Michelle Lackey shares her journey from racer to leader, and how she’s fueling a sense of purpose, pride, and passion at Alaska’s only full-service raceway.
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Show Notes:
In this episode of Mission Matters, host Adam Torres interviews Michelle Lackey, known as Lady Track Boss, from Alaska Raceway Park. Michelle talks about her mission to preserve and grow the motorsports community in Alaska, how she leads with transparency, and her newly published chapter, “Building a Community Around the Track,” in Mission Matters: Mission-Based Leaders Share Inspiring Stories on Leadership and Success (Business Leaders Edition Vol 11) From her grassroots leadership to launching Alaska Speed Week, Michelle is driving connections one race at a time.
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About Michelle Lackey
Michelle Lackey is the Owner and President of Alaska Raceway Park, widely recognized as one of the most scenic and celebrated motorsports venues in the world. As a leader in Alaska’s racing community, she oversees a premier complex that holds NHRA Division 6 and NASCAR sanctions, making it the state’s go-to destination for motorsports enthusiasts.
With a strong background in marketing, promotion, event planning, graphic design, and finance, Michelle brings a well-rounded skill set to every aspect of the racetrack’s operations. She’s also an accomplished racer herself—holding an NHRA Super Comp license, with titles as a champion bracket racer and part-time dirt track competitor.
About Alaska Raceway Park
Michelle Lackey is the Owner and President of Alaska Raceway Park, widely recognized as one of the most scenic and celebrated motorsports venues in the world. As a leader in Alaska’s racing community, she oversees a premier complex that holds NHRA Division 6 and NASCAR sanctions, making it the state’s go-to destination for motorsports enthusiasts.
With a strong background in marketing, promotion, event planning, graphic design, and finance, Michelle brings a well-rounded skill set to every aspect of the racetrack’s operations. She’s also an accomplished racer herself—holding an NHRA Super Comp license, with titles as a champion bracket racer and part-time dirt track competitor.
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 in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today is a very. Special episode, we’re bringing back a return guest, Michelle Lackey.
And I’m proud to announce that she is a newly released author in our recently released 11th edition of our bestselling business leader book series. Michelle’s known as the Lady Track Boss and she’s the over at the Alaska Raceway Park. First off Michelle, welcome back to the show. So good to see you.
Yeah, it’s good to see you too, Adam.
Alright, so we’ll definitely get into that. And just for everybody watching, I, I have one in my hand and I, I’m really excited about it. And so Michelle’s Michelle’s content was called Building a Community Around the Track. So we’ll talk about that. But before we do, we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute, Michelle, at Mission Matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives and experts.
That’s what we do. Michelle, what mission matters to you? The mission that matters most to me is just keeping Motorsports alive in, you know, in our community here in Alaska, but not, not just in Alaska. Across, across our great country Motorsport has been kind of a backbone to a lot of things over the years and I really feel like it, it is.
Our country and to our community and to our state as a whole. And so, so what I can do here is, you know, make, make our raceway the,
and, and for a long time. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And just to get us kicked off here, I don’t wanna assume that all our new listeners have maybe heard some of our previous content. So we’re gonna start with one of my favorite things, lady Track Boss. I mean, that’s what I’m talking about as a title.
Talk to me about like how you got started in this business. I. Well, motor sports is a family event. Event. My brother started racing here in the late eighties, and of course we all got drug along to come out to the raceway. As soon as I was old enough to drive, I was racing. And the same with my little brothers.
My parents took over the raceway with some other racers at the. 98 is when they took over solely. So my family’s run it for almost 30 years now. Wow. I ended up having a daughter in 97 and when that happened, instead of racing, I switched into the role of working behind the scenes in the tower.
And I’ve kind of been working here ever since. Did a lot of behind the scenes stuff. We started as a drag strip, but in 2016 we added a, a one third mile high banks paved oval, and it’s a NASCAR sanctioned track. And so at that time my dad was like, okay, you know, I’m building the track, but you’re gonna run it.
And so I started running that circle track and then took over for my parents completely in 2020. Wow. What’s one of your favorite parts about being in the business, like, about being in motorsports? Like what, what do you like about it? My favorite part about being in motor sports is the people. We have an incredible group of racers out here that have, have seen me grow up.
