Shawna Robinson

Shawna Robinson was born November 30, 1964, in Des Moines, Iowa, the daughter of Richard "Lefty" Robinson and his wife, Lois, who drove a race car until she flipped it and her husband asked her to stop racing. "Lefty" Robinson was an amateur diesel truck racer and promoter who worked on vehicles in his home garage. Shawna was the youngest of the Robinsons' five children. She and her siblings were taught they could do anything they set their mind to, and they raced minibikes, snowmobiles, and motorcycles until they were old enough to drive cars. As a teen, she looked up

Shawna Robinson

to racecar drivers A. J. Foyt, Steve Kinser, and Sammy Swindell. By her early twenties she admired Janet Guthrie as her interests turned to stock car racing.

When Shawna turned eighteen, her dad taught her to drive the 14,000 lb. diesel truck cabs he raced as an amateur. Only 5'6" and 110 pounds, young Shawna began racing the big rigs on short tracks, competing against male racers, who often resented her. At age nineteen, she became the first woman to win a GATR major super speedway points race, the Milwaukee Mile Bobtail 100, and was voted GATR Rookie of the Year. She went on to race big rigs at the Paul Ricard Grand Prix Truck Race in France the following year and finished second in the Grand Prix of Trucks in Mexico City in 1986. In 1987, Robinson won the GATR Big Rig 100 at Flemington, New Jersey. Then she set her sights on NASCAR racing.