Shannon Slaughter and her family bought her Sportsman Modified car in May.
Just a couple months later, she found herself with that car in Victory Lane.
On July 26, Slaughter won the T.P. Trailers Sportsman race at Grandview Speedway in Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania for not only her first victory at the track, but also her first in a modified. The 22-year-old became the first female driver to win a feature race at Grandview, a NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series track.
By Cara Cooper, NASCAR.com
“I think that is really cool,” Slaughter said of the history she made that night. “I think that’s a great stepping stone for women in motorsports as a whole. I think that can be inspiring to other girls to show it’s possible to be out there and be competitive with the guys and come out on top.
“Hopefully that inspires some other girls to try racing or just get involved in motorsports somehow.”
Slaughter was strong during her hot laps on the night of her win, and she started second in her heat race. She took the lead about halfway through and ended up winning the heat, putting her on the front row to start the feature.
“Grandview’s pretty tough,” Slaughter said. “There’s, like, at least 40 cars entered in the division each week. So it’s pretty cool to win a heat race, but the track surface is so much different in the feature, and the competition is so strong. You have a full field of cars there, you never really know how it’s gonna go, so it helped a little bit, but I was still a little bit nervous.”
It didn’t take Slaughter long to get back to the lead in her final race of the night. She took the top spot on the first lap of the feature and stayed there pretty much the whole race.
“I committed to the outside. I figured that that was going to be my best chance,” she said. “So I just gave it everything I could on the outside and ended up winning that.”
Slaughter’s biggest challenge came on a restart with three to go.
“It was some pretty tough competition restarting right behind me,” she said. “I think the guy right behind me had won two already this year, so he’s been pretty fast, and he restarted right behind me. He actually was running the bottom and I was running the top.
“For probably the last two or three laps he was right next to me, so then it was a pretty close race coming down to the finish.”
Slaughter that night had family visiting from out of town, and they were watching her race a modified for the first time — a development that made the win even more special.
The emotions of taking the checkered flag took over while she was still in her car.
“It was amazing,” she said. “I think I was yelling in my helmet a whole lot afterwards, just so excited.”
This is the eighth year of racing for Slaughter, who started in go-karts before moving up to a Micro Sprint car a few years later. She got her first opportunity to run a Crate Modified last season.
“My whole family raced,” Slaughter said. “Both of my parents and my brother, my aunts and uncles and cousins all raced something at some point.”
The start of her season wasn’t the smoothest. At first, it was the motor that wasn’t running quite right. The team then found the brakes were hanging up, “so we had some things to work through,” she said.
It was the third race when she said she felt like the team had gotten the bugs worked out in the car.
“I felt like… we had some good speed, and then last week we were able to pick up the win with it, so I’m really happy with how the car’s been running.”
Now Slaughter is hopeful the July 26 win can continue giving her momentum the rest of the season.
“It definitely makes me feel like I can be competitive there a little bit more than I had thought prior, and I’m excited to get back to it,” Slaughter said. “I’m just excited to get back to it and see what we can do the rest of the season.”
Racing will return to Grandview this Saturday for the track’s 55th annual Forrest Rogers Memorial featuring Modifieds and Sportsman races beginning at 7:30 p.m. local time.