Take Five With LEAH PRITCHETT

The NHRA Top Fuel Driver Tells HOT ROD How Persistence Paid Off and that You’re Never too Good to Stop Learning

Leah Pritchett has made a name for herself with a hard-knock, but a fun-loving perspective on drag racing. The day she turned 8 years old, she began racing Jr. Dragsters with her older sister under the watchful eye of her father (a Bonneville 200 MPH Club Member), before claiming Division 7 championships in 2000 and 2001. She eventually moved into a family-built, 7-second altered Bantam. The family sold it and built their own Nostalgia Funny Car in which Leah earned her fuel license before stumbling into Steve Plueger’s 1972 Mustang Mach I; a wild and nitro-thirsty vintage Funny Car that gave the Redlands, California native an addiction she couldn’t shake until she had found a seat in NHRA Top Fuel. That chance would come from Don Schumacher himself, who signed off on her nitro Funny Car license a decade prior to piloting the NHRA’s purest and most maniacal machines. Since then, she’s set records in several nitro-burners, claimed world championships in NHRA Factory Stock, and has laid it all on the line to make ends meet. - Phillip Thomas

HRM] The background that a lot of people don’t know is that your family was prevalent at Bonneville Salt Flats. What were some of the memories that hooked you on racing with your time out there on the salt?