While discussing her drag racing career, Leah Pritchett’s face mirrors intensity, and her voice speaks relentlessness. The National Hot Rod Association’s latest female sensation is a proud tomboy with no filter and a ton of guts.
“It’s a nice little emotional roller-coaster,” Pritchett said of her whirlwind young career. “The only thing that can’t be broken is our intestinal fortitude.”
Pritchett is driven — an attribute she developed at age 9 in 1997, when she won her first NHRA event at Bandimere Speedway in a junior dragster with a five-horsepower Briggs & Stratton engine. This weekend at Bandimere, the native of Redlands, Calif., will drive a 10,000-horsepower nitromethane-powered top fuel dragster at the 37th Mopar Mile-High Nationals — her first race at the Morrison track since she was 14 in 2002.
Pritchett, 28, is coming off a semifinal finish at the last race, July 10, outside Chicago. She views herself as different from other nitro-powered drivers Brittany Force in top fuel and Courtney Force and Alexis De Joria in funny car. Pritchett. who packs her own parachutes, mixes her own fuel and is married to a clutch specialist, is proud to have worked her way to the big leagues.
“Unfortunately, the current nature of the sports is, if you got money, you can run in one of these race cars, no doubt about it,” Pritchett said. “It’s something that I want to change one day. I want it to be where it was. I want to take a couple steps back. I want it to be where, you’re a (great) driver, you deserve to be in that seat, and you need to scratch, claw and fight for it and show your worth. And then you get selected — you get picked — to drive a car, instead of the opposite way of either you have a ton of money, you’ve been extremely successful in business and life, or you pay for a ride. I’m neither one of them.”
Pritchett is entering her fifth event of the season with Don Schumacher Racing (DSR), her third team this year. She began the year with Bob Vandergriff Racing in what was to be her first full-time top fuel season, and she won the second race. But four races into the season, the team abruptly retired upon the death of a sponsor. She raised financial backing to join the independent Lagana Brothers team before landing with Schumacher.
In 12 of 13 races overall, Pritchett is 11-11 in the elimination round and sits 10th in the standings. She announced a new sponsorship Thursday, but she’s not financially committed to compete in all of the remaining races.
“We have been on the struggle bus for the last four races, and we’re getting off it now,” Pritchett said of her relatively new team — DSR’s fourth in top fuel. “Now, from a pressure standpoint, it’s time to perform. And that’s the pressure I like”.
Pritchett has been fighting for her current ride with DSR since 2008, when she was selected to replace retiring DSR world champion Gary Scelzi. That funny car deal never came to fruition, and Pritchett went back to school, and back to work. She pieced together sponsorship deals to compete in regional circuits while working toward a marketing degree at Cal State-San Bernardino.
She married Gary Pritchett, the clutch specialist for independent top fuel driver Steve Torrence, the defending winner at Bandimere. Leah Pritchett has become a very aggressive businesswoman.
“Strategic business alliances and networking and learning marketing is the only way I’ve been able to get to this point,” she said.
Pritchett is earning the respect of her peers. Funny car veteran “Fast” Jack Beckman, the defending winner at Bandimere, says Pritchett knows how to play the right cards.
“In 2004 she came through the drag-racing school of which I was an instructor. That’s the time I was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer,” Beckman said. “She delayed her class to make sure I was going to be her teacher when she came through. Ultimately, I signed Leah’s first competition license, and she asked me to give a speech in her marketing class.
“You talk about somebody who has done everything they can to get the right background to do this. I don’t think people realize how hard she has to work, how many phone calls she has to make to close these deals. I have so much respect for her.”
Two-time defending pro stock world champion Erica Enders is happy for Pritchett. They ran the junior dragsters together in the 1990s.
“I was finishing up my junior dragster career when she was on the scene. It’s definitely nice to see another woman who has gone through the ranks like I did, and have success at every level,” Enders said. “I’m proud of her.”
Pritchett file
A closer look at Leah Pritchett:
Birthdate: May 26, 1988
Hometown: Redlands, Calif.
Residence: Indianapolis
Height: 5-foot-9
Hobbies: Volleyball, golf, snowboarding, motocross
Twitter handle:
Career-best moment: Defeated Brittany Force in the Feb. 28 top fuel final in Chandler, Ariz., using a superior start and a top speed of 323.12 mph for her first career NHRA national event victory.
Mike Chambers, The Denver Post
