Resilient Pritchett finally living out dream
Top Fuel driver Leah Pritchett had finally made it. She landed a full-time ride at the start of the 2016 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season and scored her first career win in the second event of the season in Chandler, Ariz.
Then, two months later, the opportunity vanished.
Bob Vandergriff Racing went out of business in April 2016 when one of its main financial supporters died. Pritchett lost her ride and a substantial amount of her financing. She didn’t know how she was going to get back to where she was, but she wasn’t going to quit.
“It had everything to do with the beginning of the season,” Pritchett said. “It was my first full season.
“The hype around it. … If we hadn’t won (in Arizona), I think it would’ve been easier to quit, but we had that taste of victory and wanted more and knew we could get there.”
And so she kept going. She dedicated 100% of her time to ensuring she was back racing full time.
That meant putting her marriage on the line so she could fulfill her dream, and the strain between her and husband Gary Pritchett, who is a crewmember for competitor Steve Torrence, became obvious.
“I said to my husband, ‘Baby, just deal with me for the next six months, and we’ll get back to that,’ ” she said. “Whatever ‘that’ is.
“I did realize it was affecting me. You make your marriage a priority in life; most people do. Some people make time for seeing each other and going on the lake and going to barbecues, but I needed to shift my priorities and come back to that.”
Eleven days after the team shut down, Pritchett put together a deal to be at the next event at Charlotte Motor Speedway for Lagana Racing with support from her Bob Vandergriff Racing sponsor FireAde.
“I thought, ‘I’m bound to come up with something big,’ ” Pritchett said.
But the work didn’t stop at Charlotte. At the track, she started having conversations in between qualifying runs with potential team owners.
One owner was willing to help her: Don Schumacher. With 302 wins and 16 championships, Schumacher owns one of the most successful teams in NHRA. He wanted to help Pritchett make it into the Countdown, NHRA’s version of the playoffs.
“I need to try to put something together to keep her in the Countdown,” Schumacher said of his thoughts when he heard about Pritchett losing her ride. “She’s really very talented.”
By June, Pritchett had become a mainstay at Don Schumacher Racing by reaching out to sponsors, including FireAde and Quaker State.
She didn’t win the rest of the year but made the Countdown and finished seventh in the championship standings.
In August, Pritchett landed Papa John’s, which helped her finish the season, and the pizza company agreed to extend the sponsorship through 2017.
Fast-forward to February. Pritchett was a full-time driver again. Her confidence was high as the team arrived at Pomona Raceway for the season-opening race, and she delivered her second career win.
Next, the series headed to Chandler, and Pritchett set the NHRA world record with a pass of 3.65 seconds (329.34 mph). Then Sunday came, and Pritchett won again.
Pritchett has added two more wins, in Baytown, Texas, and in the most recent event in Minnesota, where she broke the world record again with a pass of 3.64 seconds (330.63 mph).
“I knew how good of a team I’d put her with,” Schumacher said. “It certainly shocked me when she broke the record (in Arizona). Who would have thought we could run a 3.65? They have exceeded my expectations. But I knew they could be successful.”
Pritchett put a lot of this together, but she wasn’t alone. She insists if it wasn’t for the people around her, she wouldn’t be here.
“The credit is due to the people Don has with me and the people I had last year,” she said. “Period. End of story.”
Once Pritchett, who is third in points and has four victories this year, got her on-track life sorted out, she went back to her off-track life and repaired the damage that had been done to her marriage.
“It took more than six months,” she said. “More like a year. Now things have transitioned and have been more fulfilling. Now it’s more status quo.”
Horrall writes for The Indianapolis Star, part of the USA TODAY Network.