Race to success

Young driver awarded Mazda scholarship

Racer Chris Nunes was awarded a $75,000 scholarship by Mazda.

Chris Nunes is an 18-year old from Alpine who began racing moto­cross at the Barona speedway when he was four and was profession­ally racing off-road by the time he was 15. Now 18, he splits his time between taking college classes toward an engineering de­gree and racing cars for Mazda through a $75,000 scholarship.

He smiles wide as he tells his story, a mop of curly hair bouncing around as he describes his start on a mom-son team.

“When I was little, my dad had cancer so it was always my mom and I who would go to the tracks and I had to learn every­thing where these other teams had like six, seven mechanics. Even though my dad is all healed up now, it’s still me and my mom, she’s my mom-manager to this day,” Nunes said.

Fast forward over a decade and Nunes went from motocross to off-road, then realized he would have more opportunities on the road and after racing for about six months in a Miata, was offered his chance to race professionally with Mazda.

“The cool thing about race car driving is that it’s a long-term ca­reer as long as you do it right. I’m working with a neurologist to make sure long-term my body will be able to handle it,” Nunes said.

He has a diet and workout plan to ensure “my body will still be correct in 10, 20 years for being in a race car,” but he says it is a dangerous sport and accidents do happen.

“Let’s say I end up breaking my neck or become paralyzed,” Nunes suggests before explaining his passion extends beyond rac­ing and into design and coaching as well.

“I actually coach the off-road kids right now. I run the Mod Kids USA bootcamp; I just started do­ing Go Kart training schools. On top of that, I also do love engineer­ing— it’s my passion and I always make new parts,” Nunes said.

The budding engineer frequent­ly designs new parts for his cars that he thinks could create an ad­vantage, developing them at home and producing them on 3-dimen­sional printers.

“It’s not cheating, just smart,” the teen said with an impish smile.

If he had to stop racing he would still want to design car parts for manufacturers and stay in the design world of racing, he said but ideally, “if I was like 50 years old and was still in proper shape to get into a car and race, I would def­initely still race,” Nunes said.

As an early success story, he already has wisdom to offer younger kids and teens: never give up.

“We didn’t have a big bud­get and now I’m traveling all over the United States. As long as you’re the whole package, you’ll be able to do whatever you want wheth­er it is in racing or whatever sport you want to pur­sue,” Nunes said.

Be able to market yourself, he advised, “you don’t even have to be the best at what you do, you can even be the third-best” but suggests any successful athlete has to learn the keys to personal success in their particular sport.

Optimistically, the Steele Can­yon high school grad says a year of distance learning due to COV­ID-19 actually worked in his favor as he has been able to complete community college classes online while answering to his busy pro­fessional racing life.

“I’ve been pretty fortunate while traveling that everything has been on Zoom. My heart goes out to everyone who is having struggles with it but honestly it has helped me out,” Nunes said.

Racing two cars for Mazda coupled with college classes is “a full-time job” but he said he’s al­ways happy to answer questions for younger racers or give them tips at californiakid02@gmail.com or he can be found on Instagram: @chris2nunes.

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