Sitting across from Katie Best, you can feel an air of certainty and confidence circulating around her.
Katie doesn’t have a typical summer break experience. As an electrical engineering student and racecar driver, she regularly switches between a library chair and the cockpit of her hobbystock racecar as she races around the oval track at Avondale’s Eastbound Speedway.
But how does one even find themselves sitting behind the wheel of a racecar?
Katie told us she was raised in a “race family,” spending every Sunday watching NASCAR, and even being trusted from a young age to be the spotter for her father, Mark Best, as he raced around the track himself.
But Katie never wanted to just be a spotter, saying she was “always begging” her dad to let her get a car of her own, pleading for the chance to be one of the racers she grew up watching.
Well, on October 4th, 2025, Katie would get that opportunity. Loaning a car from a friend, she entered her very first race. She told us she was just “testing the waters” that day, but the results of that race said it all… a third place podium finish for her debut. A test drive became a podium, and no further experimentation was needed to ignite her racing career.
“I know the taste of it… this is what I want to do,” said Katie
The very next season at Eastbound Speedway, one tenured veteran stepped down to make way for a promising new rookie. Her father Mark decided to sell his racecar and focus on helping Katie write her own story on that familiar oval raceway.
For years, Katie was trusted to watch over her father in the tower. She acted as his eyes, communicating through the radio what was happening on the track around him.
That trusting relationship between spotter and driver is key to success and safety in racing. The driver needs to completely trust the person in the tower to accurately and quickly relay information about track conditions, positions of other cars, and anything at all happening on the track.
That trust brings safety and allows the driver to be present, focusing solely on the road ahead. Now that it’s her turn in the driver’s seat, there was no question her spotter would be her father. He returns the favor of watching over her, as she did for him all these years. In fact, the safety that trust brings is so powerful, Katie told us she “doesn’t even look in her mirror very often” while racing.
“I got a side mirror, but where I got my dad in my ears, you just trust him,” she said.
She’s planning to make the most of her racing story, sharing her goal to win rookie of the year this season.
Katie debuted this season with a car of her own, a regular 2012 Honda Accord she found on Facebook Marketplace. But the car couldn’t race in that condition. Extensive modifications were needed to turn a regular grocery getter into a fully equipped racecar that can handle the demands of the track.
Katie said, “we stripped it down, so there’s nothing on the inside of it, we put in the roll cage, did all the safety… you take out the windows too.”
Despite flying into turns going 115 km/h, all while maneuvering around competitors, Katie says “it’s not as scary as people think”.
She attributes her sense of safety to the car’s preparation, a mutual respect and trust with the other drivers and officiators, and the adrenaline she gets from racing.
You have to wonder how one finds the time to pursue a racing career, all while taking five courses over the summer.
As a lifetime competitive figure skater, Katie has always found a way to balance school and extracurricular endeavours. At the track, she studies sitting outside her car between races. Studying heavily the week before a race allows her to feel “comfortable enough to get to the track.”
Katie knows how important it is to stay invested in hobbies even through school. No matter the season, she can often be found outside of school, putting that same effort into a different aspect of life.
In winter, it’s figure skating at the rink. In summer, it’s racing. Katie told us the time she spends at the rink and track “completely resets” her mentally. A refreshing perspective in a world obsessed with productivity. She advises other students to invest themselves into something outside of school too, claiming that a healthy divide can keep us from struggling.
Katie lays out her secret to success: confidence, connection, support, and autonomy, along with maintaining her social and recreational pursuits. Perhaps we can all learn something from her story, and take on this semester with fuller lives and stronger report cards.