The Fearless Warrior Podcast

117: From the Softball Field to Professional Drag Racing with Melanie Johnson

• Amanda Schaefer

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This week, we step outside of softball and head into the drag racing world. I sat down with Melanie Johnson, a professional drag racer, who shares how tiny adjustments, sharp focus, and trust in instinct turn five seconds of chaos into calm execution.

Episode Highlights:

• Pre-run routines that reduce noise
• Evidence-based self-talk and focus cues
• Visual strategies, focal points, and cockpit blinders
• Practice tree habits and reaction time limits
• Reframing fear of failure and NIL-era stress
• "Shrinking moments"

Connect with Melanie:

IG: @melaniejohnsonracing

Website: https://melaniejohnsonracing.com/



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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Fearless Warrior Podcast, a place for athletes, coaches, and parents who know the value of a strong mindset. I'm your host, Coach AB, a mental performance coach on a mission, former softball coach, wife, and mom of three. Each episode, we will dive deep into all things mental performance, mindset tools, and how to rewire the brain for success. So if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, you're in the right place. Let's tune in to today's episode. Melanie Johnson, daughter of 13-time top fuel champion tuner Alan Johnson, will pilot the McPhillips Racing Top Alcohol Dragster during the 2025 NHRA LucasOil drag racing series season. Melanie is a third-generation racer, made her debut in top alcohol driving for McPhillips Racing during the 2024 Fall Regional event in Vegas. After competing in Supercomp, she earned her top alcohol license and is now racing this year, and I have her live on the podcast with me. Her fastest speed is 274.11 miles per hour during her qualifying at the Las Vegas regional event. Fun fact, she's also a former softball player and multi sport athlete, and I'm so excited to dive into her mental game and how she is mentally strong going hundreds of miles per hour behind the wheel of a drag car. Melanie. Welcome to the pod.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for having me. This has been a great experience just to find the links between the softball world and the drag racing world.

SPEAKER_00:

I love it so much. And so my students will probably laugh at me, but we connected because I started fangirling and I slid into your DMs because I said, You are so cool. You play softball, you drive a drag car, you are in a very male-dominated field, and you're in a field that requires a lot of mental stamina. And I just had to interview you. So let's back up a few steps. Tell us who are you, where are you from, and what's a day in the life? Like where are you at? What are you doing right now?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So I'm Melanie Johnson, and I was born and raised in Santa Maria, California, Central Coast, lots of strawberry fields, all that good stuff. I grew up playing softball. I started, I think when I was four, turning five, um, started playing t-ball and played all the way through high school, went off to college, transitioned to throwing the javelin for the track and field team, got out of college, joined a slow pitch team. We're still playing together. And now I also drag race. And drag racing's been a part of my family for three generations, and it's just a passion that we have. We all love it. We've kind of built our community and our family, extended family around the drag racing world. Um, day to day, right now, I'm the marketing manager at Quantum Fuel Systems. So I run the e-commerce marketing, um, SEO, GEO, conversion rate, all of that. And that's my day-to-day. And on the weekends, I escaped to the drag strip.

SPEAKER_00:

That's so awesome. And you just got back from Vegas, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I got back to from Vegas over the weekend and uh have a weekend off before the last race in Pomona, California next weekend.

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing. And for those that are listening, I would love for you to explain. I mean, I can explain what drag racing is. I grew up going to Topeka, Kansas. Every year it was a tradition with my dad, but kind of explain what you know, what is drag racing in in a very layman's term. If you've never heard of drag racing or NHRA, it's a phenomenal sport. It gets my blood just pumping, thinking about it. And it's even a great sport to watch on TV. So, how do you explain it to people that maybe have no idea what it is?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's um Fast and Furious is probably the best example of you know a movie that a lot of people have watched where it is just two cars lining up side by side, and the first one to the finish line wins. So, in the class that I raised Top Alcohol Dragster, we're going zero to 270 plus miles an hour in under 5.3 seconds, and that's to a quarter mile. So it's it's really uh one shot, that's all you got. But you you don't get a redo. It's not like NASCAR, you know, NASCAR is the household name recognize. You're just doing circles all day. If you have a bad lap, you can just make it up. You can you can kind of work your way back to the top if something goes wrong. But in drag racing, it is one shot down the track, so it's it's pretty intense.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. And from a bracket perspective, you know, comparing it to a softball bracket, how many drivers would be in your class on any given event?

