Champion IndyCar Pit Crew Member Downshifts for Slower Pace on the Farm

Scott Davin is a veteran member of the pit crew for world champion IndyCar driver Alex Palou of Ganassi Racing. Off the track, Davin is a new farmer, putting down roots on his southwest Indiana property and finding mentorship from neighbors and farmers on YouTube.

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Meet Scott Davin

Davin grew up on a family farm in Virginia but left to pursue a career in the racing industry. He and his wife purchased some property in southwest Indiana 20 years ago, and when the 134-year-old farm across the road was listed for sale last year, they jumped at the chance to live the country life. 

Now the farm helps Davin reconnect with his roots and provides a getaway from the hectic life of racing. He’s enjoying learning about regenerative agriculture and getting tips from nearby farmers and those on YouTube.

Episode Highlights

• Davin fell in love with racing going to the track with his dad, who raced open-wheel cars and sports cars.
• Davin’s position in Alex Palou’s pit crew is the air jack. He jacks the car up, takes the outside rear tire off, makes sure all tire changes are done correctly, then drops the car. “He’s at 18,000 RPMs leaving the pit box,” Davin says. “We’re just a tick over four seconds for tires alone, and for tires and fuel, anywhere between five and a half to six seconds.”
• Davin’s family farmed in southeast Virginia. He left to follow his racing dream in Indianapolis but now he and his wife own a small farm two hours outside the city.
• While he admits he’s “a baby” at farming, he’s learning from neighbors willing to mentor him and from farmers on YouTube.
• Davin says he wants to bring the racing mentality to his farm, focusing on precision and neatness. He currently has some row crops and cattle on pasture.

Links and Resources

Transcript

Please note, this transcript has not been edited.

Lisa Foust Prater: Welcome to the 15 Minutes with a Farmer Podcast from Successful Farming, I’m your host, Lisa Foust Prater. My guest today is Scott Davin, a veteran member of the pit crew for world champion IndyCar driver Alex Palou of Ganassi Racing. Off the track, Davin is a new farmer, putting down roots on his Indiana property and finding mentorship from neighbors and farmers on YouTube.

In each episode, I have a quick 15 minute conversation with a farmer to hear their story and share their experience, expertise, and life lessons. 

Well, I have to tell you that growing up, my house was a two sport house. We had boxing and we had racing and my dad was, owned an auto body shop, was a big car guy, loved racing and, we loved watching races together. And it’s one of my most fun memories with my dad was just watching races and talking about cars and seeing things happen in the pits. So I’m really excited to talk to you today.

Scott Davin: Well, thank you. you. I’m flattered. Thank you. Good to be here.

Lisa Foust Prater: So I understand that you also were exposed to racing at an early age from your own father and that he inspired you with his love of racing. So tell me about that.

Scott Davin: Yeah, it goes back to day one really. Being at the track with my dad, my dad raced open wheel cars and sports cars. Yeah, and just got born into it. Cars in my hands when I little baby and going to the races as a young boy and young man and then moved away from home, which is on the East Coast, Virginia Beach, Virginia and moved here to Indianapolis for a chance to win the Indy 500.

Lisa Foust Prater: That’s amazing. What a dream. You you think about when you’re a kid and you’re watching the races and you see all the people that are involved in a team, you know, the driver obviously, but the whole team around them and just seeing that all come together and then to have experienced that kind of success in your own career and with your team, that’s so exciting.

Scott Davin: Yeah, it’s a dream. is. It’s very glamorous on the outside, but there’s quite a bit of effort and pain that goes in to get the finished product to the viewer at home. I run the air jack. I’ve done outside rear. But yeah, I’m on the 10 car with Alex Palau. This is my 28th season in IndyCar. And yeah, I’ve been doing the air jack for, well, since 14, I guess it would be, 2014. Before that, I did outside rear. Yeah, most of my career.

Lisa Foust Prater: So tell me about that air jack position and what exactly that means to people who don’t follow racing so closely.

Scott Davin: Okay, yeah, well, it’s kind of a quarterback role. It all starts with the air jack and then it ends with the air jack. It’s a precision type position.

We measure it very closely and spent a lot of time practicing and training. I’m a 53 year old guy competing with much, much, my outside tire guy is 23. And he’s one of the top guys. All of our guys on our car are at the tip of the spear when it comes to pit stops and which kind of portrays our entire team. Our entire team is pretty elite. so, yeah, so I jack the car up. We have an air gun that’s a quick disconnect. And then I take the outside rear tire off. And then I concentrate on the other the other tire changes make sure they’re done when they’re done. I drop the car and normally he’s you know 18,000 rpms leaving the pit box Yeah, and so tires alone were just to tick over four seconds and Tires and fuel Anywhere between five and a half to six seconds for all that to happen.

