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Why A Female Racer Fought To Keep Her NASCAR Drive Alive

This article is more than 4 years old.

Compared with dozens of other off-season transactions in stock-car racing, Julia Landauer’s announcement this month that she’d be driving full-time for the PK Carsport team in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series this year only made a little blip. It deserved bigger.

After storming into stock-car racing with bright seasons in 2015 and 2016, Landauer, the 28-year-old New York native, Stanford graduate, corporate speaker and “Survivor” alum, had driven in only nine stock-car races in the last two years, all in the Pinty’s Series in Canada.

She is a lot more than a racer now. She could have called it quits, and people probably would have understood. But she is still at it. Why?

“I love racing. I love the speed, the intensity, the team work, the putting-together-the-puzzle, the people, the winning, and side-by-side action,” she told me this week. “I've intentionally built other pillars of who I am, like going to college and starting a corporate speaking career, so that I have a platform for racing and beyond.

“But I want to keep racing, first and foremost, and won't stop until I feel like I've reached my potential. Luckily, all of the other initiatives I do away from the track allow me to help fund my racing career and keep that forward movement. I haven't come close to hanging up the helmet, and I don't expect to for years to come.”

Landauer, who I met in 2007 when she was an aspiring 15-year-old Formula One driver, switched to stock cars and drove in 14 K&N Pro Series West races in 2016, finishing among the top five in seven races and in the top 10 in all but one race. She was fourth in the final standings.

Landauer drove in the same series but for a different owner in 2017 and struggled, posting just one top-five and seven top-10 finishes in 14 races. She’d hoped to progress to NASCAR’s truck-racing series in 2018, but her career stalled instead.

She drove in three Pinty’s Series races in 2018, finishing 12th in one race, and six more races last year, getting one top-10 finish. She found herself still motivated to keep racing. Europe became an option.

Landauer said, “Over the past few years a few people in NASCAR have talked to me about the Euro series and how they think I'd love it, and I have a few friends who raced in it who said it was a lot of fun, great racing, and a cool culture.

“Last year, when looking forward to 2020, I really wanted to get back to racing in a full season for a championship, and with the budget I have the Euro series fit perfectly. Right now the most important things to me are getting in good equipment with a good team and racing for wins and a championship. PK Carsport is one of the best teams, and I'm really excited to do this season properly.”

PK Carsport, a Belgian team, has four series championships and 29 race victories in NASCAR’s European division, which includes two series: EuroNASCAR Pro and EuroNASCAR 2. Landauer will drive for PK Carsport in the EuroNASCAR 2 Series, which opens in April.

PK Carsport team owner Anthony Kumpen said, “Expectations will be high for her and we’ll do our best to help her become the first woman to win a NWES championship. We’re very excited about this and we think she’s a perfect fit for our team.”

Landauer, who in 2015 became the first woman to win a NASCAR season track championship by taking the Limited Late Model title at Motor Mile Speedway in Radford, Va., was the only woman selected to the NASCAR Next promotional program in 2016-17.

Other female drivers, most notably Hailie Deegan, get most of the attention now. But Landauer’s racing career still rolls along, because she is determined and persistent, and she was not ready to focus just on her other projects. She is an inspiration — to girls and boys who want to race, or follow their dreams.

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