Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Stanford graduate. ‘Survivor’ contestant. Sprint Cup driver?

Julia Landauer

Chris Ramirez / The New York Times

Julia Landauer, at age 15, with a Ferrari she raced, in Newton, N.J., July 18, 2007. Landauer, a Stanford graduate and former “Survivor” participant, is being promoted as an up-and-coming star in the Nascar racing system.

So much has changed in Julia Landauer’s life since she raced a five-horsepower go-kart up and down her driveway 16 years ago. She is now 24, with a bachelor’s degree from Stanford, a nascent public-speaking career and an appearance on a television reality show.

She has also shifted her aspirations, from driving sleek Formula One cars overseas to stock cars here — where female competitors are rare. She appreciates the value of patience and knows a top sponsor is as good as a lead foot, but Landauer still likes going really fast.

“The love of racing — that’s a cliché, I know — but there’s not as much of a high as being on a racetrack,” she said recently.

Last year, Landauer ignited her career by becoming the first woman to win a NASCAR track championship in the Limited Late Model division at Motor Mile Speedway in Radford, Virginia. She now is in her first season in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West, three rungs down from the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

Landauer was the only woman among the 11 drivers selected in May to the 2016-17 NASCAR Next program, which highlights future stars. Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney — who are among the Sprint Cup’s top 20 drivers — also participated in the program.

Through nine starts entering Saturday’s race at Douglas County Speedway in Roseburg, Oregon, Landauer is in eighth place (330 points) in the series with three top-five finishes but no victories. Another NASCAR Next driver, Todd Gilliland, 16, whose father, David, is a Sprint Cup driver, leads the series with five victories and eight top-five finishes (384 points).

“It’s just a matter of her getting the seat time and the experience to move up the ladder,” said the owner of Landauer’s car, Bill McAnally, who has worked with other young drivers, including Todd Gilliland.

NASCAR, which has boasted that women represent about 40 percent of its fan base, has made a point of bringing in more women as drivers, but success has been limited.

Of the 16 women who have raced in NASCAR’s premier series, Danica Patrick, 34, is the only active driver, with no victories in 139 career starts, one pole position and six top-10 finishes. Janet Guthrie, now retired, is the only other woman with more than 30 starts. Shawna Robinson is the only woman besides Patrick to race at the premier level since 2001.

Jill Gregory, NASCAR’s chief marketing officer, said of Landauer: “She’s obviously got the talent, and that’s first and foremost. Our fans want to see drivers who can compete on the racetrack.”

But Gregory also said: “You can tell when you meet Julia that she has a great personality and is very talented, but she has a very clear idea of what she wants to do — to race in NASCAR.”

Landauer grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and spent her summers in Newton, New Jersey, before enrolling in the science, technology and society program at Stanford and graduating in 2014.

As a college sophomore, she was a contestant on the CBS reality show “Survivor: Caramoan.” Recently, she has blossomed as a public speaker, advocating STEM education (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and empowerment for women.

She made it about halfway through the “Survivor” competition in the Philippines before she was voted out. She learned something, saying now that she had hoped to fit in by playing down her college affiliation, but she probably earned a reputation as being too quiet.

“It was brutal to learn that in front of 9 million people,” she said.

Landauer has moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, the capital of stock car racing, to keep chasing her career. She said she thought it was realistic that she could be racing in Sprint Cup in three to five years, but she also said she needed to push ahead. She is the second-oldest driver in the NASCAR Next class.

She is enjoying a renaissance, of sorts. Landauer once aspired to be an F1 driver overseas, and, at 14, she won the Skip Barber Eastern Regional Series championship, winning promotion in 2007 to the F1 BMW Series.

But as the youngest and smallest driver in the series, she struggled. She knew next to nothing about NASCAR when she met Bob East, widely known in racing for building sprint cars and midget cars. East taught her about driving, but she did not have a full-time ride until 2015.

“I was racing when we could,” she said.

She secured a regular ride at Motor Mile Speedway, and won the track championship. McAnally, whom Landauer met in 2009, was interested in giving her a full-time ride — and not just because she could drive fast.

“Her education definitely doesn’t hurt her,” McAnally said. “It makes her a better spokeswoman, and drivers have to learn how to deal with people besides how to handle adjustments to her car. Even at 24, she’s far beyond her years.”

To participate in “Survivor,” for example, she had to persuade her instructors at Stanford that she could cram 10 weeks of classwork into five weeks. She has taken on public-speaking engagements, including a TEDx talk at Stanford: “Can Nice Girls Win (Races)?”

“What is the one thing that girls are always taught to be? Nice. But I’m going to tell you,” she said during the talk as “niceness loses races” flashed on the screen, “that racing is an extremely difficult sport, and not everyone can do it. So, as women, we not only have to protect ourselves on the racetrack, but fight through the stupid stereotypes that hold us back.”

The audience laughed when she told the story about how her father, Steve, an anesthesiologist, told her to “rip their livers out!” before a race. She was 14.

“With NASCAR, in particular, unlike Formula One and IndyCar racing, there are different levels of racing that you can make a living at, and in many ways, NASCAR is a great place for her to do what she’s doing,” said Steve Landauer, who bought the first go-kart for Julia and her younger sister, Emma, now 22, and brother Aidan, 19.

Emma and Aidan’s interest in racing has waned, but Julia forges ahead. Her father said she worked hard to develop the skills of both a top driver and a potential corporate spokeswoman. Like anyone in professional sports, earning potential does not last long.

“It’s there, and I’m aware of it,” she said of her career clock. “I will push racing as long as I can. It’s really just a matter of hustling my butt off as long as I can.”

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