Sting Ray Robb - 10-20-24

Full show from the Donovan & Jorgenson Heating & Cooling Studio

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Faith in the Zone. I'm the Big nine
twenty in your iHeartRadio app. I'm Mike mcgiffrin flying solo
this week. Pastor Ken Keltner from Brookside Baptist Church. We'll
be back in studio next week and we're coming from
the Donovan and Jorgenson Heating and Cooling Studios. Guys, if
you haven't turned your furnace on yet, it's coming. It's
coming soon. And any issues that you have take my

(00:24):
word for it. Donovan Jorgens dot Com the largest employee
owned h FAC company in the state of Wisconsin. When
somebody comes out to look at your h FACT system,
you're dealing with one of the owners. That's what sets
them apart. And they're just they're really happy that they're
a sponsor of Faith in the Zone. Anytime I'm at
their office, somebody will come up and say, hey, thank

(00:45):
you so much for getting having us be a part
of Faith in the Zone. So thank you to Donovan
Jorgens and Heating Cooling. Thank you to Brookside Baptist Church.
Thank you to all our sponsors. I really appreciate that.
So with Faith in the Zone, I get it chance
to talk with men and women all over the country
that are involved or have been involved in sports and

(01:07):
will are willing to share their testimony and how their
faith has changed and moved their life professionally and personally.
And sometimes I have to talk to people that are
involved in sports I don't know much about. Yeah, look
I try to play golf. I'm horrible. I can't say
I know much about golf, baseball, basketball, football, Yeah, I'm
okay with that. I've been coaching or I've been around

(01:29):
it for a long time, race car driving, race card, NASCAR, Indie,
all of it. I've never been to a race. I've
watched one race, and I wish I knew more about it.
But when we had the opportunity. Now, I want to
thank Tom, somebody from Brookside Baptist Church who went up
and introduced himself to our guest mom at the Milwaukee

(01:51):
Mile and said, look, my friend does this kind of
show and can we get staying ready to do this?
And she said absolutely. Haven't reached out to me once
our season's over, And that's what we did. Our special
guest for the entire hour. He is a race car
driver through and through, and he was born to be
a race car driver. His legal name sting Ray Rob

(02:12):
is our special guest, sting Ray.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
How you doing today?

Speaker 3 (02:15):
I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Hey, dude, do I call you sting Do I call
you sting Ray? What? What do Most people call you?

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Sting Rays that I go by most of the time.
But if you let me know what you're gonna call me?
All answer to it.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, let's go with sting Ray because I love it.
And every interview You've done a lot of research on
this young man, and every interview I heard everybody starts.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
With the name.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
I'm going to bypass it. It's his legal name. His
parents were Corvette fans. He is sting Ray Rob. And
I'm telling you this kid was born to be a
race car driver, grew up in Idaho. Sting Ray started.
You started officially racing at what age?

Speaker 3 (02:56):
I started go karting when I was five years old.
Real competition started when I was about seven, But I
had a passion along before that.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Do you remember those days and the innocence of And
I looked at a zillion pictures of you at all
ages and you're are you twenty three years.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Old right now?

Speaker 3 (03:17):
That's correct?

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Twenty three stingarette.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Before we get any further, I envy you so much.
I envy anybody who is as young as you are
and have figured out their faith part early. I'm one
hundred percent Irish stinging writing and it took me a
long time, and I wasted a lot of time and
doing a lot of, you know, ridiculously stupid things early

(03:41):
in my life.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
And I envy a guy like you.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
And we're gonna ask you to share a testimony in
the second segment, but I want you to know that
at the age of twenty three, the things that you
have accomplished in your sport is incredible to me.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Young man, Well, thank you.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, And it's kind of funny you say that you
wasted time. I don't think that's wasted because you want
to be here today if you didn't go through what
she went through, So don't I don't think you should
count on a waste of time count of a valuable
learning time.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, do you know on this show, I'll say a
lot of people that we talked to, the worst thing
they ever did was steal a candy bar. And then
you've got guys like Pastor Darryl Strawberry and myself who
did a lot of things that I thought staying ry
that I had to get myself cleaned up before I
could I could go and ask him to be my savior.

(04:28):
I thought, okay, well I can't. I can't go like this.
And what I realized is is, as you know, he'll
he will meet you where you're at. If you ask him,
he'll be there, and it's okay, you can join his family.
And I just it's been I don't know, twenty twenty
some years and and thank God that I made that

(04:49):
decision with the help of my wife and the help
of the pastor at east Side Baptist Church, and things
have been been quite a bit different. So you know,
thank you for that. And I agree, I agree with
with you. Hey, at that early age, what about and
I know you are a multi sport athlete and we're
going to get into that, but what about racing? Do
you think caught your heart and it continues to be

(05:11):
your love?

