Racing Career
After graduating from Pepperdine University he became a successful businessman, eventually purchasing his father's parts company in 1989 at the age of 25. He raced at a competitive amateur level, supported by his business income, but dreamed of someday driving in the Indianapolis 500. He first drove professionally in 1995 in the USAR Hooters Pro Cup Series at the age of 31, by racing standards an unusually old age to begin a professional career. Nonetheless, he won Rookie of the Year honors.
In 1997 he made his first IRL start and became a rising star in the league, raced in 3 consecutive Indianapolis 500's, and netted his first victory from the pole at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 1999, finishing fifth in series points that year. During that offseason, while testing in preparation for the 2000 season, Schmidt suffered a horrendous crash at Walt Disney World Speedway on January 6, 2000. The accident rendered him a quadriplegic, and on a respirator for five weeks.
After leaving the hospital, Schmidt, no longer able to actually drive a racecar, realized he needed to find a new passion and follow it. Inspired by meeting paraplegic Formula One team owner Sir Frank Williams, he founded Sam Schmidt Motorsports, which has become the most successful team in the history of the Indy Lights series (formerly named Infiniti Pro Series), winning the 2004 series championship with Thiago Medeiros, the 2006 title with Jay Howard, and the 2007 title with Alex Lloyd. Sam Schmidt Motorsports was a full-time IndyCar series team in 2001 and 2002, and continues to participate annually in the Indianapolis 500. In the Firestone Indy Lights series, as of August 2009 the team had posted 30 victories out of 100 starts. After acquiring the FAZZT Race Team IndyCar team in 2011, Sam Schmidt Motorsports returned full-time to the IZOD IndyCar Series, and on May 21, 2011, driver Alex Tagliani won the pole position for the Indianapolis 500, the first pole for the team.
Read more about this topic: Sam Schmidt
Famous quotes containing the words racing and/or career:
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)