At age 20 Matt Reilly was hired on at the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving as a mechanic to maintain and build Formula Ford race cars. He was later promoted to the role of instructor and became the youngest instructor to be hired. This environment proved to be a great teaching ground to develop his driving, instructing and communication skills while working with a talented pool of professional instructors and racers. Over the years Matt has taught for numerous racing schools and is currently working as the instructor supervisor for the Ford Performance Racing School which recently moved their headquarters to Charlotte Motor Speedway.

 

Matt has a great aptitude of teaching numerous disciplines behind the wheel: Road Racing, Advanced Road Racing, High Performance Driving, Car Control, Anti Terrorist Courses, Stunt Driving, Defensive Driving and EVOC. Besides driving schools Matt has used his talents behind the wheel in the film industry as a precision driver shooting numerous commercials and industry footage along with stage reveals. He has also worked with the majority of car manufactures and tire companies, designing, planning and managing their dynamic driving events such as sales training, consumer marketing events, PR/Media launches and product testing/development. He has further developed his communication skills as a featured guest on live radio shows both local and national news broadcasts.

 

He started his racing career behind the wheel of an Austin Healy Sprite, competing in small bore production classes in SCCA competition. He first started at Solo 1 events then moved up to Regional and National level of racing before expanding to race go karts, Showroom Stock, Formula Mazda and numerous GT classes. In addition to road courses, he has also competed in Stock Cars on dirt and paved ovals. His talent helped him win three drivers championships which fueled his dream to compete on the professional level. 

 

While instructing NASCAR star Bill Elliott, he convinced Matt to try his hand at NASCAR competition. Matt showed he was up for the challenge and competed successfully in the NASCAR Southwest Tour and Winston Race classes. During this time, he built his reputation around the NASCAR garage as a road course ringer. While helping coach 30 drivers on their road racing techniques, two of Matt's students named Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Sr. won races on the Sears Point circuit under his coaching. Matt's received an offer from Dale Earnhardt Sr. to start a driver development program for his famed DEI race team in Mooresville, NC. This enabled Matt to compete in the highly competitive NASCAR environment. Unfortunately, just as Matt moved his family South, the new program was put on hold due to Dale's death at Daytona.

 

In 2006, Matt's family was shaken to the core when his Mother In law was killed in a crosswalk she was hit by a 17 year old teen driver that was texting and driving. After the accident, Matt was contemplating his next venture when he met NHRA Top Fuel racer Doug Herbert who had just lost both his sons in a horrible car crash. Matt and Doug joined forces and created the non profit charity, B.R.A.K.E.S, teaching defensive driver training to young teens and their parents. With Matt's passion for teaching and tireless efforts to grow the charity, the program took off and became one of the most successful Nationwide teen driver programs: training over 40,000 students, at no cost!

 

Whether you are interested in gaining knowledge of your exotic SportsCar performance limits or wanting to shave tenths of a second off your lap times, Matt has the experience and ability to coach drivers to perform at their best!