Blake Lothian is living the fast life and living his dream as a 23-year-old NASCAR driver.
“I just stumbled across it on TV and was, like, ‘Man, there’s, like, cars going around in circles. It looks amazing.’ I just fell in love with it instantly,” he said.
The Wellesley High School graduate will return to the New Hampshire Motor Speedway to race in the NASCAR truck series on Saturday. He was 7 years old when he first ventured to the Granite State raceway with his family.
“We’ve always felt that our kids need to do something that they’re passionate about,” his father Dan said.
The younger Lothian started his racing career at 16, driving go-karts and even won a championship at Louden. In 2019, he joined NASCAR as part of a competitive diversity program.
“At some point, he said to me, ‘Mom, do you think I can do this?’ We were watching a race. I think he was in fifth or sixth grade. I said, ‘I think you can do anything you want to do,'” his mother Cindy said.
Lothian said part of his attraction to NASCAR is speed. He said he loves going fast.
“It’s a surreal feeling,” he said. “The sound, the feeling, the smell inside the truck, there’s nothing like it.”