Speaker 3 (05:14):
I think the inspiration started very young, and I used
to sit at the Corvette Club meetings and autocross events
and drag races and watch my parents drive their cars,
and that was just what I thought was normal. I
thought that that's what every little kid's experience was at
the time. It turns out it wasn't. But I loved
the feeling of the dragstrip when the cars would light
it up and you could feel that volume in your chest,

(05:36):
that pounding of the motor. And I love the smell
of burning tires and race fuel. And I remember very
vividly when I was younger, i'd sit in the backseat
in my mom's car and she would accelerate away from
a stop light or a stop sign, and I would
be in the backseat yelling faster, faster, faster. I just
love the g forces of the compression that they create
your body against the back of the seat, and so

(05:59):
that I love that passion started very early. And I
remember there's this picture that my parents blew up and
printed out so they can hang on the wall. But
it's me at the racetrack for one of the first times,
around five or six years old, and I had a
clear advisor on my helmet, so you can see my eyes,
and I looked like I was Michael Jordan or something

(06:19):
with the amount of intensity that was in my eyeballs,
and like that intensity was real. I remember that feeling
of like, this is what I loved. It's like that burning,
burning passion inside of me to go faster.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Well, I I again doing research. One of my favorite
lines in some of this stuff, and this was actually
on your website. My heroes, and this is a quote
from you. My heroes are all those who have come
along siged me to make it possible for me to
follow God's calling in my life. And then and to them,
I say thank you. All the glory goes to God.

(06:55):
And in all the stuff that I've read that I
highlighted that line. And and look, it's your website. I
don't know how much of this you wrote, but listening
to interviews, it would not surprise me that these were
words that you put down on paper, because in the
interviews that I listened to, you know, I loved hearing

(07:15):
you talk about going to you know, the fastest speed
you ever went, and how it's like putting a frog
in hot water. You just kind of you get it
a little bit hotter and hotter, and you know it's
it's you don't really even notice it. But that line
for me, my heroes who have come along sidebed to
make it possible for me to follow God's calling in
my life. To them, I say, thank you is just

(07:38):
wise beyond your years, and I thank you for things
like that.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
Well, thank you, yeah, it is it a real blessing.
You know. I think that people always ask, well, who
was your role model? Who was your hero? Who are
the athletes that you look to growing up? And my
answer was, I don't know if I really have any
you know. I wasn't looking at other drivers and saying
and I want to be like them someday. I mean,
there was definitely inspirations of I want to do what

(08:03):
they're doing, but never a hero of the sense. And
so I think that the people that I looked to
most often were the people that I was surrounded by.
Who was my homeschool teacher, it was my parents, it
was my grandparents, it was my driver coach, it was
my manager. And so those people came in at the
right time in my life whenever I need to them
as the most and spoke into my life, and they

(08:24):
led in wisdom, they led in encouragement, and those people
are the reason that I'm here today. And I always
tell people in racing, it's the driver that's in the
car and crosses that finish line. But to get to
that point takes a village, an oven, surrounded by a
great team of people to get to this point, you know.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
It has to be And when you were eight nine
years old, if I would have said to you, listen,
you're going to be twenty twenty three rookie IndyCar season,
and you're going to be a rookie in twenty twenty
three on the biggest stage of the world, what would
you have said to me?

Speaker 3 (08:58):
I probably would have asked why I hadn't got there sooner?

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, how bad?

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Well you look you're twenty three now, So I mean
when you started racing. How competitive were you at an
early age?

Speaker 3 (09:14):
I was very competitive in nature, and I think I
got that honestly through the genetics of my parents. My mom,
she was a multi sport athlete. She actually holds a
three point record at the high school that she graduated
from still to this day. So that was a school
that I went to. So it's kind of cool to
see her name hanging with some of the walls. But
that competitive nature came out to me at a very

(09:34):
early age. I remember we would go to races and
we'd be gone forty two weekends a year, it's forty
two out of fifty two. I had different events, and
it wasn't just one race a weekend. A lot of
times what we'd do I'd have my dad wrenching on
one go cart and my Grandpa wrenching on the other.
But I was running multiple categories on the same race weekend,
and I wanted to win every time I was on

(09:55):
the racetrack, and I got whooped quite often, But those
were learning speriences. I always say that every chance to
fail is a chance to learn. So for me, those
were great opportunities and how to grow. And I spent
a lot of time learning before I started winning.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Well, you know, and you say you got whooped a lot,
but you're ranked number one USA Minimax driver at eleven
years old and qualified for the Minimax Team USA Invitational
in New Orleans at eleven. Look, I didn't know where
my sacks were when I was eleven, and you're out there.
You're ranked number one USA Minimax driver at the age

(10:33):
of eleven, and so you may have gotten whipped a
little bit and learned some but boy, you had some
success early as well.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
I did. I was very blessed to have a good
opportunity at an early age to make a statement for sure.
But you know, I think again, I'm going to point
back to the people that I was surrounded by. My
dad was semi retired at that point in my life,
and so he was able to be on the road
with me all those weekends. And so he's only ever
missed one race in my entire life. Wow, And it
was because he was in the hospital and he was

(11:02):
still calling its every five minutes to tell us what
we were doing wrong. So it was not by choice
that he was not there with us.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
What is his first name?

