@spotlight

Spotlight: Racing Cars and Saving Lives - Renée and Christina Brinkerhoff

article image placeholderValkyrieRacing Swell.jpg
And I guess, Renee, my first question is to you. And then, Christina, I'd love you to answer from your perspective. How do you feel about the racing industry as a whole, given the fact that you are in it now right now

Two women changing the road of racing. Valkyrie Racing #impact #change #women #sports https://bit.ly/3i1gF2e

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@spotlight

Clarifying!! 🤣

I just had to make a clarifying point that Renee Brinkerhoff started racing in her mid 50s, not in the mid 50s. Just clarifying that in case people misheard it. Thanks
@RBrinkerhoff
Renée Brinkerhoff
@RBrinkerhoff · 4:12

Life discovery started with Rally Racing

Then I had to go do it. I chose rally racing because it sounded exciting, the thought without knowing what it is and never having experienced. If you just imagine going around a track and you've never done it, it does sound boring, right? So for me, I thought, Gosh, I don't want to do that. And so when I heard about rally racing, that's what I got into. And so what is rally racing? Rally racing is racing on public roads
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@cbrinkerhoff
Christina Brinkerhoff
@cbrinkerhoff · 1:42
And so not only is she doing rally racing, she's doing sort of extreme events on every continent of the world. So in some ways, we have sort of a myopic view because we're so inundated by just the experience, the culture, all the things that are going on. And so I don't know how much we can speak to racing as a sport in a big picture way. But we can certainly talk about rally racing
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@spotlight

The name .. the myth! https://www.valkyrieracing.com/

And I obviously went online to say, what does that name mean? Where does it come from? And I learned that it's from Norse mythology. And it connects to a female figure who is in charge of those who live and those who die. She's in charge of choosing those who live and those who die. And then further down, it talks about the fact that Valkyrie are often daughters of royalty. So I just love how this sort of ties into the mother daughter theme as well
@RBrinkerhoff
Renée Brinkerhoff
@RBrinkerhoff · 1:16

Dreams and Visions

And it was so intriguing. I said, Well, what's a Valkyrie? So we started reading about it. And Valkies come from Norse mythology. And they are women warriors, courageous, brave, with compassionate hearts. And they would leave Valhalla. And Valhalla is their heaven. And they would go to the battlefield. And they would rescue the wounded and dying that were worthy. And they would return them to Valhalla. And they would heal and restore life. And that was so beautiful and poetic
@spotlight

The making of a #dream #roadmap

Offer. Nate, thank you for that explanation. It just dropped me straight into this feeling of possibility and how beautiful that image is of healing people and restoring them back to semblance of strength and health and purpose
@RBrinkerhoff
Renée Brinkerhoff
@RBrinkerhoff · 3:32

Fear is your friend

I was so afraid and having to overcome that, praying on my knees in the morning about getting in that car and praying at the start when they're counting me down and wondering, what in the world are you doing here, Renee? But knowing I had to and just pushing through all of that for me, a lot of my experiences with racing have been about overcoming fear, even after I'd done it for several years
@spotlight

Storytime...🍿🙏

And I would just love for you to treat us to a story in one of these 18 countries that you traversed and sort of 18 countries that you traversed. And I'm not going to raise this because this is swell. We always mess up and say things and we keep on going at least I do
@cbrinkerhoff
Christina Brinkerhoff
@cbrinkerhoff · 2:32

Stories from filming this wild adventure

So the rally car comes by and then about, I don't know, five minutes later, an organizer's car just flies by and they stop and they're like, Are you okay? I know my guys are back there. Then the car races off and I start walking back to where my car is. And I see a huge female lion. And it's about, I don't know, 10 meters from me. That moment of like, okay, what do I do?
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@RBrinkerhoff
Renée Brinkerhoff
@RBrinkerhoff · 3:05
But at the same time, we're really fast and catching the cars in front of us, which is not very common in this kind of racing. So now I know what I would have done and should have done. But at the time, I didn't have any of that experience. And so just to go quickly to the problem, the tires were over inflated, about 20 PSI all the way around. Which is no wonder I was having a hard time turning the car
@spotlight

