The Race that Made me confident again. 

​​Living room summer of 2020. I hear the sound of the cars just flying by one by one. Trader Joe’s cookies in hand. My little brother and I stuck to the TV. “It’s lights out and away we go”…I was amazed…what the Hell did I just find? What is this new form of motorsport that I have found.? Time goes on. I feel more and more joy Lap by Lap. The racing gets better and better. I’m truly beyond amazed. So much happening in so much time… messed up pit stops “fu****” one of the drivers says…Then the laps continue to count down. Then I look up to see the big pink racing-point car take the checkered flag and then I hear those words: “The man who was last at the first lap…Sergio Perez WINS the Sakhir Grand Prix for his first one in F1. I looked up at the TV amazed. Here was something I was able to Talk about and go on and on about. I felt confident when talking about this race, my talking was fluent when talking about this race…as someone who struggled to talk I was amazed I was able to talk about it freely..my speech didn’t feel restricted as usual. Growing up I always felt as if my speech was restricted as I felt I lacked understanding to a lot of things that was being spoken about. Yet something clicked, days after the race I found myself re-watching it, doing all my research. I had just watched my first formula one race and it felt like it was a life changer. Was this the motorsport that was going to change my life? Was this what I’ve been looking for all along? Was this what I needed to jumpstart my abilities in reading and writing? 

Growing up with ADHD was something that had taken some getting used to as I had the attention span of a fly. Really couldn’t focus on well…anything. This was something that had taken a big effect on my Literacy mainly because to go along with ADHD I also had begun to stutter while I was reading. When I was in both Middle school and High school I had gotten made fun of when I had gotten called to read outloud cause well the majority of the people around me had the ability to read more fluently than I can. It took a lot to change this cause these instances of me getting made fun of had really killed my confidence. I kinda had to find ways to help my reading anf I had to do it really on my own so even though I had speech when I was younger and everything I still struggled. Now when I was young I was introduced to race cars, trains etc… anything that moved and had a motor or engine I was automatically HOOKED. So my sophomore year in high school was when my confidence in both language and literacy was at its lowest as I was struggling to read and write. I had to find a way to get myself that confidence back as I refrained from answering questions, reading out loud, I was scared for any writing assignment with the fear that I would fail. Then once Covid hit I got my big break because that’s when I just started to Jornal about things that made me happy. So during quratione I was really big into racing and one thing that had helped me was netflix Drive to Survive. It took me behind the scenes about everything that was going on in formula One and it was something that I had automatically fallen in love with. So much so that I had started basically writing summaries of each season that I had watched I was glued to my TV and my notebook. Now granted I had always been into racing since I was a kid but it was always Nascar and all the Major US racing, but Formula One was an absolutely different story. So going into my junior and senior year I had just pages full of F1 things and drama that was happening in both the shows and then once the F1 season had restarted I was able to compare and contrast.. I was able to get full insight and it opened a whole new world for me as a reader and a writer cause now im sitting here reading different articles week in and week out and basically writing summaries of each race! Then my best friend Julain and My little brother got the Idea to one day just sit down and just listen as I read these race summaries to them. Honestly it was the best thing that could have ever happened to me because just sitting and listening and giving me that constructive feedback which I never really had ultimately boosted my confidence. By my senior year I was fully confident in my writing and my speaking although I still read and spoke with a stutter I didn’t care.  So through the help of my friends and me just going back to what made me happy had really rebuilt my confidence and now I’m fully confident in both my language and literacy no matter the cause, no matter the event. I still have my struggles in overall reading and writing sometimes but nobody is perfect in those aspects and I don’t have to be perfect either, it’s okay to struggle cause it’s not how you fall it’s how you get back up and that’s something that I have applied to my overall academic life, it’s something that’s a big help and I will continue to stand by that in my life. That’s what I carry when I look back at Sergio Perez First F1 Race win.