Speaker 3 (11:11):
My first my dad's first name is Larry.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Larry and Kimmy correct, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, And again I want to thank Kimmy for her
kindness to Tom, who I go to church with, to
be able to spend a couple of minutes with me
on the phone as she was walking in to State
Fair Park here in Milwaukee for the Milwaukee Mile. And
I want to thank Larry because I can tell you
that I coached high school basketball a long time, so
I have, you know, surrounded myself for a long time

(11:39):
in my life with kids. Seventeen eighteen years old now
our special guest sting Ray is a little bit older
than that, but for him to tell us the only
race his father's ever missed in his life, he was
in the hospital and calling it every five minutes to
tell him what they were doing wrong. I absolutely love
if I went through all of the years and all

(11:59):
of the awards that this young man has won in
his young year. Right twenty fourteen, named Rookie of the Year,
he was, I could just keep going name top USA
driver in his age bracket in twenty fourteen, and it
goes on and on. I would spend the rest of
the hour telling you about all of these things that
he's accomplished.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
And it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Every time I say something to him about this, he
talks about the people that have made it possible for him.
And I love that because that servant leadership heart that
sting Ray has comes is very apparent to a guy
like me, because he's not saying, yeah, that's all me,
I'm winning all those races. It's a team, it's a village.
And I love that. Hey, when growing up, did you

(12:44):
have to make a decision whether you wanted to race
an indie with an IndyCar or NASCAR?

Speaker 3 (12:52):
Yeah, there was a point of decision where I was
going to make that transition from carding into cars. I
didn't know what I wanted to do because I'd spent
so many I spent ten years of my fourteen at
the time trying to figure out how to drive a
go cart, and so the next step up was going
to be a huge step, and so I tried everything.
I tried Nascar, I tried Formula cars, I tried dirt

(13:14):
car racing, I tried sports car racing. I tried professionally
go karting in Europe, and so all those things were
pouring in experience to me. But at the most point
it was that I decided that I was going to
be an open wheel driver, which is what I'm doing today,
an indie car driver, because I love the versatility that
a driver had to have. We were racing on ovals,

(13:34):
road and street courses, and for me, I love the
road and street courses, and at that age, I wanted
to drive something that was the most similar to what
experience was I'd had so far, which was go karting,
and so that road and street course experience really paid
big dividend, and I stepped into a formula car for
the first time because I had that racing experience there,
the ovals were a whole new thing to me, and
so in Nascar, I felt like was a bigger, heavier

(13:58):
car that I didn't really feel was as light and
nimble that like a go kart feeling as a formula car.
So there was some different experiences that I had to
gain before I can decide on what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Our special guest for the entire hour, he is sting
Ray Rob. Go to his website stingray Rob dot com
to learn more about him, and it's just a it's
a good it's a website that you can watch some
video from him, you can read a couple of things
about him, and immediately on his website you can see

(14:31):
what his true heart is, John three point thirty. On
his car, he's got John three sixteen pray dot com
there there. He is not ashamed of who he is
and he's willing to come right out and say, listen,
this is who I am, this is what I'm about,
and look I a hashtag for God's glory. He is
number fifty one. Are you, by the way, are you

(14:53):
with aj Foyt Racing? Now?

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Is that who you you're with.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
I was for the twenty twenty four season. Next year
I will be changing teams, but that is soon to
be announcer.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Okay, I'm glad you said that. Good luck with that decision.
I'm sure that that decision is going to be the
right one for you and your team and your group.
Last question for you. Look, I don't know again much
about about racing, so I don't know the practice part
of it. Is it Physically you're really fit, obviously you

(15:24):
have to be. How much time do you spend in
the weight room, how much time do you spend staying
physically fit, and how much time do you spend behind
the wheel?

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think a
lot of times people just assume that we're in the
car every weekend, and that's not the case. Our season
runs pretty much from the beginning of March until the
end of September, and next year I'll actually be even
shorter and more compact, and so during that time we're
quite busy. You know, it might be every weekend or
every other weekend we're driving the race car. And in
the meantime, you know, I'm based in Indianapolis now and

(15:56):
there's a gym here that I train at in between events,
and so if this is a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
I'll due to the traveling back Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I'll
be in the gym. And then during the off season,
you know, from September all the way until about February,
I'm trying to build that strength back up because that
season really fatigues us. And so the kind of training

(16:17):
that we're doing right now in the off season is
a lot of strength building, a lot of weightlifting, and
then towards the end of the off season we'll get
back into a heavy cardio training because we train like
endurance athletes, where you're doing sort of long endurance, high
intensity training that simulates what you're going to be experiencing
in the race car, because our heart rays anywhere from
about one hundred and thirty to one hundred and eighty

(16:39):
beats per minute over the course of a two to
three hour race, and so we have to be able
to maintain that level of intensity in the race and
manage the adrenaline without getting what I like to call
brain fade. Brain fade is kind of that point where
you know you've heard runners where they get a runners high. Well,
for us, we don't want to get that runners high,
because as soon as you sort of zone out and

(17:01):
hit that rhythm, there's so many variables that are changing
inside the cockpit of a race car that when you
zone out, you hit walls. And when you hit walls,
obviously there's a lot of damage or a lot higher
consequences than a misstep in our running race. Yes, and
so for us, we train past our limits so that
when we sit in a race car, we're not meeting them.
We're supposed to be trained past, so that our brains