Lisa Foust Prater: He’s out of there. That’s incredible. It’s like watching a ballet. I mean, like everything is so choreographed and everybody knows what they’re doing and they’re right in their spot doing their thing. And when it goes like you plan it to, it’s just, amazing the speed that that all happens in that short amount of time.

Scott Davin: It is. It’s a team. And when you get, you know, five guys working together as one, it’s pretty interesting. Yeah. It’s pretty good.

Lisa Foust Prater: I would imagine the race day, the pressure, all the planning, all the practice, and then just like the pressure and excitement of race day. It must just be just a crazy day.

Scott Davin: Race day? Yeah, it is. I mean, it’s like any other professional sports, athletic sports competition. There’s a tremendous amount of effort, training, practice, and then it’s all executed as one. And that’s pretty interesting. It’s a long, long days and long hours.

Lisa Foust Prater: I’m sure it’s so fun to watch. And when it everything comes together, it’s just it’s a beautiful thing. So tell me about your background in agriculture and that influence on you growing up.

Scott Davin: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, from a kid, my family farmed in southeastern Virginia. They were growers there. And in fact, the land we farmed dated back to the King of granted by the King of England to our family. So that’s kind of neat. But I trended to a different path and went racing and now I’m coming back to it. My wife and I bought some land about 20 years ago and then right across the street from our property, it’s Southwest Indiana, a 134 year old farm became available and the boss, my wife said, I want it. said, okay. And the next day we made an offer and here we are. We’ve got 55 acres total. then we we have row crops on 15, 20 acres of it. And then we have 30 acres of pasture.

We’d like to get more. We’re excited learning about farming. The nuts and bolts of it, you know, and bringing a, if you will, an IndyCar mindset to it, know, detail-oriented, you know, precision, you know, view of farming.

I’m just a baby really in it. My wife is really into it too and we’ve been our goal is to have a regenerative style farming culture at our house our farm there yeah yeah it makes sense to me so I like I like that you know nothing goes to waste and so we’re we’re pretty we’re pretty stoked for this this part of it.

Lisa Foust Prater: That’s so great. So you mentioned that you have some, a little bit of row crop and then you have pasture. You’re in Indiana, I’m assuming, are you corn and soybeans? Is that what you’re planning for the crops? And then what about the pasture? Tell me about like livestock endeavors or plans.

Scott Davin: Yeah, well, we’re learning to grow grass. That’s where it starts. so I spent an ungodly amount of time watching Joe Saladin and Greg Judy, their YouTube channels and learning how to grow grass and caring for the stock and our flock. We have 40 chickens. And so we have a good time collecting eggs. We just had a silky chicken born. So that’s kind of cool. That was our first animal born on our farm.

Lisa Foust Prater: That’s sweet. I love that. That’s one to remember. So are you looking at any like cattle or sheep or hogs or any other sort of larger animals?

Scott Davin: So right next to our property is basically a 100 acre ranch and that rancher leases my 30. And so he’s kind of like my mentor teaching me the ways. So there’s, I guess we had about 60 head last season. And in fact, I’m going to pick up some beef from the processing plant tomorrow, matter of fact.

Lisa Foust Prater: Excellent. That’s a super reward. So yeah, there’s nothing like that. That beef that you know, you know where it comes from and you know, it’s going to be wonderful. Yeah.

Scott Davin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nowadays, we don’t know where our food comes from. so many people just think it comes from the Meijer so it’s neat to teach the grandkids. You know, they love going out and look, they want to pet the cattle. Sure. Yeah. Okay. If you can catch them. They love doing that. But yeah, so there’s about 60 on there and we’d like to get more.

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah, yeah. it’s, it’s, you know, a lot of farmers have day jobs, jobs off the farm, they and or their spouse. I mean, it’s a very, very common thing, even for even the big farmers, a lot of them have a job off the farm. In many cases, it’s for health insurance or, you know, other reasons. But, but that’s not uncommon at all. But now here you are, like, you know, you have this big job with, you know, you’re working in IndyCar races, and then you come home and you have this farm, must be, it’s a different speed, a different pace of life. It must be a relaxing and kind of great experience to come home to that.

