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<\/p>\n<\/div>Andy Pilgrim is the American Dream. Right down to his surname.<\/p>\n
Pilgrim crossed the Atlantic in 1981 to seek a better life. Arriving in New York City as an IT contractor under the watchful gaze of Lady Liberty with just $100 in his pocket, the 25-year old computer programmer was placed in Pontiac with General Motors. An avid motorbike racer in his native England, he also hoped to race a bit.<\/p>\n
Give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free … and do some hot laps.<\/p>\n
Now 59, Pilgrim has realized his dreams. He has his own tech business. And by the way, he is one of the most highly regarded sports car drivers in the business after a career racing everything from Corvettes to NASCAR. Today he pilots Porsches for Black Swan Racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came to the U.S. for opportunity,\u201d said Pilgrim in Atlanta last week where he was testing Chevy\u2019s new Corvette Grand Sport for Automobile magazine. \u201cRacing was a dream. Car racing in England takes huge money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pilgrim\u2019s rags-to-riches rise in racing is a rare journey in an expensive sport dominated by wealthy families with names like Andretti, Earnhardt and Rosberg where money and sponsorship often talk louder than talent. Humbled by his success, Pilgrim is determined to give back to his adopted homeland. Alarmed by the lax driving standards in the U.S. (compared to say, England and Germany), Pilgrim is a missionary for safer driving habits through his non-profit Traffic Safety Education Foundation.<\/p>\n
After spending his first year in Pontiac, Pilgrim\u2019s next contractor gig took him to El Paso, Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cPontiac at the time had 68 percent unemployment, I was told. The room I got was $100 a month,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a rough neighborhood. (My complex\u2019s) guard dog got beaten up.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Texas he bought his first ride, a used Renault Alliance Cup Car. \u201cI called it a Renault \u2018Appliance\u2019 \u2013 and that\u2019s how I got into serious racing,\u201d says Pilgrim. \u201cI funded myself. I never went to a racing school \u2013 I couldn\u2019t afford it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a big step up from his motorbike in England.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have car,\u201d he remembers of that first bike. \u201cI would pay a buddy (gas money) to drop me at the track. And if I wasn\u2019t dead, he\u2019d pick me up in the evening to take me home.\u201d<\/p>\n
He started his own company, Electronic Computer Services, in Dallas in 1989. The successful small business kept the revenue stream coming to feed his racing habit. Pilgrim\u2019s talents were getting noticed. His habit would soon become all-consuming.<\/p>\n
In 1999 his career took off as Corvette Racing tapped him to race their first C5 race car. Co-driving the car with the father-son duo of Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr. at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2002, he finished second-in-class. In 2004 he moved over to GM\u2019s Cadillac race team where he would win the 2005 World Challenge GT Series championship. He has driven for numerous teams since, including a bid in NASCAR.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s a race driver\u2019s life like?<\/p>\n
On the Thursday I spent with Pilgrim at Atlanta Motorsports Park testing the Grand Sport, the race jockey had opened the week in Portland to talk at an auto conference, then flown to Pontiac to school a Corvette driver\u2019s club on the M1 Concourse\u2019s new Championship Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n
\u201cFantastic,\u201d he says. It is just blocks from his first Pontiac apartment.<\/p>\n
From Atlanta he flew to Lime Rock, Connecticut, where he would qualify his Porsche for Saturday\u2019s Weathertech race.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a lot of frequent-flier miles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m getting paid to race cars in my late 50s,\u201d says Pilgrim. \u201cNever in my wildest dreams did I think I\u2019d be doing it. It\u2019s been phenomenal.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he\u2019s not in airports, at race tracks or overseeing his tech company (\u201cMy insurance policy if the racing dries up\u201d), he is passionate about teaching driver safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re killing 20,000 more people on our roads than we should be,\u201d laments Pilgrim, who is now a U.S. citizen. \u201cRelative to other industrialized countries, we should be killing about 12,000 people if we were doing things as well as Germany and U.K. But we\u2019re killing 32,000 to 40,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe driving test is a joke. They might as well hand it out with Kellogg\u2019s Corn Flakes package tops,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to change the culture. It starts with parents and with helping … kids understand what distracted driving is. Legislation isn\u2019t going to fix it. They\u2019re not going to make the driving test as hard as it should be because kids won\u2019t pass the driving test until they\u2019re 20 \u2013 and that is unacceptable to voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
So he travels the country handing out DVDs and instruction manuals, and giving speeches. \u201cYou gotta give back,\u201d says Pilgrim who now resides in Boca Raton, Florida. \u201cMy mother taught me that.\u201d<\/p>\n
And how did he like the Corvette Grand Sport? \u201cThis car will not disappoint,\u201d he grins. No, it won\u2019t. Pilgrim set an unofficial production car track record at Atlanta Motorsports Park at a blistering 1:23.6.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Andy Pilgrim is the American Dream. Right down to his surname. Pilgrim crossed the Atlantic in 1981 to seek a better life. Arriving in New York City as an IT contractor under the watchful gaze of Lady Liberty with just $100 in his pocket, the 25-year old computer programmer was placed in Pontiac with General […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19034,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19033\/revisions\/19034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}