(17:24):
bandwidth can be expanded to focus on other things like
the cars around us, different variabilities that are happening inside
the cockpit. If we can change the chassis settings, if
we need a radio to the team on the next
pit stop to add or take away from win rear wing,
higher pressures, fuel, all those things are constantly being communicated
across the radio. But those are all things that I

(17:47):
have to process in my head before I can communicate them.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
He is, I'm telling you, he's so impressive as a
twenty three year old. And if Kimmy or Larry are
both hear this interview one day I want you to
know that I was a grandfather of six. Say well done,
Well done, Larry. The fact that your son right away said, look,
he's only missed one race, I love that. I don't

(18:11):
think I missed but two basketball games my son Matthew
played in. And so I know exactly where Larry is
going with this. And I want to thank Kimmy for
her help of setting this up. Our special guest, he
is Sting Ray Rob hashtag for God's Glory. He is
number fifty one and you can go to his website.
It's a great website. Just google sting Ray Rob and

(18:33):
you can take a look at all of the things
he has accomplished.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
We're going to get to a break.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Other side of the break will ask him to share
his testimony with us. This is Faith in the Zone
on the Big nine twenty in your iHeart Radio App.
Welcome back to Faith in Zone. I'm the Big nine
twenty in your iHeartRadio App. I might be given flying
solar this week. Pastor Ken Keltner from Brookside Baptist Church
will be in studio with me next week, coming live

(18:58):
from the Donovan and Jorgensen Coolean Studios. Our special guests
and I told him during the break that's as much
as I learned so much from that first segment about
what it takes. You know, there are some people that
they get in the car and drive it and they
turn left all the time.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Absolutely not. These guys are really good athletes.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
And sting Ray rob our special guest, and when I
start doing research and when he puts on his excuse
me his website who I Race for hashtag for God's Glory,
he is a guy that I definitely wanted to talk
to and have on Faith in the Zone. Sting ray
second segment of Faith and Zone is our favorite. It's

(19:37):
when we ask our special guests to share their testimony,
if you'd be so kind.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Please absolutely. You know, I kind of will leave with
this that my testimony is a little bit boring to start,
but my interpersonal faith it's pretty exciting. And you know,
I was lucky enough that I grew up in a
Christian home and I was actually homeschooled by a lady
from our church from the time I was in pre
K all the way through sixth grade. And so that

(20:03):
was really important for me in my life because not
only did I get to do the Bible study, do
the biblical history lessons and then apply that and memorize
that in my life because of the homeschooling, but I
got to see it lived out in someone's home other
than my parents home. And so for me that was
very important because I got to see how she handled
daily things. You know, because one we're called as believers

(20:26):
to live differently. It's easy to talk about it and
to say that, but did actually see it done right.
It's very difficult, and it's very very inspiring. And so
I got to see that her home day in and
day out. I mean, how she communicated with her kids,
her husband, how they supported the church, how they supported
their community, the salt in life that they work so consistently.

(20:47):
I got to see from an outside perspective, which was
very neat.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Can I ask you what is her name? What was
her teacher's name?

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Her name was Missus Blair.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
You know, we never know, and we might not know
until we get to heaven. People that we have touched
in the way that she obviously led her life, and
you watched as a young child. I think Missus Blair,
I got to be honest with you, and I hope
that she understands the kind of impact that she had
on your.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Life, absolutely, and I think that she does because that
was her goal, that was her passion. And so, like
I said, I was lucky enough that I had a
family a foundation of faith through that, but that second
level of having someone that was outside the family that
spoken in my life was very important and kind of
a mentor rule. You know. She was much older than

(21:40):
I was, and she was my teacher, but she was
able to guide and direct me in a not just
overpowering me. It was a leading sort of way. And
so that was very very important for me to you know,
build the foundation of faith in my life and have
a biblical worldview. But my interpersonal faith actually kind of
went along with my racing career. I'll start by telling

(22:03):
you the story that you know, my family is a
little bit split. My dad's had the family's LDS, my
mom's side is Christian, and so at some point I
had to do research on Okay, what do I believe?
And then that research called me deeper into my faith
and then I was challenged around the same time. It's
when I was doing this research because it was twenty twenty,
and we all know that twenty twenty was a crazy

(22:25):
year was COVID and the shutdowns and everything there. But
for me in my racing career, it wasn't making or
break its season. I was either going to win the
championship or I was going to be done forever. And
so I knew that that was the time that I
had to find my victory. And so I go into

(22:45):
the first race of the year. It was very challenging.
We actually had a fuel pump failure in the first
qualifying session, but I ended up driving back to the
field and finishing second in race two. There second race
weekend of the year, I qualified somewhere in the top four,
so I knew I had a chase to win. You know,
I could race from force the first there were some

(23:05):
guys that were fast than me, but that's how racing is.
You can you can drive to the front if you
have a good day or whatever else. And so I
went out started the race and I ended up driving
off the racetrack, spinning out and running into someone and
it was no one's fault but my own, so I
was upset. I finished tenth, which was a bottom of
the barrel finished for me, and so I got out
of the car and then I went for a walk
in the woods around the race track and I ended

