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When we are kids, most of us don’t know what we are going to be when we grow up. Some people do. The person I interviewed seemed to know. This person has just turned professional and comes from three generations of this chosen profession.

All that would not be very extraordinary, if not for the fact that this life long Richardson resident just turned 21, wants to dominate NASCAR, currently races for breast cancer survivors like her very own mother, and – yes – she is a woman in a sport dominated by men.

Meet Lindsey Adams.

I interviewed Lindsey at her home in Richardson. (Click Here to see more photographs of Lindsey Adams.)

Echo: This is probably a question you get asked all of the time but I have to ask it. One doesn't think of a bright young woman wanting to get involved with racecar driving. You obviously don't represent the typical stereotype for a racecar driver. How did you get involved with driving and when did you decide you wanted to be a racecar driver?

LA: I'm a third generation racer but I wasn't allowed to race for so many years. I grew up at the motocross track but I wasn't allowed to race motocross. After begging and begging my dad to race something, my godfather Dan Tomlin with Tomlin investments thought it would be great if we got a go-kart and started racing go-karts. We did and I immediately started winning. I won a national championship in the KART National Championship in the Rotax International Class. After that Dan gave me a call and said, "Would you like to drive a Formula car?" I said, "Absolutely" and I drove a Formula Mazda for Tomlin Investments in 2006 and at that point I knew I wanted to be a racecar driver.

Echo: How old were you at that time?

LA: I'm 21 now so it was like about 18 and 19ish. I was 18 when I found out he was going to put me in a Formula Mazda.

Echo: For the sake of people who don't know all the classes of cars tell me what a Formula car is? How would I know one if I saw it?

LA: A Formula car looks like an Indy car. It's an open wheel race car. It has no fenders. It has wings and in my case we had a Mazda engine in my car.

Echo: You say you come from a 3rd generation [of racers]. Describe the other generations.

LA: My grandfather had a speed shop here in Dallas called Custom Automotive. Racers like Carroll Shelby and Johnny Rutherford would come in for repairs. My dad grew up around drivers like that. He went out, competed in a go kart race and won his first race. His dad said, "Absolutely not. You are not going to be a race car driver. You are going to be a doctor." He always wanted to drive and that was always his true passion. He continued on with his other passion which was to become an orthodontist and once he established himself he started racing motocross very seriously. He was extremely competitive. He won championships and that is what I grew up around. I really wanted to get a dirt bike. My mom wouldn't let me. She'd hate to see me on a motorcycle. We got a go kart and continued forward with that.

Echo: How did you learn how to drive?

LA: I learned how to drive through a collaboration of a bunch of different people. In the beginning it was my dad that taught me everything I knew. When things got too intense and too competitive for it to be just me and my dad I worked with different mechanics from all over the country with certain factory teams that would hire racing coaches and driver coaches to help me learn how to drive.

Also, they have systems nowadays where you can have a computer in your race car and it will literally draw a map of what you did on the track. You can go back and look at where you accelerated and where you braked and where on the track you did those things... your turning points. All that kind of stuff. There is so much that is digital and so much that is electronic that you can use to help you.

I just switched from open wheel racing which is road course racing, where those kinds of systems are super important and we relied so much on our data acquisition. Now I am racing stock cars so it's very different. Now I have crew chiefs and fellow drivers and so many people that are helping me understand what I need to be doing and how to translate my terminology for problems with the car to their terminology. It's really different. It's French vs. Spanish. It's not the same language. It's been an interesting transition.