SPEAKER_01:

So the last weekend we had 23 cars qualifying for 16 spots, and then we pare down and uh race for just the the last man standing, basically. So four rounds and uh with that 16 car bracket.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and it's a three-day or two-day? What are a typical events? Three days. Yeah, typical events, three days. Okay, so we're just gonna dig into this because again, I'm fangirling. One of the things I really wanted to quiz you on is you you've already talked about it. You have one shot to get down the track. And if you win, you win. If you lose, you lose. And so we talk about failure recovery a lot with our athletes inside our programs and different sports. It's not like NASCAR, as you said. It's not like soccer or volleyball where, oh, okay, you know, we have another point. This is your shot. So take us through. Let's say you go and you're not satisfied with your run, you don't make it, but then now you're bumped down to a loser's bracket. What's it called in the drag racing world?

SPEAKER_01:

You're done. There's no loser's bracket. Yeah. It's uh, yeah, if you if you lose the round, that's it. You wait till the next race, and that could be the next weekend or it could be six weeks from now, just depending on your schedule. Um, so it's uh it's sometimes it can be a hard pill to swallow. But uh as a driver, you you have to focus on what you are doing inside the car. And um, the way the the racing program that I'm a part of, there's crew guys that are tuning the car, they're making decisions on okay, track conditions, weather conditions, and trying to get the best performance out of the car. I'm not involved in that. I understand how it works and I'm I'm very nerdy about it, but I have to zone in, I gotta focus on just my job when I'm in the car. So if we go out there and I cut a good light, which that means having a good reaction time, um, and we just have a slower car, you know, I don't like to lose, but ultimately I have to focus on, okay, I did my job, they're doing their job, they're gonna take notes, they're gonna get this worked up, they're gonna come back better next weekend or the next race. And it's it's really difficult to experience that frustration of man, it feels like we're doing everything right, but we just can't catch a break. But in drag racing, you just have to keep being consistent. You have to keep doing all the small things right, and I think that's applicable to every sport and life. It's just if you can do all the small things right, it prepares you for when things do align and go right for you, and those wins do come.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and there's an element of things are outside of your control. So talk about track conditions, talk about weather conditions, and you know, you're headed to Pomona. There is varying, you know, of the um, I'm trying to think of of where it's at, but it's the um where you're in the mountains. Is that Pomona?

SPEAKER_01:

Or is that so Pomona is gonna be pretty close to sea level, but last weekend in Vegas was it we had quite out quite a lot of altitude. Yeah. And so the the the style of engine that we run, it's an injected nitromethane engine. So we it's naturally aspirated um to some extent. And in our class, there's also supercharged cars, so they they can sometimes have an advantage at that altitude because they're forcing air into their engine where that that thin air is just is really hard to create power with. So okay, we know that's our setup, that's what we have to work with. We're gonna just tune it to the best we we can. And like we what happened second round, we were racing a blower car. He's number two in the world right now, and he's just got a really fast car, and we got beat. I cut a decent light. We made our best run of the weekend, or one of our best runs of the weekend, and just got beat. Um, and that's and leaving a weekend like that is it actually does feel positive because we did make strides. We did put down one of our best runs, and it just makes me excited for the next event, especially coming down to sea level. And the track conditions in Pomona in November are usually really good because it's a little bit cooler air. The engine really likes that. Um, it's easy to make power. That track in particular is slightly downhill. Um, we're talking like quarter of an inch slant or some some minute thing, but it helps you get wheel speed because you are traveling downs downhill somewhat. Which is just all these little things.

SPEAKER_00:

A quarter mile. What's a quarter mile? Two and a half football fields, three football.