Scott Davin: Yeah, it’s pretty surreal really. The two worlds are so different so that’s why I’m bringing this IndyCar, if you will, mentality, I call it, to farming. This is a multi-gazillion dollar facility with the best of everything. And then I go you know, drive two hours to my farm and, and so bringing that type of mentality to it, you know, detail oriented, neat and tidy, precision type stuff. Sometimes my wife goes, Hey, we’re not, we’re not on Indy cars right now. We’re, we’re just building a fence. Yeah. Yeah. So

Lisa Foust Prater: We can take a beat. You know, farmers almost all have some sort of mechanic in them, you know? I mean, they’re very good at fixing things, at innovating, coming up with creating a tool or a machine or whatever it is to suit their needs. You know, the mechanic aspect and the farmer aspect, I mean, those things feel very tied together. And even if a farmer doesn’t have the inclination or the time to like be their own mechanic, they know that having a good mechanic on their team is a huge priority because if your machinery is not functioning when you need it to function, everything stops. So I think that’s a really interesting sort of crossover for you of having all those mechanical abilities and, and, you know, putting that to work on your own farm.

Scott Davin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, um, yeah, it’s, there’s a lot of zero fail missions. I call it, you know, um, when your cattle are dependent on, on, you know, the water and the feed or the, you know, making sure that the ground or getting the crop in before, you know, this big storm comes. And if your combine or your tractor is, is offline, we can have that.

So having the mindset to be prepared. I think farmers are tuned into that and most all of them can fix anything on the farm because they can’t afford to call somebody. So they pick it up. Most of the farmers I know, they’re guys that know everything. Hey, do you know how to know somebody who puts the septic in?

Yeah, I know how do that. Yeah. And that’s it. you know, they’re old school farmers. just get it done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause they have to. They got people and, and, and timeframes and, you know, I guess the bottom dollar.

Lisa Foust Prater: Absolutely. So you mentioned that your neighbor farmer has been mentoring you and that is so fantastic. I know like for us, my husband and I, when we first started raising cattle, my father-in-law was a wonderful cattleman, but he was three hours away. We had our next door neighbor who was our mentor and he was the one who, if we had a question or we didn’t know what to do or we had a cow that was struggling or whatever it was, having problems with the calf he was right there for us. Having that sort of relationship is so important. I think especially when you’re dealing with livestock, because a lot of times you can be in one of those situations where it’s like, I have a calf who’s not thriving and I don’t know what to do. You know, sometimes you’re in a situation where you got to get on it right now. And having somebody close, you know, physically close who is willing to take on that mentor role for you is huge. You know, you can learn so much from those types of farmers. So I love it that you have someone close who’s mentoring you.

Scott Davin: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s in the South we call it, know, hospitality, Southern hospitality. And Southern Indiana is very much like that. All the neighbors are, you know, here’s my shirt off my back if you need it, you know. So it’s pretty tight community. Everybody kind of knows everybody and they’re all willing to help. At least the ones I’ve been in contact with. There’s been a handful of them that have been responsible for the success of our place, yeah, for sure.

We’re a small farm and really, you know, it’s insignificant when it comes to that. There’s so many big ones around us, but a little bit of detail we can get from them and our mentors. I’ll take advantage I can get.

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it takes all kinds of of farms and farmers to make the world go around. So I love it that you’re that you’re looking at this and, know, and this will be, suppose, you know, someday when you retire from racing, you’ll have this farm life waiting for you.

Scott Davin: Yeah, it’s waiting for me right now. 

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah, there’s always something to do. There’s always something waiting.

Scott Davin: It’s a target rich environment, I call it. I can stand on my porch and I can see, yep, there’s a project there I need. Yep, there’s a project I got to do there. Something’s broken over there, I’m sure.

Lisa Foust Prater: That is, I love that phrase. It’s a target rich environment. I’m gonna start using that myself. That’s excellent. I love that. It’s good way to phrase like I have so much to do.

Scott Davin: Yeah. I pick up those little phrases from some of our war fighters that we work with and, you know, they have that, you know, military vernacular and so I target a rich environment. I like it.

Lisa Foust Prater: That’s great. I love that. I love that. Well, I’m so excited to talk to you and meet you today and, and, um, you know, best of luck with everything on the farm and also for a safe and successful racing season. I know that’s kicking off in March and St. Pete. And then, you know, the 500 in May, I will be watching and I will also be impressing my family when I see you and I say, Hey, I know that guy. 

Scott Davin: Thank you. Well, it’s going to be an exciting year for us and looking forward to bringing a three-peat for the IndyCar Championship to Chip Ganassi Racing.

Lisa Foust Prater: Thank you for listening. Please subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Open the latest issue of Successful Farming and visit us online at agriculture.com for more interesting features and news for your farm and Join me next week for another episode of 15 Minutes With a Farmer.