(23:26):
up taking a knee and I started praying. I said, Lord,
I'm done. I give up. I've given as much as
I know how to get for as long as I
can remember, and I m either not good enough, someone
runs into the back of me. I have a part
that falls off the car. If something fails, it's never enough.
I'm done. And in that moment, I had a memory
versus my homeschool days, which was James one come back

(23:48):
to me and it says, consider it pure joy when
you face trials of many times, because you know that
the testing of your faith produces perseverance. So let perseverance
finish its work so that you may be mature and complete,
not lacking anything. And in that moment, I had the
clarity of God saying to me, through this verse, keep

(24:09):
your head down and keep going because this is all
for a purpose. This is all for a reason. I've
given you this gift of steward, so don't quit on me.
And I responded and I said, all right, I get
the message. I'm memorizing this verse again and I'm going
to get back in the car tomorrow. But You're going
to have to show up because I'm done, And so
I go out the next day. It was my forty
ninth race start in this series without a win. I've

(24:32):
been on the podium multiple times, but I had not
broken through in the victory yet. And I get my
first win and when honestly, it was so cool because
I was in the race and I was in third place,
and the two cars in first and second ahead of me,
they touched and they split, and it was like the
gates of Heaven opened up and trans the Angelics singing
the background, suff Oh. I got through finished first, and

(24:56):
that was like the floodgates had opened up for the
rest of the year. I seven wins on the season
and would go on to win that championship, get a
scholarship to go onto the Triple A Ladder of the
Open Wheel series that I was in, and then that
would eventually propel me on an Indy car a few
years down the road. That's where my interpersonal faith began

(25:16):
to speak into my racing career and I got to
see the purpose and the practicality of faith in life.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Amen, was so cool, Aimen, what a great ted I
got goosebums on my arms. I got tears in my eyes.
I'm telling you the fact that you were you were
smart enough and willing to go off on your own,
get it down on you on your knees and say Lord, okay,
I'm either not good enough or this isn't the path.

(25:44):
And then for for for you to be able to
come back to what missus Blair taught you and say
remember a verse that said, hold on, young man, hold on.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
This is all for a reason. You're in the right place.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
I'm giving I'm giving you this, this, this platform, and
and you're gonna do great. You got to go back
and just trust me, and you get back in the
car and say okay, I'm done. But you know you
got to take over at this point. And I love
the fact. I can't imagine when you when those two
cars bumped and and and you know it opened up
for you to win that race. You had to just

(26:17):
close your eyes and you got done and say Lord,
all right, I got it.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Thank you for that.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Absolutely, it's so cool.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Our special guest he is sting ray Rob. He is
look hashtag for God's Glory. He is an Indy car
driver and he was born to be a race car driver.
I have to tell you my one race car story
real quick before we get to a break. I was
working for some other radio stations and a client of mine,
actually a guy who did a NASCAR show on the radio,

(26:49):
came to me and said, look, Rusty Wallace is coming
to town and we need to find a sponsor for
a press conference.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
And I said, okay, let me see what I can do.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
I got a couple of guys that seemed to really
like NASCAR and racing, and I found a sponsor, which
got me an invite into the press conference and the gathering,
the meet and greet with Rusty Wallace, and driving over there,
my buddy said, listen, when they open it up to questions,
don't you dare raise your hand And I go why.
He said, you don't know anything about race car You're

(27:20):
going to embarrass us in the station, and you just
let me do the questions. I go, yeah, okay, well
it's staying ray. As soon as they open it up.
I was in the front row. I raised my hand
and my buddy's looking at me like please don't, and
they go you and I go, hey, so I don't
know a lot about NASCAR. But I've always wondered this,
And I said, Rusty, when you get done with the

(27:41):
race and you get in your car to drive home
and you get on the freeway and somebody's in the
left lane going fifty five instead of seventies, you just
rub paint with the guy?

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Or do you? What do you do?

Speaker 1 (27:51):
And he burst out laughing, and he goes, Okay, that's
a really good question. He goes, it's normally quite a time,
you know, a number of hours, for the time I
get off the race card to when I actually get
in the car to drive anywhere. But I can tell
you I get as frustrated as anybody going into the
left lane going for you know, fifty five sixty. I

(28:11):
don't rub paint, but I want to, and I could,
but I but I probably shouldn't. And my buddy's like,
all right, that's a good question. Do not raise your
hand again. I said, that's the only question I have.
So I'm gonna ask you. You know, you get done racing,
is it hard to just get into a regular car
and get on the freeway and go seventy?