SPEAKER_01:

1320 feet. So divided by three, that's four football fields.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And you have to get it there in in five seconds, right? Like there, these minor when you say small things, we are legitimately talking about small levers, small changes, small focal points that you're adjusting every run.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So we are talking about like half a gallon less or more of fuel here and there on the run, talking about a little less timing in your computer. It's grams, like the weight of the weight of a dollar bill is what we would change on the clutch because it's a centrifugal clutch. And I won't get into all the mechanics, but you're changing the weight of a dollar bill when you're changing, you're taking nuts on and off of that thing. So it's tiny run-to-run. Yeah, tiny changes. And that could be the difference between going out and having a personal best run or smoking the tires at the hit.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. So, what are the things that you're focusing on? Talk us through, you know, from you know, second in line, third in line, your runs coming up. Like, walk us through a pre-run routine. Like, what are you focusing on? What are you saying to yourself? What like put us in a seat with you?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So we leave our pit, and I've got all of my gear in the tow vehicle because we don't start the car up until we get to the starting line. Toe up, and we're sitting in the staging lanes. I wait till there's probably six pairs of cars before me before I get in the car. I don't want to get in too early and have to sit there in silence and marinate. That just creates too much opportunity for negative thoughts and distractions to happen. So I've I've got that timed out. Okay, it's about six cars left before I run. I start putting my earplugs in and I always go right, left for everything. Right, left, right, left, right, left. It's just a routine. And it's not that I'm superstitious about it. It's just that I don't want to have to think about it. And I just want to do the same thing every time. Doing the same thing every time limits the room for error. So earplugs go in, head sock goes on, helmet goes on. And once that helmet goes on, it just is silent. It is, this is my place. The helmet's on. It's the physical barrier between me and the outside world. And the only people I really interact with after that point are the guys working on my car, or maybe my parents, if they come up and give me a fist bump or something. Um, fire suit comes up or zipped up, jump in the car, get strapped in, um, call it squeaky tight because you can't, you cannot move, you can hardly take a deep breath. Um, but that's just it almost is feels like a security blanket being strapped in, and you're just like, okay, like locked in, ready to go. And after I get strapped in, crew guy walks away, and that's basically just my time to really find the zone. And it's a little bit different, race to race, run to run. Some weekends I it comes really easy, and I can boom, the world's blocked out. I'm focused on just what I need to do, and my mind's very clear. And there's some weekends where it's really hard to get to that point. Maybe there's more family, maybe there's dinner plans later on, and I want to see a friend in town, or you know, there's all these little distractions that start to pop in your head when you have these silent moments. And it it can be really hard to block that out. But I have, I know I have okay, six cars, that amount of time to really focus, clear it out. We're not thinking about anything. I've made enough runs in this car where I don't have to think about all the little routines and all of the procedures. It's it's all muscle memory. And it was a it was almost easier to get focused in the beginning when I did have to think about all those little procedural things because you're just running the okay, clutch in, brake on, switch arm when we start the car, he's out of the out of the brake, he's off the clutch to roll through the wall. Like all these little things you're thinking about when you're just learning how to get this routine down, forces you to focus on the job at hand. But when that becomes muscle memory, it's almost harder to okay, block it all out. You know what to do, you just have to not think and react. And that's that's the exciting part is where you can get to that point where you're just reacting to the light on the starting line, not having to think about anything. So we're pulling up. I've I've worked on this focus, I'm blocking things out. If I start to get a negative thought, like don't be late, or don't red light, or what if it smokes like all these things, all and and the more you race, the more laps you have down the track, the more memory you have, and the more uh events and different things that could come up, they just start bubbling up. And it's like, nope, lock it all out. You I have to tell myself I can do this, I have done this, I will do this. I and it it I could just repeat it as many times as I need to stop those thoughts because they're they're always gonna be there. The brain is crazy, the brain is it's weird, it's almost got this self-destructive uh structure to it, but you you can control it. And I've found that um and it's different things on different weekends. Like last last Thursday before I went to Vegas, I had a really good slow pitch game and I hit a home run and it was so smooth and it was so it was just like slow motion and that feeling of like just seeing the ball and knowing I'm gonna smash this ball. And so over the weekend I used that, I used that experience. It was like just that home run feeling, just so simple, but that home run feeling, and it's funny to bring it all back. And I'm not I'm not kidding, like this is real. Using an experience from the night before that something that was exciting and was peaceful, and that energy, it just reminds me that I I can do it. Like I know how to be an athlete. It's being a driver is being an athlete. You're trusting your instincts, you're trusting your body. You can do it. Absolutely. Yeah, we get up to the starting line and they say, fire them up. And Richie, my crew chief, says, All right, clutch in, break on. It's like it's like lights out, it's just dead focus. Not a single thought goes through my head. It's almost an outer body experience of my body knows exactly what to do. There's no thoughts after that point. It's just peace almost.

