This week kicks off a new feature on News Racers Can Use called A Racer’s s Journey. This edition features Luca Day is a 15-year-old race driver from Montreal, Canada competing in his first year of Ligier Junior Formula competition.
Hi, my name is Luca Day. I’m 15 years old, I’m from Montreal, Canada, and I race in Formula 4 with LC Academy Racing. I’m in grade 9 at a great school called Pierrefonds Community High School. This is my first-year racing. I started karting when I was 8 and worked my way up before starting to do test days in Formula cars. I had the chance to go to France to train in Jacques Villeneuve’s FEED racing program before coming back home.
I worked with a few teams and then signed with LC Racing, an F4 (now Junior Formula) team based in Miami, Florida.
Racing is intense, and my friends always ask me how I do it. Of course, F4 is very challenging, so I always make sure to work out every day in the gym on my legs for the pedals, as I need to put a lot of force on them, especially the brake. It’s not an easy brake – you must push very hard. Also, I train my back for posture in the car and my arms for the steering wheel as some corners require a lot of steering, so it’s important to train the muscles in my arms. I make sure to do as much cardio as I can to get ready for the cars, which go up to 200km/h, as there is also a lot of G-force in the car and because the races last up to 1 hour, so I have to make sure I don’t get tired and make mistakes. If something goes wrong and I crash, I could get injured very badly, so it’s always important to stay in shape.
On top of training, there’s school, and I make sure to balance my schedule with the gym and school by working hard every single day and making sure I dedicate myself to my exams by studying hard as if I fail, I can lose the chance to race for a while. This is the hardest part because I must miss school days and then catch up on my work. But when I’m away, I’m racing, training, talking about race strategy, reviewing video and race data, and learning about the track. It makes it hard to do it all. I’m lucky because the teachers at my school are great and understand that I have a different schedule than other people at the school. They help me balance everything.
Where I live in Montreal, we have snow for several months a year. That means I can’t race here and have to travel every time. To help me with that, I have an F4 simulator at home that I’m on for hours at a time so I can practice the tracks that I’ll be on in the future. It helps me improve my lines and my driving for up-and-coming races in real life.
My life of being a race car driver is very stressful and challenging. Balancing school, homework, training, my simulator, and racing is very hard, but I manage it very well and I make sure to have a schedule and write everything down I need to do after school, so it fits perfectly.
I’ll be writing more on my journey as I start the season and experience racing and new tracks for the first time. I’ll also tell you about how I’m doing with school and training along the way.
Racing cars in the US is very expensive. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support my journey thanks to Road2Racing Canada here.
Follow Luca’s journey on Instagram at @luca_day_racing and on his website www.lucadayracing.ca.
Author: Luca Day
Luca Day is a 15 year-old race driver from Montreal, Canada competing in his first year of Ligier Junior Formula Competition.
