{"id":617119,"date":"2026-04-20T19:01:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T19:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/617119\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T19:01:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T19:01:12","slug":"nascar-drivers-surprising-day-job-catches-an-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/617119\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR driver&#8217;s surprising day job catches an eye"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">KANSAS CITY, Kansas (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kmbc.com\/article\/nascar-driver-making-people-look-twice-with-surprising-day-job\/71064386\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">KMBC<\/a>) &#8212; NASCAR driver Patrick Staropoli can give you a perfect description of what drivers will see this weekend, turning laps around the Kansas Speedway.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThere\u2019s so much of this that\u2019s hand to eye co-ordination,\u201d Staropoli said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">He would know plenty about that. Staropoli isn\u2019t just the driver of the No. 48 Big Machine Racing Chevrolet in the NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series, he\u2019s also an eye surgeon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cYou go into the clinic and you\u2019re talking to a patient, you\u2019re talking about their eye and what you\u2019re going to do to help them out and the other half they want to know how the race went,\u201d Staropoli said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">He returned to NASCAR in 2025 after putting his driving career on hold to focus on his other career.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Patrick has been a driver since he was a kid, and he always wanted to be a doctor, too. While in medical school he kept on racing, and ended up joining Big Machine Racing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThe autograph session, I had a lot of people ask me what kind of doctor I am and if I think they could swing by for an eye exam,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">At age 36, Staropoli loves bringing his two passions together.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cWe try to use the racing platform to raise awareness for things that are important to us in the medical field,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Staropoli started 24th and finished 14th in the Kansas Lottery 300 on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">By Eric Graves, Alan Shope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Kansas (KMBC) &#8212; NASCAR driver Patrick Staropoli can give you a perfect description of what drivers&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[712,49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-617119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}