You know, I’ve seen them grow up. I’ve seen their kids and my kids. Kind of worked together on this and you know, people can be out there and they’ll be racing each other, but if somebody’s car breaks, you know, they’re the first ones to hop in and be there and, and help get them parts or get ’em whatever they need to get back on the track.
We have extended family now with the racers that have moved to different places across the globe. But our, our track family is what makes us all worthwhile. Hmm. And so your content for the book, building a community around the track, there’s a lot of different angles, a lot of different approaches you could have taken in your writing.
Why this angle? Like, like why this content? Like why was that important for you to publish? It’s important to me because as I. Look towards the, the leadership that I provide here at the raceway, and, and I feel this is important not only at in the racetrack setting, but in other businesses, is that you have, you have a community of people that are depending on you.
They, you know, I have people that are depending on me to make sure that the raceways in, in business and.
Servant leadership sort of.
We have, you know, our racers of course, that wanna have a place to come out and play. And we have our employees that are here, not because they’re making a million dollars because you don’t do that working in a raceway. Yeah. But they’re here because they love what they do and they, you know, they’re taking their time to be here.
We have our. Are here enjoying the races and, and being entertained. And they have, that’s what our goal is, is to entertain them. And then we have sponsors who are investing their hard earned dollars into what we’re doing so that we can continue to provide these things for everybody else. And so my whole, whole look at running the facility is trying to make sure that I’m, I’m keeping all of those user groups, satisfied as much as I can. Of course, you know, you can’t ever please everybody, but everybody’s getting their needs met without all of these people that are working together in this c.
So you grew up in this motor sports community and just in the community in general, as you mentioned. What are some of, now that you’re on the other side and you’ve been in this, in this position for a while, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, and you know, running the day to day what are some of the things that you find make this particular community so sticky?
Or, or just what makes it work? I think what makes our community work is that there’s, there’s transparency in what I’m doing. There is trust. The, the racers trust that I’m, you know, I’m here for the long haul. I’m here to help them keep our, our facility going. And I’m very clear with everybody about, you know, whatever setbacks we.
You know, I, I. Decision making as far as like, you know, hey projects that we need done. I, I listen to them when I do, you know, I ask for feedback and they, they give me feedback on, on rule changes and things like that. And it’s not that I let them run everything, but I, you know, I feel it’s important for us to make sure.
Specific things that we’re gonna be working towards, so that way the racers and my employees and, and the fans, everybody’s got buy-in because this is their, this is their track. You know, my name’s on the bottom line, but it’s, it’s all of our, it’s our playground and it’s what we wanna be doing. And so I need to get the feedback and stuff from everybody so that.
Yeah. So that the, the concept of communities, whether you’re building a community around a show, around a business like this has been something that is very it’s very it’s very current day. I think after COVID. I feel like a lot of a lot of this concept of wine to be connected and connectivity just to kind of whole new meeting.
If you were to give some advice. You know, to the new community builders, and it doesn’t have to be a motorsports, I just mean in general on, on how to start a community, how to, how to make it work. Like what kind of things would you tell them for those new community builders, let’s say. I would tell new community builders to make sure that they’re listening to the people in their community and that they’re, that they’re working really, really hard on communicating you know, your goals and your visions.
Making sure that that is expressed out so that people that you’re, you’re trying to get to be part of your community, understand what it is that they’re, they’re working towards. Communication is, is a really, really big thing. And, and don’t, don’t talk a whole lot about what you’re gonna do do.
People will see. From action, you know, they’ll get buy in with you. A lot of people come in and they’ll, they’ll talk really big about, you know, all of this stuff that’s gonna happen, but then it doesn’t happen. So it’s better to just let stuff happen and, and let that speak for itself. Everybody will, will kind of buy into it when, when they know that your heart’s in the right place and you’re doing what needs to be done.
Yeah. What let, let’s get into the racing side of things a little bit. So, new season. What’s up? Like, ta talk to me about the season. Talk to me about what you have planned. I. We have got so many things on the schedule for this year. So we kick off in two weeks, we start at our NASCAR track, so we’re nascar, that’ll be mid, mid-May, right?
