ED NAZARIAN

Ed is a good guy.  I have gotten to spend some time with him over the last few months for NASA.  He is the perfect garage mate.  He doesn’t talk to you too much and takes care of business.  He also has the coolest dad ever.  The last time I ran NASA was in June.  Ed wasn’t driving but he came out anyways and did a ride along in my EVO.  Then, he drove my EVO, which scared the crap out of me.  There is nothing like having a real race car driver drive your daily driver around the track in anger to freak you out and show you how slow you are.  I thought I was kicking some imaginary ass in HPDE but ED is really the one killing it!!  I can’t wait to have more good times with Ed out on the track this year in NASA.  You should come out too!! [nasaproracing.com]

More on ED Nazarian after the break

Here is what Ed has to say:

I didn’t grow up wrenching on cars, and never had any interest in racing, so it is pretty bizarre for me to sit here and write about how I got into car racing in 2009, and my relationship with RRE.  You can read in more detail about my races and how I got into racing on my website:
– www.ednazarian.com

In the meantime here’s a little background info.  I started off doing HPDE’s (high performance driving events) and I was hooked right away.  In 2007 I felt like I wanted to compete on some level, and after looking around I found out about Time Trial events, which is a competition where drivers compete for fastest lap.  NASA’s rules made the most sense to me, so in 2007 I started competing in NASA’s TT series.

I competed in the TTA class for about 2 seasons, 2007-2008.  In 2008 I also went to NASA’s National Championship, at Mid-Ohio, which was a grueling trip for me that totaled around 5,000 miles.  Nationals had a major impact on me and upon returning I started thinking about taking that step and transitioning into racing.  During the 2 seasons while I was competing in TTA I had followed a few of the race classes.  After some thought I realized that nothing excited me more than to race my Evo, so Super Touring was the class I decided with.  I’m lucky though, because ST2 is competitive at the National Championship and in Socal, which was one of my deciding factors, i.e. I wanted to race in a class that is competitive at Nationals and in my region.  That’s important because you’re really not going to learn how to race if you’re racing in a class that’s not competitive.

We’re in the 2011 season now, and within the last 2 years I’ve been in 21 races.  I’ve also raced at NASA’s National Championship during both of those years, 2009 and 2010.  But if it wasn’t for RRE’s support, I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish all that.  Their knowledge and hard work is what put me in a position to aim for such goals.  Therefore, what I’ve been able to do since I started racing in 2009 is partially a reflection of what RRE is made of.

Ed Nazarian