{"id":90918,"date":"2024-01-09T19:18:20","date_gmt":"2024-01-09T19:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/di-30-under-30-2023-mike-costic\/"},"modified":"2024-01-20T23:50:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T23:50:12","slug":"di-30-under-30-2023-mike-costic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/di-30-under-30-2023-mike-costic\/","title":{"rendered":"DI 30 Under 30 2023: Mike Costic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m the background guy,\u201d Mike Costic proudly admits. \u201cI pride myself on being the \u2018find-it guy.\u2019 If a part can\u2019t be found, I get a phone call or a text, and I can usually track it down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what gives me the most joy in motorsports is being able to get the job done when people will falter,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s my happy moment in racing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Costic hasn\u2019t only just been the \u201cgo-to-find-it-guy\u201d for racers. Before securing his full-time position with Summit Racing Equipment, the 29-year-old had held numerous roles in the sport and even dabbled behind the wheel as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was Costic\u2019s grandfather who introduced the family to motorsports. He was an infield official at a circle track because he had six sons and wanted to have something all of them could do. It didn\u2019t take long before Costic\u2019s dad found himself at a dragstrip and became infatuated with the quarter-mile, straight-line sport.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Costic couldn\u2019t wait to get behind the wheel, that so much so, right after he received his driver\u2019s license he took his daily driver, a 1997 Chevy S10 single cab, straight to Thompson Raceway Park in Thompson, Ohio.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just a regular street truck. I didn\u2019t do anything different from that until I got into our race car [a 1962 Chevy Biscayne], which is a low-to-mid-9-second quarter-mile car, and that was when I was 19.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

However, when Costic was 16 years old, he found himself in another role at the track.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI started doing video of our car to get the chassis setup correctly, and another racer saw that I was taking video, and he asked if I had ever taken photos. I was like, \u2018No, but I\u2019m not opposed to it,\u2019 and he handed me his camera.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In Costic\u2019s words, things \u201cwent crazy\u201d from there. Before he turned 21, he was published 12 times in four different publications, and even made a Facebook page where he would share his work that quickly gained popularity. Additionally, Costic was the track photographer at Quaker City Motorsports Park in Salem, Ohio, and he\u2019s worked alongside Bryan Epps and Mike Davis, who is the track photographer at Summit Motorsports Park.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then the pandemic hit and Costic had to pivot.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI took it upon myself \u2013 I was actually sitting in the parking lot at Summit Racing, and I made a video saying, \u2018Hey, you know, all these tracks are closed for the time being, and I want to give back in any way that I can to the racetracks. They\u2019ve given us a place to race for all these years, and they haven\u2019t really asked a whole lot of us other than to show up. Well, now is our time to support them.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Costic turned his words into actions by volunteering at tracks that were eventually allowed to open during 2020, doing whatever the track needed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou need grass mowed, you need a starter, you need this, you need that. I\u2019ll figure it out,\u201d he explains. \u201cDragway 42 called and said that they needed help in the water box one weekend. Then, I went to the starting line position, and now I\u2019ve been all over the racetrack. The only thing that I haven\u2019t done there is prep and take people\u2019s money at the front gate.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, Costic is proud of his role at Summit Racing Equipment, a journey he began seven years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI started three days after I graduated from college,\u201d Costic explains. \u201cI went in at the end of college to a job fair at Summit because I knew a couple of guys that worked there.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy degree is in graphic design with a minor in marketing, and I just went in to have interview experience. Just so happens one of the guys we raced with was the guy that picked up my application,\u201d Costic continues. \u201cI lucked into an entry-level position there as a merchandiser in the retail store in Ohio. I worked from that position to a retail salesman job. I got as much sales experience as I possibly could knowing that my ultimate goal was to end up in the motorsports division. Now, as of the beginning of this year, I transitioned from retail sales to motorsports. I get to talk to some of the biggest names, which is really cool.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Costic\u2019s future goals are to continue to learn as much as he can while he\u2019s at Summit and continue to bracket race.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

The post DI 30 Under 30 2023: Mike Costic<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated | Drag Racing News, Opinion, Interviews, Photos, Videos and More<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m the background guy,\u201d Mike Costic proudly admits. \u201cI pride myself on being the \u2018find-it guy.\u2019 If a part can\u2019t be found, I get a phone call or a text, and I can usually track it down.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s what gives me the most joy in motorsports is being able to get the job done when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,78117,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-race-pages","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91090,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90918\/revisions\/91090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}