Speaker 3 (28:31):
It is at times, So I think that for me,
I'm actually more scared of drivers on the road than
I am on the racetrack, because they're so distracted these days. Yeah,
everyone's got their phone up in their other hands. They're
looking at their screens, they're they're texting, they're calling, they're
watching Netflix. They're just not paying attention to the road,
and it's terrifying. So I will go a little bit

(28:51):
quicker than I'm probably supposed to a lot of times
to get around some people. But I think for the
most part, I'm a fairly calm, safe driver on the
public roads. But I'll tell you this, the hardest thing
in transition from the racetrack onto the streets is that
in the race car, when you're going two hundred and
forty months an hour, you're looking at hundreds of yards
down the road, right, because it happens in just a

(29:12):
few seconds. And so when I get in a regular
street car, sometimes I get caught out by I'm looking
too far home. Oh, I don't see what's right in
front of me. And so I can remember to slow down,
not physically, but slow on my brain to pay attention
to what's right there in front of me at the moment.
So that's probably the harder transition to make from the

(29:34):
racetrack to the streets.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
Do you know one thing I didn't know about about
your sport until the guy that I told you about
that brought me to that. I went to this press
conference with He did a show after I do a
high school sports show as well as a home improvement
show and faith in the Zone. And he used to
do the NASCAR show right after my show. And we
got a snowstorm and he was going to be fifteen

(29:58):
minutes late to this studio. And he texted me and said,
you got to do the first segment of our NASCAR show.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
I go, Are you sure? He goes, yeah, I'll be listening.
Good luck. So I went on the air and said
my favorite NASCAR drivers.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
Were AJ Foyd and to the Tom Cruise character from
Days of Thunder and Cold Trickle. Well, the phone lights
lit up, and people are like, AJ Foyd doesn't drive net.
Well I knew that, I sting ray. I was smart
enough to know that, but I thought, well, I'm gonna
get the phone lights lit up. You know, Cold Trickle

(30:36):
and aj Ford are my favorite drivers. Well, the phone
lines went nuts, and I was called the NASCAR outsider
is what they started calling me. And I and this
Sparky made me come to his house and watch a race.
And one thing I didn't understand about your sport, it's
it's there. You guys have their teams, and you guys
do watch out for each other a little bit. I

(30:57):
didn't realize.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
You know.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
He would say, look this, and then we're watching NASCAR race.
He'd say, hey, this guy is actually blocking for his
teammate at this point, and I go, he's looking up
for his teammate. Don't they want to win the race?
He goes, yeah, But it's it's very much more team
oriented than you think it is.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Is that the same with Indy?

Speaker 3 (31:17):
I think it can be. It's tough, right because you
want the team to do well because you know it's
with high tides all ships rise, and so if your
team's doing well, it's going to help you do well.
But when it comes to being in the race, the
closest comparison you can ever make is to your teammates.
So of course you want to beat your teammate because
they have the same equipment that you do most of

(31:39):
the time, and so that's the person you're trying to
beat most of the time because they're your closest competition,
but at the same time you're both trying to beat
the rest of the field, and so I think that
at times you will see that you'll see teams work
together to get to the front. But what you are saying,
I think that that's probably more common in a place

(31:59):
like Apples. During the Indy five hundred, because of this,
the car is at two hundred and forty miles an hour,
they punch a hole in the air. Well, the car
that's in the lead is punching a much bigger hole
in the air than the car that's behind, because the
car behind is going through the pocket that vacuum that
the first car is making, and so that first car

(32:21):
is actually burning more fuel and going slower than the
car behind because has more drag that the wings are
pushing against the air through the race. And so a
lot of times what you'll see is you'll see drivers,
and it's not always teammates, but you'll see drivers work
together to save fuel while still going fast. And so
one will be in the lead for a few laps,

(32:42):
it will use the momentum to kind of Ricky Bobby
splingshot around through the draft, and then they'll sit behind
the car and fuel safe, and so they'll switch back
and forth every few laps to keep the pace up
while still being efficient. And so I think that's where
you're going to see. It's the most But the only
other time you might see it is that let's say,

(33:04):
for example, I have a teammate that has a bad day,
but I'm fighting for a podium. If I'm fighting for
a podium and then my teammate has a bad day
and I'm getting ready to laugh him a lot of times,
what will happen is that they'll make it much harder
for the car in front of me to get around. Yes,
then they will for me. And so you'll see the
car in the second place, let's say I'm in third,

(33:26):
They'll they'll have a hard time. They'll get slowed down
by my teammates. The teammate will then get passed eventually,
and then he'll just point me on buy and they
go on ahead. And so it's not necessarily blocking, but
they might throw a few wider car moves than what
they would to a teammate.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Man, I'm telling you, I'm going to know more about
racing after this interview than ever, and I'm going to
start to follow I'm going to follow this young man.
I can tell you that he is sting Ray Rob.
And again, if you want more information at sting Ray
go to his go to his website and it's sting
Ray Rob and you can find out as much about

(34:04):
him and it's a really good website. You get a
chance to know him pretty well through that website. And
again the favorite line that he had there going through
his website and listening to him on a bunch of interviews.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
My heroes are all those who have.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Come alongside to make it possible for me to follow
God's calling in my life. And to them, I say
thank you. All the glory goes to God when you
get to a break. Other side of the break will
continue our conversation with sting Ray Rob. This is Faith
in the Zone on the Big nine twenty and your
iHeart Radio App. Welcome back to Faith in the Zone

(34:38):
on the Big nine twenty in your iHeartRadio App by
Mike mcgiffrin, flyining solo this week coming from the Donovan
and Jorganson Heating and Cooling Studios. Well, I want to
thank our special guest because he doesn't understand you can
teach an old dog new tricks He's been a great
teacher when it comes to race car and Indy Car,
and I thank him for that. Our special guest is

(34:59):
Sting Rob and I couldn't go through all of the
awards and all of the things that he has done
in this career of his He's twenty three years old. Guys,
he's twenty three. Normally this is about the age people
are getting out of college, trying to figure out what
they want to do with their life. And he has
been a professional race car driver for a really long time.

