We race because we are born with a competitive instinct. Anthropologists would probably tell us this dates back to our Neanderthal relatives who competed with each other for food. Theirs was a life-and-death competition; those who threw their spears with the most accuracy got the meat. They survived to pass on their genes to their offspring. The poorer spear-throwers fell by the wayside due to malnutrition, and were kept from passing their traits on – one of which was lack of skill with the spear. The concept is known as “natural selection.”