A Girl With Big Dreams.

Collete is a first-generation racer and had to find her foothold in the sport on her own. She is ultra-competitive by nature and as a kid she tried her hand at everything she could (competitive cheerleading, basketball, soccer, and track & field) but nothing ever “stuck” like racing.  She was also very curious, and would take apart remote controls, lawn mowers, and eventually cars.

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When she was 15 she discovered that racing was a sport, and found from internet research that the place to start from was racing karts!

She went with her dad to the local kart racing track for her to try it out and see if she liked it.

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After convincing her parents to let her try out the sport, she found a used go kart locally to get started, and with her parents made a deal to get her started.

She and her dad, Brooks Davis a Colonel in the ARMY, would show up at the track with her used kart, used race suit, and ready to learn. They spent many days testing to make Collete a better driver, and to dial in the kart to be fast.

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A few months later Collete started kart racing competitively, and by the end of that year she was winning races, and ultimately won her first karting championship in that first year. She has been quoted that, “It was a dream come true. It was just my dad and I out there competing against all these huge teams that had a lot of money and the newest equipment. Hard work and commitment pays off… by the end of the year some of those teams were coming to us to ask what our setup was. It was an amazing start into racing, and I immediately knew I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.“

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COLLEGE FOR ENGINEERING AT 16

 

Knowing she wanted to pursue a career in racing, she did everything she could to graduate high school early so she could make the next steps towards becoming a professional race car driver.

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She kept a normal high school schedule, took classes online, and attended a local community college at the same time to both earn credits toward accelerated graduation and to take automotive technology classes where she was able to work on cars every day.

All the extra work paid off and Collete was able to graduate high school at 16 years old, with a scholarship to attend one of the top engineering schools in the US – Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.  The school also happened to be located in Daytona Beach, Florida – a major US motorsports city. 

 

She attended ERAU for Mechanical Engineering with a focus on high performance vehicles and minor in entrepreneurship. Being in Daytona Beach, Florida was major factor in moving her racing career forward. Embry-Riddle would later become one of Collete’s first major sponsors that would propel her motorsports career forward.