(35:20):
And I want to thank Kimmy, his mom, and I
want to definitely have not met Larry, but I want
to thank his dad. These guys have done a great
job raising this young man named Missus Blair, who was
his homeschool teacher who showed him at an early age
what a Christian life could could look like. And I
thank her for that. If it's Sting Ray, if I

(35:40):
had said, you have all the tracks that you have
raced on, and if I could snap my fingers and
you could be in a car on that track right now,
what track would you pick?

Speaker 3 (35:52):
There's two that I would mom, maybe three mayby four,
I don't know. Answer. My favorite tracked. I think that
we still race on the day. Is that Laguna Seca,
which is in Monterey, California, And it's great because they
have one turn that's called the Court Screw and it's
a three story drop from the top of the bottom
of the section, which is the coolest thing ever.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
The weather Tech Raceway, that's what it's called there, and
I'm looking at July twenty seventh, is when you race there.
How did you do in that race?

Speaker 3 (36:26):
This year is a little bit rough, but the last
win that I had was actually at that track back
in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
That's awesome. Hey, what did you think of the Milwaukee Mile?

Speaker 3 (36:37):
By the way, it was a challenging course. It's a flat,
short oval with low grip, which doesn't make it for
a super nimble race car, but it made the racing
really exciting because it was a very very challenging driving experience.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
Well, I hope that I hope that this is an
annual thing, and you know, there's so much history to
the Milwaukee Mile and to get you guys to come back,
and I hope that it's on next year's schedule. I
don't know if it is, but I hope that it is.
I think crowd wise, it ended up to be pretty good.
If I'm not mistaken correct.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
I think so, And I do think it's on the
schedule for next year, so I think you can expect
us back.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
That's awesome. Hey, how much do you know about cars? Right?

Speaker 1 (37:22):
I just talked about Tom Cruise in this movie and
he didn't know anything about cars, couldn't change the oil
in the car. How much I know that Larry's really evolved.
You talked about your grandfather as well. How much have
they taught you about not only the feel of the
car and what you have to know to be the driver,
but how much can you do with a wrench with

(37:43):
the car?

Speaker 3 (37:45):
If you asked me to work on our race car today,
I probably wouldn't know the first thing of how I
make it go forward. But I will say this that
I am a little bit of a gearhead. In high school,
I had a nineteen seventy three Toyota Lane Cruiser that
I ended up doing an engine swap on with my dad,
and so I ended up restoring it. I gutted the interior,
I weld in your pieces of metal in, I built

(38:07):
rear seats. I had some upholstery done. So when it
comes to old classic cars, I can hold my own.
But a modern race car that's a different story.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
That's awesome again. You know what, who's you bring up?
Who's next to you? And there's Larry, you know doing that.
I coached basketball and my son, who now is a
father and a husband has two kids of his own,
called me from the airport one time and he said, Dad,
I was in a meeting and the woman who I
was in the meeting with said, listen, I've got to
cut he meeting short. I've got to get my son

(38:39):
to AAU basketball practice. And he said, look, I've traveled
all over the country with you, and I started telling
her about, you know, playing AAU basketball and I got
to the airport and I started thinking about it, and
I grew up thinking everybody did that, but they didn't.
You guys took your whole summer to travel all over
the country so I could get a chance to play

(39:01):
AAU basketball. And I just thought all kids my age
had that opportunity, and they didn't. And so he thanked
me the way that throughout this show, you have thanked
your dad and your mom forgiving you this opportunity. Along
with you know the rest of this team, the rest
of the Sting Ray rob team, which we couldn't go through,
all the people that make this thing happen. For him

(39:22):
to get in the car and to be able to
drive it and be the face of this team, he's
the guy, he's the guy behind the wheel, but boy
he is throughout the whole show. Has said, look, I'm
just I'm that guy that's driving it, but there's so
many other people that's involved with it, and I thank
him for that. I love the fact that when I
asked you that, you said, look, I have won two

(39:42):
three different racetracks, but here's the one that I just
really really like. Is there one that you haven't driven
that you would like to get on?

