Adam Torres and Sting Ray Robb discuss the 2024 season.
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Show Notes:
New episode alert! In this episode, Adam Torres and Sting Ray Robb, IndyCar Driver, discuss Sting Ray’s faith, career and 2024 season.
About Sting Ray Robb
Sting Ray started chasing his dream and began kart racing at age 5. Over the next ten years he garnered several National Titles and was twice ranked the number one US Driver in his age group. He remains the only Triple Crown winner – having won the Florida Winter Tour Championship, the CanAm Championship and the Challenge of the Americas Championship all in the same year. He earned a much coveted seat on Team USA in three consecutive years that allowed him to compete in Spain, Portugal and Italy. His transition to formula open wheel began at the Skip Barber Karts to Cars Shootout, where he was the recipient of the Bryan Herta Scholarship and named the Winter Series Rookie of the Year. That scholarship enabled him to transition to the Road to Indy at the age of 15.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to apply. All right, so today is a very special episode. We have Stingray Rob on the show, who is an IndyCar driver, for those of you who do not know, and we got a lot to talk about today.
I want to talk about the work and the collaboration you’re doing with Prey. com. We got to talk about how you got that name, of course, and a whole lot more want to know what’s going on in the season as well. But just to get us kicked off here welcome to the show. Good to have you here. Yeah, thank you.
Thanks for having me on. So first thing first, I always like to hear, you know, it’s easy to look up and see where you’re at now. IndyCarDriver, of course, one of your dreams being realized. But like, where’d all this start? Like, where’d it all begin? Like, how’d you get interested in racing? I think my interest started from an early age.
My parents, they would take me around to Corvette club meetings, autocross events, drag races from an early age. I actually took my first steps at a Corvette club meeting. And so I knew that that’s what I wanted to do. I mean, I just love the smell of burning fuel, burning rubber, and all of that kind of with my name a little bit, but we can get into that a little bit later if you want or now whatever works.
But yeah, so I, I knew pretty early on what I wanted to be. And that was a race car driver. Were both of your parents car people, like your mom and dad or just dad or mom or how was that? Were they in the business at all or? Neither one of them were really into the business of auto racing or cars or anything like that, other than they just had a passion for it.
And so they brought their passion along to me through my name. That’s part of the story, but yeah, , they went to all those events just for the sake of doing it, for having fun. And you know, for me, that was something that. I got to see firsthand. I mean, when we were driving around town, I was in the backseat of my mom’s car.
We’d take off from a stop sign, and she’d accelerate quickly, and I’d say, Faster, faster, faster! So, it was, it was pretty early that they hooked me with that bug. Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah, my I asked because my, I mean, I grew up in a car family, so I’m from Michigan originally, from Detroit. I’ve been out in LA maybe the last decade, maybe a little too long, but I grew up in a car family.
I grew up in Detroit. So my dad owned an auto body shop growing up. So I remember like I was around a lot of Chevelles around a lot of American muscle back in the day. And it was just one of those things to where it was I didn’t end up ultimately going , into that business. I, I did go a different route obviously, but but I was just, , I can see it , like how you get sucked in at at a young age.
And then you take in your friends. first steps at a meeting. Come on. And the name, I got to get to the name. How’d the name come about? Yeah, that’s usually the first question that people ask. And they usually follow it up with, is that your real name? And yes, it is my real name. I promise. But the story goes, my parents were big Corvette fans, obviously, and they decided to name me after the Stingray Corvette.
So my dad has a 1966 Corvette. C2 Stinger and Corvette I grew up around and then the other half of that story, the more boring side, it doesn’t mean a lot to very many people, but it’s kind of fun, is that my dad’s side of the family’s heritage is from Stirlingshire, Scotland, so Sting is actually short for Stirling, and then both of my grandfathers had Ray in their name, so it was a combo deal, and there’s a lot going on, but I think it was just an excuse to name me after the Corvette.
Man, you just had some cool parents, too. I mean, shout out to the parents, man. I’m like, I don’t know, my dad’s favorite growing up were Chevelles, so if my name would have been Chevelle, I don’t know how to felt about that, but Stingray is cool. Or Camaro, Camaro Torres, oh my god. I can see it, man.
