WELCOME

"My dad was in his 30s when I was seven.

Jan. 17, 2018 by Paul Fletcher

"My dad was in his 30s when I was seven. I don't remember him as much as most people remember me, but we would drive together off on the weekends. We'd go out to the fields and the dirt and the dirt and the road. It was like a big family family car, with the driver's seat in the back, and the driver, with the car's engine running, and I'd just sit in that seat and drive the car.

"There I was, in front of the engine, and he was driving a big, big, big, big, big car, and he was driving it like an amateur. I didn't know I was doing it, and that's how I got into it. There's so much more to this sport, and it's just so much more interesting. I mean, for a lot of American guys, it's all about the pro driver. You can really create a really strong driver, and that has a huge influence on a lot of people's racing, because you can kind of create that sort of dynamic and really have it happen in a real way."

So as a young kid, did you have any aspirations to be a professional racer?

"I started racing when I was four years old," Dalla Lana says. "I was just starting out racing, not even sure what I wanted to do. I was just going through life racing and all. I never thought I'd get a chance to go racing for the first time. I didn't think I'd be doing that for seven years. But I was there, and there was a lot of excitement about it. So I just went off and started the next thing I could do, and then there was a lot of work around me. It was a really amazing time.

"I did my first race, and I won that first race. As a kid, racing was pretty much a hobby. You just got to know your car. You had to do a lot of things. I could see the speed and the speed of the car, the way the car would go. But there was not really a lot of passion and attention. I'm not sure if I was ever going to be competitive. I just was able to keep racing and try to improve. I never thought I would be competitive in this sport, but I got to the point where I realized I was doing it for the right reasons."

The first time you raced at Le Mans, you drove a Porsche 911 GT3