SPEAKER_00:

And I want to point out when you're saying when you start to have those negative thoughts in your approach, you're saying I block them out, but you're also using a technique called self-talk where you're giving the radio waves what you do want to pay attention to, and you're anchoring in the proof that you know to be true. It's not flowery positive, I'm the best driver, I'm gonna win. It's just facts. I can hit runs, I'm a boss, I'm an athlete. And so the tool that you're using, and I hope our warriors and everyone listening, these aren't just feel-good things, these are real things that you've experienced. And when your brain can start to key into that proof, the more that you start trusting that muscle memory, it's not superstitious, you're literally building more mental reps with each physical rep, and you're just gonna get that much better and better. And this to me is why I wanted to interview you because if you're not, there's a lot at stake. Yeah, this isn't going up to to bat and oh, you might get hit by a pitcher. Like, no, you're strapped in. What did you call it when you're strapped in tight? Uh squeaky tight. Squeaky tight. Like you're you're in the car. There's no bailing out.

SPEAKER_01:

Nope. Yeah, it's uh, and there's a lot of people putting their their lives into this and their their time investment into setting up this car and and towing this car around the country to race and getting it, trying to get it perfect. And I want to make sure that I do my job to give us the best chance to win. Everybody's doing their job, and you don't want to be the weakest link, but you can't put that pressure on yourself either. Um, it's it's drag racing is a combination of being an individual sport and a team sport because it's a it's a team to get the car together to get you know all the work done, the setup, the breakdown. But as soon as you get to that line, the car is started up, it's you're on your own. It you have all the power within your right foot. You stay in it or you get out of it. All the power relies on the driver, and um you have to trust yourself. And that's the other thing with going down there. Maybe it's not making a great run, and it starts to shake the tires and knowing, okay, it's time to lift, I gotta get out of it. It's all by the seat of your pants, and no one from the outside can see or feel what you're feeling in the car, and you have to trust this is the right move right now, and you can pedal it and hook it back up. If you're in competition, you're racing the other person, you want to make sure you get it to the finish line. You don't maybe they're experiencing the same thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Because yeah, you don't know what's going on in the other lane, so you can't assume, right?

SPEAKER_01:

There's so much that goes into this until you see that car flying past you and they're not having any problems. You're doing your best to get it to the other end of the track. And uh, I've had a couple of round wins like that this year where um indie first round was one of those, and I caught the car. Super quick. I pedaled it and got it to hook up. And the the person I was racing against, they shook as well. And their parachute shook out. It was shaking so hard. And um they were pedaling it. And I just happened to catch it quick enough and got it down there. And that was it was incredible. It was that feeling of like I I did it. I I knew what it felt like and reacted super quick to it. Um five seconds or less.

SPEAKER_00:

Like we're talking about you're having to make these decisions.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. This was this was one second into the run. So you just hit the gas, you're just floored, you're just pinned to the back of your seat, and now your head's rattling like crazy. And you get off the gas and you get back on the gas as quick as you can, hooks up, goes down. You're recollecting yourself. You gotta figure out in just milliseconds, okay. This is where I'm at on the track and still in the middle of the groove. I'm 300 feet out. We got a long ways to go. And it it's just it starts to feel like slow motion. But when I can go up there and I have a clear mind, that all comes easier because I'm not anticipating it, I'm just reacting to it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And so this is kind of a selfish personal question. What does it look like? Like you're going that fast. Is it blurry? Like, where do your eyes go? How do you focus? Like, what are you what are you focusing on? Where are you looking?

SPEAKER_01:

So, yeah. So um when we pull up to the water box, that's like the the starting area at the uh bottom end of the track. I'm looking, we're lined up and I'm looking down track and I'm finding a focal point. And it's it's something that doesn't move because you can sometimes there's roads that are you know, highways and stuff on the backside of the track that or the cars. You don't want to focus on cars, you're focusing on something that's not gonna move somewhat in the center of your alignment on the track. And okay, that picked that point, that's where I'm driving. And it's not that I'm staring at that point, it's that my peripheral vision is focused there while I'm staring down the track. It's kind of a weird, it's hard to explain because everything in your peripheral is yes, blurry. You can't see much, but you can see the other car very clearly if they're beside, you know, they're pulling out in front of you because you're both moving quite a bit. Um and the car, the cockpit of the dragster has blinders um between the carbon fiber body that goes to a certain point, and then there's a decal on the part of the windshield that's right around, you know, my peripheral vision. So it helps keep the focal point down.