That could be your nickname. Yeah, there you go. I’m, man, I’m, we’re going to do some rebranding around here. This is, this is happening. Where did it happen? It happened today. My team is going to kill me, but it’s okay. Oh, good stuff. So I, I noticed looking through the brand and everything , as I was preparing for this pray.
com. I see right there, big as ever on your website, John three 30. , what does faith like mean to you? Like, how does all of this relate? As you could tell a name of our company, Mission Matters. So , you know, where my head’s at. I’m just curious, what does it mean to you? Well, let me start by kind of telling my story a little bit, and that way you can get a feel for where I’m at.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I grew up in a Christian home, and I had my dad’s side of the family, which was actually Latter day Saints, and my mom’s side of the family was Nazarene. And so I had very two contrasting faiths growing up with. Yeah. At that point in my life. I had to make the choice of, okay, what do I believe in?
What I stood on was, after doing some research, I’m like, I believe in the Bible. Anything above and beyond that, I cannot support or justify. And so I, my faith is tied to what the word says, and I believe it’s God’s truth. But I mean, that probably was instilled in me from an early age by my homeschool teacher.
She was a lady from our church. And the cool thing about that is it allowed me to be on the road traveling and doing all the things racing wise from an early age. But at the same time, she was instilling in me lifelong lessons, traits, and also the, the biblical truths I got to see lived out in her home, because I’d sit in her living room most days, year round, and I got to see that kind of poured into her family, poured into the community around her, and the impact it had on them to change the way they lived.
And so, that was probably where I got my first inspiration. first kind of faith set. And then now I feel like from an early age, I’ve been called to use this platform to, to glorify God. You know, I support John 3, or I put John 3 on the side of my suit or sleeves or everything else as much as possible because the verse says, and it’s John the Baptist talking, he says, he must increase, but I must decrease.
And that’s a call to mission for me, because that is. What I want to stand on. I want to have the passion of racing supported by the purpose of my faith and have that be the overall mission because I’ve always said that, you know, if you reach success at this level in racing, It’s completely pointless, and you’re a complete failure if you don’t do anything with it.
So my goal is to reach people, provide some hope, maybe provide some truth, and at the end of the day, be excellent at what I do. I mean, winning races is a pretty good opportunity to, share the gospel with people. So the goal is to be excellent, but also to, you know, be good at what I do. You know, reach people for this mission.
So , I’ve never been a race car driver or anything of that for full disclosure. So some of my questions are just coming from many, many documentaries that I watch. And I’m, I’m, I’m just a fan. So the competitiveness, , where do you get that drive from? Like, where does that come from?
It has to be at least a little bit genetic. My mom, she was a phenomenal basketball player and tennis player. Wow. And I think that when I came about, she didn’t hold back on me whenever we were competing against each other. So but it’s, it’s kind of cool to see that natural. You were getting beat up by mom in basketball.
Oh, absolutely. She did not. That’s amazing. Yeah, no, but it’s great to have someone like that, that like, shows you how to bring that nature out, bring that drive out, and not like, to put you down, but to like, pull you deeper into that passion. I think that’s the big thing. what a blessing. I think that’s an amazing story and , one that I can definitely attest to.
To and having people in my life like that, that, you know, pushed me to be competitive and to want to do other things. And I, the way I look at it is just to make,, some use and do some good with time that we’ve been blessed to have on this earth. Like, that’s just the way I look at it. So that’s, it’s a great, it’s a great thought.
So, as you’ve been kind of navigating your way , the, in the IndyCar world , and I, I want to go a little bit further into maybe Prey. com, some of the crowdfunding collaboration, and just what that means overall, because I think it’s unique and I think it’s special. Nothing against other sponsors or against other things, obviously, but just the, the platform and what you’re doing, I just think , it’s different.
Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, so the cool thing about the sport that I’m in being a race car driver is that it’s not just about the individual behind the steering wheel. It’s about the team around him as far as the racing team goes as well as.
The business side of the team. I mean, I have a good group of managers around me and, you know, when this opportunity came about with pay. com, it was, it was a miracle, honestly. I mean, I don’t really understand how it came about, but it happened at the right time when we needed it to. But it’s kind of cool.
And it’s a unique situation that we’re in because most times brands come on board with drivers. The, the drivers may not support their full mission or they get called into action and they may not be. Totally aligned with what they want to achieve. And for me, I feel like this is a platform I want to use.
So of course I wanna use brands that believe in my mission on and off the racetrack. And so having credit.com on board where their mission is to make prayer a priority has allowed me to kind of like go full on into supporting them as a brand and them supporting me as a driver. Mm-Hmm. . So they wanna see me get race wins, but they also wanna see me reach people.
And so that’s kind of the cool thing about it. And you know, this crowdfund deal. I’m probably not the best one to speak about it. There’s more people than I, but like that, like I said, I have a good team around me that kind of has provided that opportunity for people to jump on board and support the mission with us.