Speaker 3 (39:51):
Absolutely, I'm glad you asked me this. This is one
of the three. But it then Belgium. It's called Spot
and I remember I went there when I was around
fourteen years old because I was go karting in the
country and I got to watch Michael Schumacher's winning Ferrari
of one car drive around that racetrack in the rain,
and it was the most magnificent thing I think you've

(40:13):
ever seen because it was echoing off the valley and
it was kind of that misty, dramatic, romantic sort of
scene that you had seen a movie, but it made
the whole thing's so surreal and it made me want
to come back and drive there one day.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
Man. That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Hey, I thanked your mom, and thanks Larry, and thanks
to people for allowing us to do this.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Today.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
I got to thank Philip Peters, by the way. You
want to talk about a guy that has really been
very good for me to work with and sting Ray.
I understand that I have to work through guys like
Philip a lot, and he is as good as there
is and he is Look, he told me how you
guys met.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
He told me a little bit about you.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
And to have him, you know, talk so highly about
you behind your back without you knowing what we were
talking about. I want you to understand, Philip Peters is
in your corner and he is working hard to make
sure that people understand that you are much more than
just an Indy car driver. That's a lot sting Ray
for people, right, That's as high up as the tone

(41:18):
and polls sometimes as you get. But he talked, you know,
we talked about your faith and we talked about how
important that was to you, and he's been great to
work with. So I think, Philip Peters, we're going to
get to a break. Other side of the break, We're
gonna ask sting Ray that question. We ask all our
guests at the end, all the uniforms he's ever put on,
he gets to pull one out, which one is it
and why? And we'll do that on the other side

(41:39):
of the break. This is Faith in the Zone on
the Big nine twenty in your iHeart Radio App. Welcome
back to Faith in the Zone on the Big nine
twenty in your iHeartRadio App. Find Sola this week coming
from the Donovan and Jorgans and Heat and Cooling Studios. Man,
I want to thank Sting Ray Rob. This has been
a really interesting sixty minutes for me. I've learned a
lot about and when you listen to a twenty three

(42:01):
year old share his testimony the way he did, when
he got down on his knees, said Lord, I think
I'm done.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Maybe I'm not good enough, maybe guys are faster, but
I'm done racing. And the Lord put a verse in
his heart and said no, no, no, Young man, this
is a platform I'm gonna have you on because I
want you to share my word. I want you to
be very outspoken. Hashtag for God's glory and that's who
he drives for and I thank him for that singery.

(42:29):
This last question was a throwaway question, but we ask
all of our guests, all the uniforms you put on it?

Speaker 2 (42:34):
We didn't talk about it.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
You played high school basketball, you ran cross country, multi
sport athlete, and you're a race car driver. Since you
know the age of eight, all the uniforms you've ever
put on, we put him in a closet. You get
to put one out to get one more race, one
more basketball game, one more meet, doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
What uniform do you do you pull out? And why?

Speaker 3 (42:58):
That is a tough question. And because I haven't played
many sports, and I've played many games, I've ran in
many races, and so I think that my answer is
actually going to be from this year. And the reason
is because I want to be here without those other experiences,
and so I don't want to take them for granted.
But at the same time, this year I got to
run in the eighty five hundred and I led the
third most laps at twenty three laps. But the one,

(43:21):
the one lap that we got wrong was the last one,
and the reason was because of an early yellow flag
or sorry, a love late race yellow flag that came
out that hurt our pit cycle. And if we got
that right, if we had pitted just two laps earlier,
we would have been fighting for the lead or at
least for the top five at the eighty five hundred,
which is the biggest, biggest race that we have, one

(43:43):
of the biggest races in the world in the world.
It's the largest attending, largest attended sporting event in the world.
And so for me, if I could put one uniform
back on, it would be that good Heart Animal Center's
paw print race suit and go back in thenty five
hundred and take another shot at one of that thing.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Man, I love that guys on his car pray dot
com John three point sixteen on his website. You cannot
go on his website and not know the kind of
young man he is because he's very open with it.
He's okay, he's not ashamed of it, he's not hiding it.
Here's who he is, and I would I recommend you know,
go to his website. If you don't know anything about

(44:24):
IndyCar racers, it's okay either do I. And I've spent
a lot of time not only on his website, but
watching him and the videos that I've gotten race and
the kid. I'm calling him a kid, and I apologize.
There's no disrespect for you when I do that, sting Ray,
I'm just an old guy. And when this kid gets
behind the wheel man, he is mature beyond his beliefs,

(44:46):
and he's a.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Really good race car driver.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
And if I was a sponsor, if that's what I did,
I would I would call him. I would go on
his website and I would I would click invest now
and I would tell and I would want my logo
to be on this guy's race card because when he
talks in public, you know exactly who he is and
who he's racing for. Again, hashtag for God's Glory. Sting Ray,

(45:10):
thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it,
and thank you for your patience. You can't teach an
old dog a new trick, and thanks for that.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
Absolutely, thank you, And if anyone wants to follow along,
go on to my website Stingrayrob dot com Rob is
r o BB two b's and Rob and I'm on
all the social media's ask sting Ray Rob as well.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Yeah, and on that website and I should have said that,
it's r Obb Stingray Rob one word dot com. And
on that website you can there's a lot of things
to look at, but near the end on the top,
you know his Twitter or x, his Facebook and all
social and there's a contact page as well. The thing
to hit that you want to get ahold of his team,

(45:51):
you can go ahead and do that. But again sting
Ray Rob with two bees dot com. Thank you so
much for your time. I really appreciate it. Good luck
next season.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
Thank you. I'm excited.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Thank you so much. This is faith in the Zone.
I'm the Big nine twenty in your iHeart radio app.