For those of you who don’t know, I am sponsoring Zeeshan Deura in several ERSCA races this year. Deura has been competitive all year in the points battle. However, if you watch ERSCA you may not be familiar with who Zeeshan is. As part of our sponsorship deal, I wanted to shine the spotlight on a driver I feel is tragically underrated in ERSCA. Not as much now after teammate Joe Francis won last week and I hope everyone acknowledged the overall showing by GSR at Atlanta. Deura is also the team owner for Golden State Racing. There’s no time like the present so let’s find out who the man behind the wheel of the #10 car really is. Also, how freaking cool of a name is Zeeshan? (For reference, my government name is Terry so I’m easily impressed)
Humble Beginnings for Zeeshan
Zeeshan Deura started his career around Christmas 2018 after getting a steering wheel as a gift. What’s even crazier, is that around the same time he broke his right wrist. This meant that he would have to raise his iRating with one hand tied behind his back. No, not literally but damn close. Luckily, as Zeeshan put it, “You only really need your left hand for ovals, the right hand is just for balance.” Sounds easy enough, right?
Well, Zeeshan is still in high school. So on top of school work and social life, this kid in his spare time raced cars with one hand. Pretty impressive perseverance if you ask me. That same attitude was on display at Atlanta last week. When Zeeshan started 28th after not qualifying and rallied to a top 10. It’s not easy to battle through the pack in ERSCA and safely make it to the front, but Zeeshan made it look easy.
More than a Sim Racer
So, apparently Zeeshan doesn’t just race cars. He is also a cross country athlete. I’ve never been in shape enough to run more than 100 feet so I have a lot of respect for endurance running. It is clear though that Zeeshan will race anything, even himself. He has aspirations of hopping in a late model and turning some laps one day. A dream that has its beginnings from watching his favorite driver Danica Patrick in NASCAR. “It was really cool to watch a race and see a woman in the lead and not to mention she holds the Indy Car record for consecutive races without a DNF.” Patrick was heavily debated in NASCAR, but her talent was never in question. Similar to Zeeshan.
The kid is very talented, but he is still relatively new in comparison to some other ERSCA drivers. This is why you need to look for the 10 car on the SYM TV broadcast Monday because Zeeshan is gonna bring it every week.
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