Women on Wheels

The dusty ground is being turned into mud by a truck designed for such a purpose. Strings of spit turned brown from chewing tobacco shoot from the mouths of several spectators. Methanol fumes fill the nostrils of everyone in the area. Wrenches clank and crank on cars. Engines crack and pop so loud you can feel it in your chest. This is what it's like in the pits at the Bloomington Speedway on a Friday night. This is also a place where two teenage girls prepare their sprint cars to race.\nMiranda Throckmorton, 14, races sprint cars against competition that is often more than twice her age. The age requirement for sprint cars is 16, but teenage drivers can be emancipated from their parents by a judge as young as 14. Throckmorton began racing when she was four and a half years old. She first raced quarter midgets, which is a racecar that is one fourth the size of a midget, with a midget being slightly smaller than a sprint car. Throckmorton has racing in her blood and began to race close to the time her father stopped racing. July 7 was her sixth sprint car race overall and first at the Bloomington Speedway. She felt nervous before her first race at Bloomington. "Bloomington is going to be a lot different for me," she said. "I think it's going to be a little bit faster and different to get used to," Throckmorton said. \nThe Speedway continually wets down its quarter mile dirt track. \n"Bloomington stays tacky (wet), and it's just a faster track," Throckmorton said.\nNorma Throckmorton, Miranda's mother, weighed in on the family hobby. \n"We just kind of did it as a family fun thing, and then it turned into something much more than that," Norma said. Watching her daughter drive smaller cars such as the quarter midgets did not bother Norma, but the sprint cars are what make her nervous. "I don't think my husband would put her in it (a sprint car) unless he thought she was qualified," Norma said. \nArin McIntosh celebrated her seventeenth birthday last Friday at the Bloomington Speedway. By the time she was a month old she had been to four different sprint car tracks. McIntosh started racing just after she turned 11 years old. When she was in fourth grade she told her parents she wanted to start racing. \n"My dad said, 'you come home with good grades and we'll look at it' and I did," McIntosh said. McIntosh is currently and honor student, and believes that her grades are what is going to carry her through life. Racing is also in her blood, because both of her parents used to race. She has attended a driving school in Wisconsin and has raced in 15 different states. McIntosh has raced on both dirt and asphalt tracks. \n"I have grown up on dirt tracks, so I am partial to dirt tracks," McIntosh said. "But I know that if anybody ever wants to make it they have to go to asphalt. If an opportunity arises then we'll look at it and see if that's what we want to do, but for right now we're just concentrating on the sprint cars." \nHer goal was always to race sprint cars, but now that she has made it to that level she is not sure which direction she wants to head next. McIntosh has a weekly maintenance program for her car, which she believes is important. \n"Races are won in the garage," McIntosh said. \nShe wants to continue driving for as long as she can stay competitive. \n"If I'm not competitive, then I don't need to be out there," McIntosh said. \nArin's father, Robert McIntosh, has been around racing all his life, but did not start racing himself until he was 26. Robert is aware of the risks involved and accepts them as part of the sport. \n"You have to realize that, yeah, it is a dangerous sport, but kids are getting hurt everyday playing basketball, football, running around on Saturday nights," Robert said. "I know that there's risks there, but it's an acceptable risk. You take all the safety precautions you can put it in the back of your mind." \nRobert works with his daughter Arin on the car and tries to increase her duties every week. Robert has no aspirations for his daughter that involve racing. \n"I want her to have fun, I want her to race up to her potential, and I want her to chase her dreams as far as she can, but they're her dreams, not mine"