Getting up from a crash #trust

But can you help us apply some of the skills that you have for navigating doubt and mistrusting yourself and actually those around you navigating that to the point where you're functional again, and you can actually see the road ahead and see yourself on that road, because I think a lot of people right now are right where you're when the car crashed. Can you help us with sort of that tactical approach you took to moving forward
@RBrinkerhoff
Renée Brinkerhoff
@RBrinkerhoff · 4:34
But if when you know something seriously going on, that's not working, stop figure out what that is and then push forward. The other thing I realized was I created this team and we had this amazing camaraderie. But every team needs a leader, and I have led. But I had led. I was afraid to be too strong of a leader or to be too much of a leader one because I was a woman and everybody else was a man, and maybe that shouldn't have mattered
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@Swell
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@RBrinkerhoff
Renée Brinkerhoff
@RBrinkerhoff · 1:39
And so his whole business has collapsed, and he's quit. And his family is looking to him and needs him. And he's basically just balled up. And if I could describe it lying on the ground in a fetal position, and you can't ever do that no matter how dark it seems or how bad things seem, that's never the answer, because that isn't an answer. That isn't a solution that's quitting, that's giving up
@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:21

Please SHARE and let’s keep the beautiful conversation going 🙏🌱

Renee, thank you for your passion and clarity around this issue and for your friend in New York tying in his story to your story. I think that's really the power of these conversations, and I want to open this up to everybody to sort of chime in and have questions for you and Christina to share this conversation with your community. There's a little share button. It's this green square here and just share out your swellcast. Com link
@Phil
phil spade
@Phil · 2:35

Is rally racing an endurance sport as well?

Thank you for opening this up. Deborah. I've been kind of patiently just waiting on the sidelines, waiting to ask some questions here. Renee, I've just had a wonderful time listening to this. And I do have a few questions, and I wanted to start by just by taking a step back here and talk about rally racing. I have some questions around rally racing in general. And you mentioned that some of these races are 2000 miles long, and you mentioned some are in traffic
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@RBrinkerhoff
Renée Brinkerhoff
@RBrinkerhoff · 2:46
When we were in let's see, Peru, that was actually a race that was for all modern purpose built rally cars. And there was one other woman in that event and I have no idea. Is it our temperament? Is it because women don't have an interest in motor sports?
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:17

Speed ! A gender thing?

And we've looked at this in the world of engineering, where there are so few female engineers, and now it's almost half. I mean, it's incredible how steam has science, technology and engineering, along with arts and math, has really infused our education system over the last 15 years. And we're seeing changes, but on a global scale, I don't know how it reflects in different countries and different race car drivers in different countries
@Phil
phil spade
@Phil · 3:33
But I would think that somewhere down the line, a niece, a daughter would be interested in racing. And that just never has seemed to be the case. Or at least that I've seen. And I just wonder, why is that? And maybe it is the fact that there's just not that interest. There's no interest in doing that. And I think that brings up a great next question. The next logical question is, why isn't there that interest?
@cbrinkerhoff
Christina Brinkerhoff
@cbrinkerhoff · 1:11

Speeeeeed!

