy ran it.

“I got my SCCA license in a 1985 Toyota MR2 and raced touring cars for the first two years and did go-karts while I was a senior in high school,” Lally recalls. “For a brief period of time I went the open wheel route when in Formula 600, or Formula 440 back then, before I went to the Formula 2000 series. At the same time, I was running some touring cars in the Motorola Cup. My opportunity came at the end of my open wheel career, which was the late ’90s, to come to Daytona and run a prototype in 2001.”

That first drive in prototype? He won his first Rolex 24 title.

But how did he do it?

The one necessity for almost any path in life is networking, and that’s just what led Andy to his prototype seat.

“I've had moms and dads of these young drivers ask me for advice on what rungs on the ladder they should go. But if you don't have the financial capability to write that check to go all the way up, there's no planning. You have to take every opportunity that you can,” Lally stresses. “If you only focus on a very narrow portion of that ladder, you're going to miss an opportunity that was over here [on a different ladder], by left or right field, maybe even up or down [the ladder]. Talk to everyone because you never know where the one spark is going to come from.”

We all know the phrase, "When one door shuts another one opens.” Perseverance and adaptability are key attributes to opening those doors.

No is one of the worst words someone can hear when stepping out to make a connection or seizing an opportunity. But that’s all it is–a word. There is no reason that a single word should put a total halt on the opportunities you reach out for and chase.

Photograph by Chris Tropea

“It's difficult to practice the art of introducing yourself and getting immediately rejected,” Lally shares. “It’s very tricky to walk up to team owners and tell them how much you want to drive and why you're different from anybody, because in reality, you're not different from anybody else. I wasn't different from anybody else. I had a lot of the doors that opened for me because I bothered knocking on them.”

When it comes to entering the motorsports world as a driver, you may hear the best path is karting or working for a team as a tire runner. But in reality, those are just paths that worked well for some.

Every driver you see in a paddock is unique–in driving style, personality, journey and how they fit in their team’s dynamic.

With all these differences, how likely is it that taking the exact same path as someone else will create the exact same results? Not that high, right?

Young drivers should explore all racing opportunities, from SCCA to stock cars, prototypes and even late models. After all, it is important to get experience in various types of cars, as this broadens a driver’s skill set and opens more doors.

 “Don't get put off by someone else's opportunity,” Andy stresses. “Focus on the other 999,999 teams and people that you can go talk to.”

 

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