“If you want to be a painter, how do you start? Do you need to go to school? Can you just get certified? Can you just start working at a shop? A lot of kids have all these questions and they just don’t know where to go to get the answers.”
— Blazing Trails co-founder Elaine Larsen
With more than 20 years of drag racing experience and two world championship wins, House of Color jet car driver, entrepreneur and humanitarian Elaine Larsen blazes more than just flame trails at the racetrack. Through her Blazing Trails nonprofit organization, she also blazes trails within the automotive collision repair industry, working with high school and college students who are seeking hands on learning and career opportunities. This article is a transcript of an Autobody Source livestream chat with Elaine and Larsen Motorsports Vice President of Race Operations Josette Roach.
Listen to the conversation on our podcast page.
What is STEAM?
Elaine: Science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. A lot of times people forget the Arts. For me, it pulls everything together. A lot of kids are interested in science, and if you ask them what their favorite thing in school is, it’s either science or math. But for me, it was always the Arts.
I always liked to make things pretty, whether it was with photographs or be able to draw or words; to be able to write something that people could kind of connect with. So it’s trying to maybe connect those dots and take what they learn in the classroom and to be able to directly apply it to a career, something that they love, like Josette’s been able to do.
How does STEAM translate into an automotive or auto body career for a student?
Josette: You know, there’s science involved with the chemistry of the paint, how it goes onto the car, because painting a car is an art form whether it’s going to be one solid color or maybe you’re going to put some cool graphics on it. Our jet cars are totally customized for our purpose, for our driver, so all of the engineering, the manufacturing, the design that goes into that, plus the beautiful House of Kolor paint that goes on the car. There’s a whole team of students who work together to make sure it meets the needs of our company.
Elaine: We two girls like to go fast. I’ve been on a quarter mile drag strip at 296 miles an hour. And Josette has gone 281 miles per hour in 5.72 seconds. The body work on the car, how slippery we can make the car, is really important to make it aerodynamically smooth and get it through the air as quick and fast as possible. So, yeah, we can only do so much sitting in the driver’s seat and then we have to rely on everyone else to make sure our cars stay Slippery, fast and safe.
The maximum amount of hands-on stuff that we can do is imperative because we want to take what students are learning in the classroom and directly apply it to a career path.
— Blazing Trails co-founder Elaine Larsen
How do you get kids more interested in cars and all things automotive?
Elaine: Well, you know, that’s how I met Josette. I’ve been drag racing for 30 years and driving a jet car for 21 years now. And I met her at a racetrack and she walked over to me, started talking to me. I gave her my business card and I said “you know, the next step is walking through the door.” And she finally did it.
Our organization is flexible. We can come to your schools or you can come to us. We’re located in Palm Bay, Florida, right in the heart of the Space Coast. We host everything from races to air shows to STEM events, and trade shows like SEMA.
Josette: We also have an online component. For example, an event that a school requests might not sync with our race schedule. So we’ve had schools out in Kentucky, for instance, where we’ve Zoom teleconferenced into the classroom.
We also host track day field trips for schools and students, such as our event in Michigan September 2023. We had more than 350 public and home-schooled K-12 students, parents and school administrators as well as the House of Kolor, NAPA Auto Parts, Kelloggs, and Florida Institute of Technology crews for an immersive hands-on preview of the limitless careers available in automotive refinish, aerospace, jet propulsion & H.I.V.E technologies.
We have 18 interns that come in and they work every single day, they come up with the concept design, full on fabrication.
Elaine: That was in Martin, Michigan, one of my hometowns. And it was kind of cool because we were able to contact the local schools and talk to them about custom airbrush graphics and gave the kids a shot at trying it. These cars from nose to tail are custom built. They’re 27 feet long. They’re powered by a General Electric JD5 jet engine from an F5 or T38 aircraft. It’s great that we’re drivers and it’s fun, but when we’re going down the track, that only takes about five-and-a-half seconds. What do we do with the rest of our day?
These field trips give us and the rest of our team the opportunity to be able to engage. The part that I love about drag racing is that every pass is a pit pass. So that means that you can come in, you can talk to the drivers, you can talk to the crew, you can maybe help pack a parachute or two and be able to understand what this world of high-performance vehicles looks like and where you fit in.
So from everything from race operations to the EMS to be able to help us, to be able to painting the race car, fabricating the race car, welding on the pipes, there’s just a little bit of everything. And so I think that’s what drew Josette into wanting to be with us.
Josette: Yes. Before I hooked up with Larsen Motorsports, what they opened my eyes to was all the career paths that are involved with motorsports. Because originally when I would think of a race team, I would think: driver, crew chief. But, it’s the whole team that’s involved. We have a welder, we have the guys working on the jet engines, we have fabricators, we have lawyers.
And then of course, doctors, because not only do our drivers have to be physically fit enough to drive the cars, but we have to have our crew be physically fit enough. So that goes into nutrition as well. And that was the most eyeopening thing for me in terms of all of the careers involved with just one car. When you’re a whole team, you’re making multiple cars, but every person that touches just that one car makes the career truly amazing.
How can schools get their students, parents and administrators involved in a Blazing Trails educational field trip event?
Elaine: It’s really easy! The first thing to do is visit BlazingTrails.info and sign up to get more information. We then identify where your school is located to see if a visit is actually able to be done. If it is, then we contact you and set up the time, the dates, and what we can do for you.
The maximum amount of hands-on stuff that we can do is imperative because we want to take what students are learning in the classroom and directly apply it to a career path. To be able to connect those dots is really important to understand complex math problems, for instance. We want to see how fast Joe’s that’s going to go down the track. And we want to be able to target the exact trajectory for the jet car. And if we can’t host an event in your area, we can always virtually Zoom in by teleconference take students on a tour around our engineering shop.
We’re located on the Florida Space Coast in the heart of the technology corridor. We work with great universities like Florida Institute of Technology. We have 18 interns that come in and they work every single day, they come up with the concept design, full on fabrication. Then those interns mentor the high school students that we get to come through the the field trips. And that’s great because you can connect a high school student to a college student. We we have mentors that are in industry companies like Northrop Grumman, Siemens Digital Industries, Sherwin-Williams, House of Kolor.
If you want to be a painter, how do you start? Do you need to go to school? Can you just get certified? Can you just start working at a shop? A lot of kids have all these questions and they just don’t know where to go to get the answers. And unfortunately, as parents, we only know what we know. So if you want to be a mentor, please visit BlazingTrails.info.
We’ve been able to impact over 100,000 students. And not only do we do that, we actually help with scholarships. Through the help of House of Kolor and Sherwin-Williams, we were able to raise thousands of dollars at the SEMA Show 2023 because gifted artists gave up their time and their talent to be able to sell pieces of art. And then 100% of those proceeds go to scholarships in the automotive industry.
So whether you want to start your own store, whether you want to learn how to paint, how to customize, whether you just need help in getting certified in a certain area, again, visit BlazingTrails.info because the cool news is we have money to give. And it’s a shame when it just sits in the checking account and it’s not out there helping people.
And so if this is something that you’re interested in and you wanna find a path and you wanna be able to find the source, I know Auto Body Source, they’re a great source of being able to help connect the dots and be able to do that. You just need to be able to go out there, research, do a little bit of work, and then the funds and the money is there for you.
Same goes with the school. If you’re watching this and you know you have a group of students or you want to meet with us and to set up the scholarship program at your school, definitely go to blazingtrails.info. Reach out to us because, again, we do have that scholarship money.
For educational sponsorship opportunities, visit https://www.blazingtrails.info/
For Larsen Motorsports racing schedule & more info, visit https://www.lmsjets.com/
