As a professional race car driver, 20-year-old Lang sophomore Keanna Erickson-Chang stands out from the stereotypical student at The New School. Langsters definitely aren’t noted for their interest in sports. While she stands out on the track, she’s even more unique at Lang.
“They’re normally very surprised,” Erickson-Chang said about her classmates finding out she is an accomplished driver. “They don’t quite necessarily believe it at first.”
Erickson-Chang competes in the American Endurance Racing series, an endurance racing competition where drivers and teams share multiple multi-hour stints on a track going wheel-to-wheel against against other teams.
She said she only knows of one other woman who competes with AER regularly. In addition to her more conventional racing on asphalt race tracks, Erickson-Chang has also just committed to the national season of Rally America, which begins in January.
Rally America is the premier rally racing championships in America. Erickson-Chang said it will be the highest level of competition she’s experienced so far in her career.
In order to participate in AER, Erickson-Chang will have to miss a few weeks of classes traveling between Oregon and Maine, just two of the stops the series will make. The Killington, Vermont native said that juggling school and racing can be tough.
“You gotta have everything with you,” Erickson-Chang said. “Whenever you have a minute, you gotta take advantage of it and just try and stay on top of things.”
Her hard work is definitely paying off. Besides getting a spot in Rally America, Erickson-Chang also competes in ice racing.
Ice racing requires an immense amount of car control skill and talent. In 2014, she won Rookie of the Year with the Adirondack Motor Enthusiast Club’s ice racing series. Also in 2014, she finished seventh out of a field 250 in the Lime Rock Open Autocross Series, making it to the Wells Fargo Invitational Shootout, the only woman to do so.
“Most of the people that we’ll see [racing] are between the ages of 30 and 55,” Erickson-Chang said. “Just being young and then also a woman people don’t expect me to even drive. I’ll show up, I’ll race and at the end of the day someone says, ‘Oh, you were racing?’ “
Erickson-Chang had a rapid ascension through the racing ranks. She got started in driving soon after she got her license at 16.
Her father, also a driver, wanted her to do a winter driving school to be a safer driver for her day-to-day life. “I just loved the car control aspect of it all and I just had to keep going back,” Erickson-Chang said.
After Erickson-Chang and her father, in separate cars, got hit during a ice racing event one day, Erickson-Chang’s father wanted her to make the move to endurance racing. But she was back on the track just three days after that accident.
“I had already planned and registered for an event the following Saturday and then after that, I was doing two five-day rally schools starting the next Monday,” Erickson-Chang said. “I wasn’t as scared away from it as I think most people would have been or that I necessarily should have been. I guess because I wasn’t hurt.” Erickson-Chang said she did have some bruises and the crash made her sore, but it didn’t stop her from getting behind the wheel again.
And when she is behind the wheel of her white, 1995 Audi 90 race car, competing at high speed, Erickson-Chang said that she doesn’t feel rushed.
School’s not on her mind at all. She’s taking in a lot of information about her surroundings and the weather and how her Audi’s performing, but she feels at ease when she’s got the pedal down.
“I think it’s very calm,” Erickson-Chang said about driving under all those conditions. “It’s just very peaceful.”
Max is a Journalism major from Queens. He plays collegiate basketball for The New School Narwhals and spends the rest of his time watching and writing about the game.