There's a connection for me with speed and freedom to varying degrees of success and my driving record. But I love that feeling. And then just on your guys'conversation regarding women in motorsport, I think part of the reason there's very few women is there are very few female role models. I also know there's barriers to entry and it's not easily accessible. So think that's all part of it. I think we don't see it
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 0:46

Plans for documentary @cbrinkerhoff 🍿🍿

I love thinking about you going racing down a Hill. You're awesome. It's so interesting because I think the issue of Role Models is 100% correct. Can you tell us about the plans for all this footage? Did you have because you've been following Rene now for quite a while and I know you're not done, but do you have a plan to just knit it all together into one documentary? Because that will allow people to really enjoy this whole arc of the story
@RBrinkerhoff
Renée Brinkerhoff
@RBrinkerhoff · 2:30
And you have that with a car, even though it's not living in a sense it is living. And then about role models. I think that probably a lot of these fathers who are race car drivers don't want their daughters to be racing because the innate thing for a father is to protect his daughters, right? He doesn't want to have his daughters get hurt. So maybe they're encouraging their sons more than they are their daughters because that's their natural instinct is to protect their daughters
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@cbrinkerhoff
Christina Brinkerhoff
@cbrinkerhoff · 0:51

The doc!

Deborah yes, the documentary the most wonderful, challenging part of my job. And we've done six continents and also six continents of footage. And our plan is either to make a really beautiful documentary or sell a docuseries. So sort of waiting till we get through Antarctica to finalize that process. I have some great people helping me film and really blessed by the team we've been able to get together here for this final stretch. So it's a big TBD conversation right now, but it's coming
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@Phil
phil spade
@Phil · 1:06

Ending child trafficking

Going to the website and seeing the footage you have so far. I did want to mention that I am really looking forward to the documentary. The footage that I've seen is just amazing, just the scenery of it all. And then capturing Renee racing by you and the overhead shots. It's really something I'm really looking forward. It's going to be an amazing docu series or documentary. And as I went on the website, I got so sidetracked on the racing part of this
@dlhastings
Daniel Hastings
@dlhastings · 1:03

Wondering about the mission-driven aspect of Valkyrie, and about the car!

Yeah. I had the same question. I'm curious about how the how the mission driven aspect works with the racing team and with the promotion and how much of it, if you were to say that's what percentage of the motivation to doing this and how important is that to what you're doing and how you found your exposure through racing, to be able to actually help that cause I'm really interested to hear about all of that
@RBrinkerhoff
Renée Brinkerhoff
@RBrinkerhoff · 4:13

Why Child Trafficking?

And here I am in 2020, and we're still racing. And through all of that, what's happened is we found that we had a voice, and we had that voice because I started racing in my mid 50s. I'm a woman. We were having success. Our team was on the podium every year. We would go to Mexico. And because of that, people would listen to us. And we were then able to talk to them
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@cbrinkerhoff
Christina Brinkerhoff
@cbrinkerhoff · 1:35

Million Dollar Mission to combat child trafficking

What would you do if it was your brother, your sister, your child, when we're looking at eight to 10 million children, and that's a conservative number that are being trafficked, you have to sort of think in those terms because otherwise it becomes too big, too unfathomable, too painful. And the other thing I want to mention is the work we're doing in Peru. We're in the process of starting our own NGO down there
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@dlhastings
Daniel Hastings
@dlhastings · 0:55

Thank you and good luck!

Hey, Renee and Christina both. Thanks for all the info that you've given us here. And, man, I just watched your training video on your website for Antarctica, and it looks it looks amazing. It's going to be so much fun. It kind of reminds me of growing up and getting my license in upstate New York
@RBrinkerhoff
Renée Brinkerhoff
@RBrinkerhoff · 3:12

356 Transformation

I don't know a lot about cars. Still, I can tell you about racing. I can tell you about how to drive that car and take it to its limit. But I'm not very good at the technical side of all that. But if you have any specific questions, I can ask the car builder and get those answers for you. Ciao
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@RBrinkerhoff
Renée Brinkerhoff
@RBrinkerhoff · 1:51

Why a Porsche 356?

I remember there was one other thing that was asked earlier that I didn't respond to, and I think it was how did I get into a 356 Porsche? How did that happen? Well, again, just one of those flukey of things in life. My husband's cousin raised old Corvettes forever, and he said he had a car he had just purchased, and he wanted us to come see. So we went over to his house, and it was 1950 something or rather, 356
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