SPEAKER_00:

So there's that's intentional.

SPEAKER_01:

That's intentional, yeah. Okay. So you don't have all this, you know, you don't need all this other extra space. You need to be able to see right in front of you. Don't turn, we're going straight. So focus straight.

SPEAKER_00:

And I really hope that everyone listening, if you're not into drag racing, I hope I'm converting you because I'm a super fan. And if you have not, just Google, like just Google Top Alcohol Dragster or Top Fuel NHRA, and like just see what Melanie is talking about because it's very tiny. Is it called a cockpit? What is it called for you guys?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, we call it a cockpit.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, and so again, like I'm nerding out on all of this because you're talking about self-talk, you're talking about failure recovery, you're talking about focal points. These are all mental skills that you're using. What else are you using to get the competitive advantage?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, I would say the quick twitch muscles, training that uh physically just and being athletic. And and there's I get asked a lot, like what kind of preparation do you do to get in the car? There's there's it's not like F1. There's the F1 Academy where you've got the crazy steering wheels and you're strengthening, you're turning, and you're they're putting their heads in things and pulling. There's we don't have anything like that for drag racing, and there's no simulators that simulate you getting thrown back into your seat when you hit the gas. It's you get in the car and you do it. And that's the thing about moving up in the ranks is that you just have to get used to that speed, get used to that movement. If you can limit the movement of your body, you know, your head in the car, if you set yourself up just right and you're not moving, everything comes to you, everything slows down because you're not adding any more movement. So we've got head and neck restraints, and I've got a chin strap that goes down into the seven-point harness. We have a seven-point harness now. And so I'm locked in, I can't move like this. So when I hit the gas, it's a tiny movement. And so if you think about if that were a little bit loose and you moved back, well, now you're adding more movement to your eyes to get used to as you're going down the track and you're accelerating. This is gonna affect how well you keep up with the car. So I every driver has their preference, but I found that I want very little movement because I don't want to add any more depth perception issues to which Hala, as a softball hitter, as a softball hitter, the best hitters don't move their head.

SPEAKER_00:

Geeking out. Okay, keep going. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_01:

It'll come, it all comes back. Yeah. Um, but yeah, for physical preparation, I I lift weights, I try to eat pretty healthy, you know, 80% of the time at least, keep it very clean, stay hydrated, um, avoid alcohol. I don't want to be drinking during the weekends when I'm racing. It's just it creates fogginess. Um, I need to have mental clarity, I need to have focus. And the the physical preparation is just getting in the gym, moving my body, staying athletic, staying ready. Because your quick twitch muscle in that right foot, it's it's gotta be on, it's gotta be ready. And uh, and then the I guess half mental, half physical practice at home is a practice tree. So I have the practice tree at home. I'm sure you've seen the video that I did on that. It's on my Instagram.

SPEAKER_00:

For everyone listening, is the lights that time to tell you when to hit the gas, when to race. Yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's it's practicing that procedure of pre-stage, stage, and then reacting to the yellow lights because by the time you see yellow and you hit the gas, the light will be green. So that's a whole other science as well. It's a four-tenth tree, so you've got four tenths of a second between the time the lights turn yellow and the green light comes on. So it just helps, it's creates the uh the more recognizable reaction times um in modern day racing, just that that bit of time difference. So cool, yeah. I've got my setup at home and I practice for 15, 20 minutes a day. Um, I find if I practice too much, I just start thinking about it more. And it's not reaction, it's not reactionary. It's uh you got to get in and you gotta focus. And um if I go through a slump in that, I'll take a break and then I'll come back to it. And that's the nice part about being able to practice it at home, is you work all these things out, like your routine and your mental approach to the tree. You get to work on that here, whereas on the track, you you're not thinking and you're just in the moment, and you're uh your adrenaline's high, and there's just not much going on, not much you can control besides that. It's just it's it's a muscle memory.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, so I have to bring this into the conversation. It's waiting on my computer on a sticky note. I'm gonna I want to make sure I say this right. On one of your recent runs, it was a 10,000th of a second, seven ten thousandths of a second difference. So point zero zero zero seven is what allowed you to win.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yeah, that was an indie in the second round, and that was that felt like the race win because of the competitor I was up against. He had a very fast car, he was very on his reaction times that weekend. So I knew I needed to be at my best and cut my one of my best lights of the season, and the guys gave me a great car, and it was it was crazy because I could see we're wheel to wheel the whole way, whole way down the track. You can't see much, but when you're that close to somebody, you can just you could just see the nose of their car. And it's like, oh, it could go either way, either way. Don't know, and it's it's once you've done enough runs, it really does feel like 10 seconds going down the track at this point. And so it's just like you stay in it, just put down, just get it there, go, go, go, go, go. And we go through the the finish line, and they have little lights on the sides of the wall, um, on both sides of the wall, so the driver can see if they won the round or not. And I see that light go on, and I just I lost it. I was like, this is insane. This is I knew it was so close. And then when we we got out of the cars at the top end, and the other guy had looked at his at the time slip, they print out little receipts basically with all the incremental times and the reaction times, and we were both looking at it. We were both mind blown. Obviously, he he was upset. He didn't have as good a light, so he didn't have a bad light, but he didn't have as good as ones he's had previous rounds. And I could not believe seven ten thousandths of a second. I think it's 12 inches, or I forget what it was. Um, it's in the article, but we're talking about like this much distance out of a 300-inch car going 275 miles an hour. It's that is almost unheard of in our class because of how how many variables there are and how fast the cars are moving. Right. You see that in some of the the lower classes, the kind of the slower cars where they're they're trying to be close. Yeah, but in our class, that is just unheard of.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. So cool. Well, I I have so many questions I want to ask you, and I want to be mindful of time. I have to ask this one, and it's pretty it's pretty straightforward. Do you ever have fear?

SPEAKER_01:

When I'm in the car, no. I it's it disappears. And the fear that I have is not of crashing or it's the fear of failure, I think. Um mostly. And it doesn't come up a lot because I've worked on all these these mental this more mental fortitude to s to be able to do this sport. Um, but one of the one of the best drivers in Fuel Funny Car said it best, like, if you're scared of these cars, you have no business getting in the car. So it's it's not a fear of the car, it's not a fear of drag racing, it's just that fear of failure. And yeah, I do everything I can to stay away from that place because it's not beneficial, it's not gonna help me get better. So I can't dwell on it. It it's a kind of a passing, passing thing. And it typically will start to show after a rough re weekend, you know, like I wasn't cutting lights very good. I I want to improve on this aspect of my drive. Then it's like, oh, like I'm not, I didn't do as good as I should have. It feels like I wasted a weekend, and that's when it starts to creep in. And it's like, nope, clear it out. It's uh it's gone, it's done. Right. Can't change it.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think this is a good conversation piece for how athletics are changing with NIL. Is that now I think what you're describing in the racing world is you have sponsors. We're talking about thousands of dollars, travel trailers across the country, and multiple people working on your team to build everything. And now we relate this to softball, and it's like, well, this fear of failure is monumental compared to what we used to experience. How would you go back and maybe change your softball career? Like, how would you treat sports different knowing what you know now about the pressures that you're facing? Would it make softball easier?

SPEAKER_01:

