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Meet Brehanna Daniels, the First Black Woman to Join a NASCAR Pit Crew
A chat with pioneering tire-changer about her sport’s Confederate flag ban and broader reckoning with racism
Four years ago, Brehanna Daniels was a 5’5” walk-on combo guard at Norfolk State who had her post-graduate sights set on a professional career in Europe. Stock car racing was nowhere on her radar when her team’s play-by-play announcer suggested she meet with a group of recruiters from NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity Pit Crew Development program and try out for a position on “the fastest team in sports.” (The average pit stop lasts about 16 seconds.)
Through hard work and determination, Daniels hasn’t just emerged as one of the few women in the sport but as the first and only black woman to work in the pits — a quick-trigger tire changer who’s now just as likely to be recognized as the face of headache medicine. Over the course of a half-hour conversation with GEN, she reflected on her unlikely road to this point and the even more unlikely history NASCAR made last week.
GEN: Did you follow NASCAR much growing up in Virginia Beach?
Daniels: No, there wasn’t much NASCAR there. The closest track, Richmond Raceway, is two hours away. Don’t get me wrong: There are plenty of NASCAR fans in Virginia, just not at the beach!
How were you drawn into the sport?
I went to three different colleges, finished my last two years at Norfolk State. Senior year, at the end of basketball season, in the spring of 2015, I was doing an internship with the athletic department recording different sports [men’s basketball, baseball, bowling], and then I would edit the footage and make highlight packages.
One Monday afternoon, the announcer of our basketball games, a woman by the name of Tiffani Sykes, catches me in between classes at Chick-fil-A. She was like, ‘The NASCAR pit crew is coming to our school on Wednesday. I think you should try out.” And I looked at her like, “Girl. A NASCAR pit crew… like, what is that?” She took out her phone and showed me a video of a pit stop.
What did you think?
