The motor racing world is littered with the fallen careers of unbridled young racers who never ran out of talent but simply ran out of money.
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Canberra's Zach Bates is trying very hard not to be one of them.
A former kart racing star, a winner of record nine rounds of the Toyota 86 one-make series last year, in which all cars are identical, and the current NSW titleholder in the open-wheel Formula Ford category, the 18-year-old ACT college student is on the cusp of his dream of racing professionally if all the cards fall the right way.
But he knows he still has to keeping pushing, desperately hoping to catch the eye of a wealthy sponsor or a V8 Supercar team owner who will share his belief that he has, as they call it in the moneyed business of top-ranked motor racing, "the goods".
So this weekend he is venturing far outside his comfort zone, racing a hulking V8-powered Mustang in the Trans-Am series at Sydney's Eastern Creek.
These raw, thundering race cars are about as far from his regular track experience as he's ever likely to encounter.
It's a car borrowed from his uncle, who bought the Mustang to have some occasional weekend fun and graciously agreed to let one of motor racing's brightest young talents hopefully demonstrate his versatility.
And maybe, just maybe, with some on-track success - although he can't do all the national Trans-Am series rounds because he's still studying for his HSC - get a crack at the big time which in Australia is the Super 2 feeder category for the premium V8 Supercars.
"Gee, how do I describe them [Trans-Am cars]?," Bates speculated.
"They are big, they're fast, heaps of power, really not much braking to speak of, and the tyres . . . well, they get soft quickly and then the car rolls around on its sidewalls and squirms a lot under power.
"So, yeh, it's totally different to anything I've raced before."
Bates, the cousin of multiple Australian rally champion Harry Bates but attempting to forge a very different path in motor racing, knows that trying to get on the front row of the grid with a one-lap qualifying dash in the Mustang will be carefully managing the rapid brake and tyre degradation.
"You really only get one chance, one lap while the car is optimised; you have to get everything right for that qualifying lap," he said.
The Trans Am rookie is racing against others, many of them part-timers, who have been in the category for years, as well as a bunch of other young drivers endeavouring to clamber up the greasy pole of becoming a fulltime racer.
One advantage is that he knows the Eastern Creek track very well; he has won there before in other categories.
But nonetheless, finger-tipping the heavy Mustang into the long turn one at 250km/h in top gear will be a unique experience.
"I'm trying to soak up as much information as I can from people who have done this before and I'm lucky to have people around me like Dad [experienced racer and advanced driver trainer Rick Bates] who have been here before," he said.
"But in the end, it's all down to me and getting it right."
