If there’s one common theme in the way Maya Brandt does things, it’s that she always goes her own way.
That’s what her mother, Radhika Shah, said with a grin as she watched her 18-year-old daughter blazing at 100 miles per hour down the straightaway at the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research (NCCAR) on Sunday, Sep. 7 in a vehicle that she herself modified to be a race car.
“She’s very, ‘I don’t want any advice. I just want to do this my way.’ But she’s come a long way,” Shah said. “Pretty impressive. She’s just a go-getter.”
While she naturally worries about her daughter engaging in such risky activities, she’s proud of the ways she has learned to focus her energy and spirit.
“I worry about her high adrenaline, just her high energy,” she said. “When she was young, I worried a lot. Now that I see her channeling it in the right direction, the only thing that I worry about now is the danger of these sorts of things.”
Indeed, this drive was not just adrenaline seeking. The occasion was Bill’s Race, an event to raise charity and awareness for Parkinson’s disease. And it was personal for Brandt, whose longtime horseback riding trainer, Juliana Zunde, has been diagnosed with the condition. Brandt took inspiration from a charity project called Racing for ALS.
“I want to do something similar to what that ALS nonprofit was doing, so I decided to do raising awareness for Parkinson’s,” she said. “I saw an opportunity to create my own thing. My horseback riding trainer knows about this project; I definitely cried when I told her about it. It’s a great cause. It means a lot to me.”
Over the six years Zunde has known and coached Brandt, she’s developed a deeply maternal relationship with the teenager.
“If I could, I’d adopt her and take her away and make her my daughter. I love that child,” she said. “She has grown so much as a human being, as a rider. I mean, she’s just amazing.”
Zunde cried as well when Brandt told her about the project.
“I was totally in tears because I had no idea she was doing that. I had no idea that I was the inspiration for that,” she said. “And it’s quite amazing, and that is what’s so incredible about Maya. Because, like with the horse, when she sets her mind to it, she can go so focused, and she can get so amazing in execution that it’s just fabulous.”
The car itself is a 2009 Honda Fit, which Brandt chose because it’s a relatively cheaper car to rebuild. The process of modifying it involved months of tasks such as replacing the suspension, building the brakes, replacing the front axles, wiring a kill switch, installing a roll cage, and too many others to individually count. Brandt worked closely with her dad, Michael Brandt, who himself races cars at Virginia International Raceway and who instilled in his daughter her longtime fascination with fast cars.
A look inside the car while it was still in development. (Photo by Ben Crosbie/Chapel Hill Media Group)
Brandt organized a fundraiser and sponsors to cover the costs. The money left over from donations, as well as money earned from eventually renting out and selling the car, will go to the Parkinson’s Foundation. She hopes it will be about $3,000 to $5,000.
One of the sponsors was Chapel Hill Tire, which helped her mount the tires, wheel bearings, and studs on the car. Aaron Marcum, the manager of the auto shop’s Fordham Boulevard location, was impressed by Brandt’s initiative.
“I just think it’s really awesome to see a young person that’s that interested in racing and wanting to do all that on her own,” he said. “It’s pretty cool.”
The event on Sunday wasn’t a competitive race, but a series of practice runs. Going forward, Brandt plans to obtain a racing license in November and start racing competitively.
Brandt’s car in action at NCCAR. She drove it herself, with her dad as a passenger. (Photo by Ben Crosbie/Chapel Hill Media Group)
Now a senior at Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill, she plans to study mechanical engineering in college. Eventually she wants to engineer and build cars that are easier for people whose physical conditions make it difficult to drive, using her elderly grandfather as an example.
“Just creating things that make that easier for people so that they can still enjoy the freedom of life,” she said. “Allowing them to have that freedom for longer, even when their bodies aren’t letting them, trying to find solutions for that.”
She said working on this race car has accelerated her interest in these ideas.
“Through this project, I’ve really found that this is something that I enjoy, engineering for a purpose and not just to engineer stuff. It’s a lot more gratifying,” she said. “Like, it’s really nice to hear the cars go fast, but it’s also nice to know that you’re helping somebody who can’t help themselves.”
If you want to donate to Brandt’s fundraiser for Parkinson’s, you can do so at this link.
Featured photo by Ben Crosbie/Chapel Hill Media Group.
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