And the goal in the future is that we could have our own team to you know, make the choices on what brands we have on the side of the car and have. Have a voice in that sense, because when you’re talking to any car racing and you’re going to any 500 and it’s 300, 000 live in attendance, audience fans, plus the million people watching around the world, you want to have an impact and you want to have an impact that is positive and hopeful and truthful.
And I’m not saying that all the other brands aren’t. I’m just saying that I think it’d be very nice to have a car that is fully focused on providing that for the fans. Hmm. Amazing. So let’s talk a little bit about the season, , like, and how it’s going and just your plans for the future. , so how’s the season going?
Yeah. So this is my second year in IndyCar. This is my first year with my new team, which is AJ Foyt Racing. And the cool thing about this year is that I’m driving a Chevrolet. Last year, I was in a Honda and I’m not challenging any brand with one or the other. Yeah. I’m a little biased at the moment but you know, the joke was last year that I was going to have to change my middle name to Civic or something.
So I’m glad that I get to keep my name. Oh, that’s keep the bow tie on. That’s cool. Yeah, but it’s been a, it’s been a very good year so far. We just finished up any 500 in May. I led 23 laps, which was the 3rd most of the year there which was not something I was expecting to do. But it was a great opportunity and it was one of the coolest experiences of my career is leading an event like that with guys that I’ve been growing up watching legends of the sport sitting in my rearview mirrors, which is.
A unique opportunity. Man, what was that feeling? Like, take us back just for a moment. If I may, like, what was that feeling? Like, that’s amazing. How could that experience even have felt? It’s amazing. It felt, it felt so good and it felt so right too.
That was the crazy thing, you know, I thought the nerves would have hit me in that moment, but it was like, Nope, this is right. This is what we’re supposed to be doing. So head down and keep trucking forward. So the way that we got to the lead. It was on a pit stop cycle and I was sitting just out, just inside the top 20 and working my way up to the field.
And during the caution flag, everyone decided to pit in front of us. So the only car that was left in front of me was the pace car. And so my eyes were massive because I realized what we had just done. Your eyes must have been like, holy smoke. Smoke. Yeah, it was insane. So super cool. But it was definitely one of those moments where like, oh wow, this is real.
This is happening. All right, take a deep breath. Lord, I’m trusting you. Thank you. So pretty cool. Yeah, that’s definitely, I’m not saying that all these moments aren’t prayer moments, but that’s one right there where I’m getting a little nervous over here just thinking about it. Got a little nervous. I’m in the studio and I’m nervous just thinking about being in like seeing that pace car and be like, wow, this is happening.
Yep. That’s awesome. So, so plans for the future. I mean, give us , some of the plans going forward , and like what’s up on the horizon, like what’s next on the schedule. Well short term, we are heading to Monterey, California next for a race there, which is one of my favorite tracks that we have here in North America.
It’s where I got my last victory. And that was the last place that I, I ran at an IndyCar where I had my best finish. So I am very excited about that, but more long term. I’m hoping that I can get. Some more success under my belt as an IndyCar driver. It’s a tough series these days, super competitive.
So you have to be perfect on the days that you get the opportunity to be at the front of the field. And even then you have to have a little bit of opportunity on your side. So I think that’s kind of in the, in the career picture. We’re going to focus on getting some good results this season and hopefully signing a second year with this team that I’m with.
This fall, I’m actually getting married. I have met Wow! Congratulations! Thank you. Yes, it’s exciting. So, we’re entering that season of wedding planning and chaos that goes along with that. Wow, that’s absolutely amazing and and congratulations. Like, I, I like to see that. I like to see from,, individuals that are in very , public places and public views , still doing, , marriage and still, you know, going through that sacrament and going through that and like, and, there’s a lot of, a lot of, and this isn’t a political show, so I’m not going to go down that route, so don’t worry, but I just mean like you’re, it’s, To me, it’s being a role model in terms of just living your life and still supporting the family structure.
Like I’ll say it like that. Like, I think it’s amazing. And I don’t think it’s something that we should we should fret from. I think it’s, it’s great. I’d love to hear it. And I love to see, and I know a lot of people that’ll be following you on social media and otherwise, and they’ll see that. And that’s still, let’s, you know, our kids know that let’s everybody know, like, Hey, it’s okay to have a family.
It’s cool. Yeah. Well, I think it’s kind of God’s design in a way you know, to have that family and I wouldn’t be here in my spot in life without my family. I wouldn’t be who I am without that. So I want to carry that on. That’s true. God gave you that mom that was beating you up on you in basketball, man.
