Be the Complete Racer Don't Skip Steps

Number 4 in a countdown of the things that racers must do to achieve greatness is to hit every step of the ladder on the way up; you learn something at every rung.

The ladder analogy is often used to describe the feeder and support series that lead to the elite levels of motorsports, whether that be Indy cars or Formula 1 for the open wheelers or, for sports cars, the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship or the World Endurance Championship. If you ask Kenton Koch, a driver on his way up the sports car ladder, it's a good one and, furthermore, it applies to what happens when you try to skip a rung or a step in racing. "The faster you try to climb, if you skip steps, like on any staircase or ladder, you might slip off one of them and fall back down just as easily," he says. "It's taken me four years to get where I am now."