Is that mid-May? Mother’s, mother’s Day weekend. So yeah, mother’s Day weekend. So we’re gonna be racing at the NASCAR track and the annex track. We’re gonna start at the drag strip a couple weeks later than usual, just because we’re, we’re running into little snafu with our, our construction project that we’re working on.
Have a whole season of racing ahead of us.
There’s a big this year called speed highlight everything that we can do. The raceway all in one day. We’re gonna have drifting oval racing a car show, drag racing and roll racing all in one day, and then that kicks off Alaska Speed Week, which is a drag and drive event.
The competitors have to race at Alaska Raceway Park, and then they have to drive their race car along this route that we have scheduled. And it’s about about 800 miles. And then we’re gonna set up a racetrack in the middle of an airport up in Tan and Race. For a couple days up there and then come back.
The challenge with having a drag and drive in Alaska is that we’re really the only racetrack in the state, right? So we, we have we’re trying to find locations where we can set up this like popup drag strips so that we have places to race. We’re adding in a concert this summer, so we have a young lady, Carson Gray, who is a recording artist in North Carolina, but she also races, legend cars.
And so she’s gonna fly up and sing on Friday, race on Saturday. And and then just her whole family’s coming up to have a good time, so. Just so much stuff going on. And then today we’re actually gonna be announcing that we’re gonna be doing a bump to pass race in August. So that is I don’t know what we’re gonna call it.
Maybe like a beater with a heater race or something. But basically it’s on the oval track. The guys, in order to pass a car, you have to hit it on the way. Oh, that sounds amazing. And there not to make you into the, the the tour guide or anything like that, but for people that are listening to this, even though I always do that to you for the record, yeah. But for people that, that have never either been to Alaska or like, let’s just say you’re racing tourist who haven’t maybe visited the track and are like, think or they’re watching this or listening to this, and they’re like, Hey.
Always wanted to go to Alaska. This is a great excuse, especially if you’re a motor, a motor sports enthusiast. Talk a little bit about just the infrastructure and how easy it is to get in, out, like amenities, like just a, just a little bit because I had that conversation with you recently ’cause I do wanna make it out to something this season to go see you and on and also to go check out some racing.
But I was like, maybe that’s helpful for the audience too. ’cause it can be a little intimidating if you’ve never been, I don’t know. Alaska is actually really easy to get to. When you come up by playing, you’ll fly into Anchorage, which is 45 minutes north of or 45 minutes south of where we’re at.
So fly in, rent a car. There’s plenty of hotels and restaurants and everything. So you’re so to plenty.
You can drive out to the raceway, hang out, and then from there there are so many things you can do. Right here in this area, there are helicopter tours that go out to the glacier that’s at the end of the valley that the track is in. There are four-wheeler tours. There’s loads of fishing. You can take a train tour and go north or south or.
Or if you’re so inclined, come up and be part of the, the Tundra tour, which is the part of Alaska speed. You don’t racers speed. There’s a small fee for that, but that includes all of your admission to all of the events as well as t-shirts and swag and stuff like that. And then you get to tour all the way around Alaska and get to see a lot of really, really cool things.
Plus you’ll be hanging out with a lot of people and doing motor sports stuff. So Alaska Speed Week is kind of a mini tour of the state on its own. Oh, get me excited every time we talk. I know. I’m trying to hook you in, man. Yeah, you got me hooked. Well well Michelle, this has been so much fun having you back on the show and getting to see what’s going on in the upcoming season and of course, celebrating our recently released.
Book. So for everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll definitely have some links in the show notes, so you can just click on the links, head on over, pick up a copy, and and read more of Michelle’s writing as well as our other authors in the book. That being said, if somebody wants to connect, follow up, I mean, I know I follow your Instagram, but Alaska Raceway Park in general, how do they do that?
Well, our website is race ak com. You can check us out there. We’re very active on Facebook and Instagram at Alaska Raceway. And if you wanna follow me, you can check out lady track com or follow me on Facebook or Instagram at LadyBoss as well. Amazing. And for everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll definitely put those links in the show notes so you can just click on ’em and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with us and you haven’t hit that subscribe or follow button, I don’t know what you’re waiting for. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, new guests, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along way your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button, Michelle, as. Always, thank you so much for coming back on the show, and I’m so excited to have you as an author in our recently released book. I’m just thrilled, so thank you. Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed this.