I would take it a lot less seriously.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And putting so much pressure on myself back then. Um, there was there was no need for it, especially being 13, 14 years old, and and I was a pitcher for I pitched pretty much from the time I was 10 through high school. I was kind of the backup pitcher in high school. Outfield was my passion. I loved it. Um, but the way that I pitched in high school was really that that attitude of like, I am the backup pitcher. I I come in when we are failing, and I'm just gonna throw my change ups and it's gonna be all good. And just that relaxed mode um versus when I was 13, 14 and thought, oh, I want to be a pitcher, I have to strike everybody out, I gotta throw hard. I it's it's just not that important. It's not that serious. And you're gonna play better and you're gonna be better if you're not putting so much pressure on every single play. And it's yeah, I I really, I really go back to a lot of those days in in outfield, and that the mental approach to outfield is totally different. And I think it's a lot of visualization. And that I did want to touch on that as well is the visualization part of any sport, but how that related to drag racing. I would be in the outfield and I would visualize a ball, a line drive coming to me, and I'm running it down and I dive and catch it. And what do you know, like a batter later? That happens. And it's it is weird, it's an intuition thing, it's a being prepared thing. But thinking of okay, if a ground ball comes to me right now, there's a run-on second base, I am a nail in this throat of home base, and I'm gonna throw her out. And it would happen. It's I mean, obviously, the law of averages, of course, it would happen eventually, but it just felt like every time I had that thought, that thing would happen. And so coming to drag racing, like I said, there's no physical preparation you can do it for exactly being in the car. So visualization is a huge tool that you can use to go through all your procedures. This is what I'm learning. This is we're talking back in August 2024. I'm in Brainerd, Minnesota, about to get my first licensing runs. Well, it didn't just happen. I didn't just get in the car. I've spent the last three months studying the procedure write out that the the crew chief gave me of like, this is all the things you're gonna do. This is the steps, this is what Uber gonna have you focus on. I'm running through every single one of those things in my head. And then I'm running through going down the track and I'm picking up all the cones because one of the guys that I've worked with in the past for supercomp racing, he said count the cones on the track so you know where you're at. That slows down the car, it brings the track to you. You know, okay, I'm at the 330-foot mark, I'm at the 660, I'm at the thousand foot, now I'm at the quarter mile, and you lift off the gas. So visualizing, seeing that and speeding it up because I don't have the experience of being in this car yet. I don't know what the speed's gonna feel like, but I'm gonna speed it up in my head and I'm gonna do this repetition after repetition. When I got in the car, it really felt so natural and it felt like I'd done it before. And I wasn't nervous, I was just excited to finally do what I've been dreaming of doing. Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Which is awesome. You have given us so many real tangible examples of mental skills across multiple things, right? Like whether you're a softball athlete or hey, I hope after you listen to this episode, I don't know who we're inspiring, but you make me want to like change my careers because I always thought it would be so cool. Here's another question. You're in a very male-dominant field. What are your thoughts on maybe females that want to pursue these goals, these dreams, but they're wondering, I'm not seeing a lot of representation. Obviously, things have changed in the last couple of years, but what's it like?

SPEAKER_01:

I I've been very lucky to be a part of the time in drag racing right now. The landscape is very female for females can do it. Females are here, we are winning. And it doesn't feel like as much of an uphill battle. And from my personal experience, everybody has been so welcoming. And I think I think if you wear the attitude of confidence in yourself and I belong here, no one can take that away from you. It doesn't matter what sport, what job, anything. It's it starts with you. And what you put out is what people are gonna what people are gonna see. And if you're you know, you're shy and you're sheepish and you don't feel like you belong, you gotta fake it because people are gonna pick it out. And this is this isn't just drag racing, this is in life. If you you feel like you don't belong there and you're putting that out there, people are gonna know. So get your confidence right. Just believe in yourself and you'll make it anywhere. I I truly believe that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, self-trust. I mean, confidence comes from self-belief and self-trust, which is evident in our conversation. Last question, and well, technically a cheater question, because we want to follow you on social, so I'll ask that in a second. But what is the best piece of advice that you've been given?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, I would say best piece of advice for drag racing specifically has come from my dad. And it's don't put so much pressure on yourself for every run. You need to remind yourself that it's not the end of the world if you don't win this win this race. And that, I mean, that applies to softball. You're at bat. If you don't get a hit this at bat, it's not the end of the world. There's gonna be another at bat. You can't make that moment too big. Otherwise, you're just gonna get in this hole. And so I yes, it's a piece of drag racing advice, but I like to take those things throughout life.

SPEAKER_00:

Love it. I love it so much. Okay, where can we follow you? Uh, you've you're posting a lot on Instagram. Is that the best place?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. Instagram's the best place. Melanie Johnson Racing is my handle. Um, same thing on my Facebook page. Uh I try to mix up a little bit of the content, but most of my stuff is gonna be on Instagram. And then you can also visit my website, MelaniejohnsonRacing.com.

SPEAKER_00:

Which is awesome. Okay, well, good luck in Pomona. We're cheering you on. I'm gonna continue to bug you in your DMs. I'll be your biggest fan, and I hope one day I can watch you race in person because you are just so cool.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much for having me, and it's been a pleasure getting to talk to you. Amazing.

Contributor

Amanda Schaefer

Host