Girls sure as hell CAN race!

I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy growing up, but only in the last couple of years or so have I really started to come out of my shell. I’m 15 years old, and I’m definitely not your average teenage girl. I’m actually Australian, and my dream is to become a NASCAR race car driver. Kinda quirky, huh? I hardly fit in at school at all, since I go to an all girls school. Everyone is all into make up, shopping, pop stars, getting dressed up, partying and the like.

And me? I’m into sports, racing, and bacon.

Unfortunately, racing is almost completely made up of guys. I’m very lucky in the sense that girls are actually allowed to race. You just don’t see them doing doing so. It’s not like the footy, where you have to wear those skimpy bikinis if you want to play on a girls team, otherwise, you can’t play at all. That just makes me want to barf.

I’ll ask you this before I tell you how I got into racing, otherwise you’ll probably think I’m insane. Have you ever just *known* that a certain career path or hobby was what you wanted to do for the rest of your life? No matter how crazy it may have seemed? Well that was exactly what happened when I saw racing for the first time. Just seeing the pure speed and skill these guys raced with was amazing. I knew from that day, that I wanted to be a racer.

The way I discovered racing was actually through an animated movie called Cars, which I’m sure most of you, if not all of you have heard of. Anyway, it was my favourite movie for a very long time. Then one day, I was all like; ‘I wonder if racing in circles actually does exist?’ Up until that point, I was only aware of F1 and V8 Supercars here in Australia. So after a Google search, that’s how I discovered NASCAR and my crazy journey would begin.

I’ll tell you right now that my mum was horrified when I told her I wanted to be a racer. When I was born, I believe she expected someone she could treat like her little princess, not a girl who acts like a boy half the time. She was constantly (and still is) trying to get the idea out of my head.

“Oh sweetie, I’m sure you’d much rather be an Architect than THAT.”

“Are you crazy? You’ll get yourself killed!”

“Well it’s not as though you’d actually make it into the big time anyway, so why bother? People start that sort of thing when they’re just kids.”

“How did you even get INTO this ‘racing’ thing anyway?!” (side note; all I told my mum was that I found an article on the internet. If I told her about the Cars thing, she’d think I was crazy)

It didn’t just stop there, and many times, I just felt like giving up. I needed to get a go kart quick smart if I wanted to have even a slight chance of racing professionally, and my mother would do anything to stop me. She was all about academics and going to University, and I couldn’t care less.I know school is important, but it’s not as important to me as it is to others.

I knew if I was going to get that go kart, I’d need to save up the money myself. I wasn’t (and still am not) allowed to get a job, so that would make things difficult. But I knew if I saved every cent I could, I would get there in the end. So bit by bit, that’s what I did. A few months down the track and I’ve almost saved $1000 dollars. I know it’ll be slow going, but it’ll only make me appreciate what I’ve got that much more in the end.

In the meantime, I’ve been able to get my hands on a wheel and pedal set for PC and have a subscription for iRacing which is an online simulator. Heaps of professional racers use it during the off-season to keep their skills up to scratch. I use a microphone to communicate with other drivers, and I often get criticised for being on there just because of my gender. But I can tell you right now, kicking their butts after all their trash talk is one of the best things that happens on that game.

I know that if I keep persisting and never give up, I’ll get that go kart and I’ll finally be a real racer. Being a NASCAR racer would be a dream come true, but one thing’s for sure; I’ll be racing because I love it, not because of fame or fortune.

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