"What you as a driver are offering to sponsors isn't really your competitive results. That's not what drives sales."

Whether you’re trying to get into competitive drifting or stunt driving, Zandara Kennedy’s advice is the same. And it may not be what you’re expecting.

“If you can do anything else, you should do that,” she says in the latest episode of The Creative Drive.

“But the people who are not deterred by that are going to get there, and it will possibly nearly kill you, but it's an experience that you have to have. You're never as ready as you think. I think that's the big one. We go back (to) Canada, there's a few guys that got their licenses, and they're like, we're gonna go take over’ and all this stuff.

“And there's so many elements. You're not thinking of… just the scheduling of it, right? If you're a driver who's used to being your crew chief, that's pretty hard to do when you have autograph signings, when you have to be at practice, and have to be at all these different places, and the facility is big. So I would just say, get as much seat time before you commit and don't build a car just before your competitive season. A lot of people do that.”

So having been through those experiences herself, what would she do differently?

“Definitely more sim,” she says. “I'm not someone that like really focuses on regret, but I think the biggest thing is also trusting my own instinct. When it came to running my team, everyone has an opinion, and it's tough. The sport has evolved so much that people's lessons or the way that worked 10 years ago are very different than the way it works now.

“I feel like the biggest asset a driver can offer… you need to be competitive, but what you're offering to sponsors isn't really your competitive results most of the time. That's not how they get attention, and that's not what actually drives sales anymore. So I would have put even more effort into media sooner. I would have focused a little bit heavier on telling the story. But I feel pretty content with what I was able to do in that space as well.

“In that time, Formula Drift was really open to supporting some of the endeavors that I wanted to do, to bring more women into the space – (we) had an almost entirely female crew in the second season – and I was able to bring a lot of women behind the scenes with the support of FD, just to meet people and hopefully get them inspired to get involved as well.”

Catch the entire conversation below.