With all the factors that go into a race weekend, a team never knows if a good car is enough. Sometimes the field doesn't give you the chance; sometimes, you're hit in the left rear corner and break your drive shaft and track bar before you have a chance to get your rhythm.

Sarah Cornett-Ching experienced the latter at Hickory Speedway in Hickory, NC, this past weekend at the Easter Bunny 150. But a bad finish, a crash, or a concussion is not enough to stop her from getting back in the car and hitting the track.

"Basically, there's not much you can do when you're dealt that set of cards except play them how you can, obviously not a great finish but the car was really good…" she said. "So when something breaks like that after contact, I guess, it's easier to take that than a destroyed race car. So there's different ways to looking at it but it's definitely frustrating."

Cornett-Ching's schedule doesn't leave time for her to feel bad about herself. She'll be racing at Oxford Plains Speedway in Oxford, ME, this Sunday and at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in Scarborough, ME, next weekend.

"I like to keep really busy, which is easy right now because we raced at Hickory, had to go back to the shop and repair our other car for two days straight, and then just turn around and drive straight to Maine for these next two races," she said. "It's easy to keep my mind off of having a 'bad finish.'"



Staying busy isn't everything. It's also important to Cornett-Ching to keep positive and remain optimistic.

"In the same sense we had a really fast car, so I can take a positive away from it because there's another Hickory race at the end of the season where I know we're going to be really good," she said. "I'm just looking forward to the next few races, and I'll try not to dwell on it I guess."

This past September, Cornett-Ching was involved in a major accident during an ARCA race at Kentucky Speedway. She hit the wall hard, and the collision knocked her out, causing a concussion that kept her out of the race car for four months. Her concussion received a lot of media coverage in the wake of NASCAR fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. suffering a season-ending concussion around the same time.



Cornett-Ching wants other racers and athletes to know that concussions are serious and it's fine to talk about them.

"I think that if you have a concussion that's not as intense as the one that I had one, one where you're not down and out, it's easier to try and push yourself back faster than you should," she said. "Even when I was getting to feeling better, I wanted to get back in the race car way earlier than I was allowed to be. I can definitely see where if it doesn't knock you flat out, how you can get back too soon or push too soon or try to not take the time you need to recover."

Cornett-Ching is happy to discuss coping with a concussion with those who are dealing with it themselves.

"I would like to be a role model in that sense, or any sense," she said. "If anyone has gone through a similar thing and wants to reach out to me, I'm very open about it."

Women in Racing

McKenna Haase