Got that competition into you, ingrained that. Now look at you. You’re an IndyCar driver. What? God’s plan. Absolutely. I love it. This is a great story. It is. It’s amazing. Oh final question for you. I know you, you got a busy schedule but final question, what keeps you, what keeps you motivated? What keeps you going?
What keeps you, and I asked this question because, you know, we’re coming to the other side of the, of the pandemic. A lot of people that maybe are in transition right now, and maybe they’re, you know, not going through the best of times or otherwise. And like what keeps you strong? What keeps you going when the times get rough, let’s say.
That’s a great question. I’ve always said that in racing, you get the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and that’s actually because we’re just driving fast, but at the same time, when you’re as competitive as I am, and you pour in so much of your life into doing something that you love and have a passion for, and you feel like you should be doing those days that hit hard on both ends of the scale, those And so for me, along my journey, I have found my faith to be my, my rooted foundation, and that’s what I have to have on those highs and those days.
I mean, I think that those low days, it’s tough to have something to kind of lift you up and having your identity tied to something that you’re not comfortable with. outside of yourself, outside of the results. And in a result driven industry, it’s tough to not look at the number on the board and say, that’s how good I am, when God calls us to so much more than just a number on a board.
And then on the high days, I think it’s the same way. I mean, we have to have the humility in those moments of recognizing, like, God, this is a gift from you. And in your grace, you’ve given me the opportunity to achieve this, to be this, to, to experience this. And I thank you for this opportunity. And I pray that you’ll do it again.
And But I’m thankful for this one, and I think that you have to have that on both ends of the spectrum. And, you know, one thing I’ve been learning this year is that there’s a verse that I, I came out of the pandemic with 2020 was kind of a transition year for me. It was either a make it or break it season in my career, and James one was kind of my verse of the year.
And that’s consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds, because you know, the testing of your faith produces perseverance. So let perseverance finish its work, so you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. And I think what I got from that verse was more of the second part of of when you face trials many times, a kind, let it finish its work.
This is all for a purpose. This is all in God’s plan. This is all in God’s plan. And you can consider it good in a moment, even when it doesn’t feel like it. But I was not considering the first part of that, which was consider it pure joy. And I think this year I’ve been learning to have joy because I’m not putting my hope in the plans that I feel like God has set over me.
I’m putting my My hope and who he is rather than the plans and that has changed my view on things changed my perspective on things I can have more joy in those moments Because it’s not a matter of am I hitting the check boxes? Am I hitting the marks? Am I hitting the steps on the way to this plan that I have set before myself?
I think proverbs talks about it. I think it’s proverbs 16 maybe But it says man plans his way, but the lord establishes his steps And so for me that’s kind of been my goal this season is that I may not You Be able to know what’s ahead of me. I can work on making the plans, but I have to turn everything over to God.
I have to die to the plans that I have set for myself. The success I may have told myself that I will achieve. The, anything that might happen in the future. I have to put all of my hope in who He is and then go to work. And when I go to work, I can work fully because of that. So And it’s, it’s a tough balance, right?
We don’t, we don’t want to just sit on the sidelines and wait for God to do something. And that’s not what He’s telling us to do. He wants us to go work excellently, be called to excellence because of who He is and who we are to Him. And at the same time, He wants us to achieve great things, but it’s not up to us, it’s up to Him.
So that kind of turning it over and having joy in the midst of all of that is a lesson I’ve been learning this year and it’s something that I’m, I’m striving to achieve in the future. Yeah, man, I love it. You got, you got me all fired up over here. I’m sure the audience is fired up as well. If people want to, want to follow up, they, they want to follow your journey, follow your social media, , like , give us some of the handles.
I’m on most social medias at Stingray Rob. That is Stingray R O B. B, B, two B’s on Rob. My website is thingwriterob. com. Same thing, R O B B. And then if you guys want to follow along on the NTT IndyCar series. This year, we’re currently broadcasting on NBC Sports Broadcasting app, which is Peacock TV, or on the major streaming network, NBC Sports.
Some of the races are on different channels, but those are the main ones you can follow along with and support us when you can. Come to a race. I always tell people, if you want to get Come to a race. Yeah. Because there is nothing like it. So there you go. I completely agree with that. And then everybody listening, just so you know we’ll put all those links , into the show notes so you can go check out what Stingray Rob is up to.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe button. We have, or that follow button. You might be listening on Spotify. I don’t know. We got many more mission based. Individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing.
This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new stories and hopefully new inspiration to help you along your way and along your journey as well. Stingray Rob, Hey man, I really appreciate you making some time for us over here at Mission Matters in wish you much more continued success.
Awesome. Thank you.