[custom_adv] Toni Breidinger made history as the first Arab-American female driver to compete in a NASCAR national series after she made her debut at Daytona International Speedway over the weekend. The 21-year-old on Monday told CBS News it was "exciting" to be a trailblazer. [custom_adv] Driving in the 2021 ARCA Menards Series season-opener in Daytona, Florida, on Saturday was "a dream come true" for Breidinger, who placed 18th. The feat was twelve years in the making for the Hillsborough, California, native. [custom_adv] Her love for the sport began after her father took her and her twin sister Annie go-karting for fun over winter break when they were 9 years old. When she sat in the go-kart, she knew that what's she wanted to do. [custom_adv] Although she's friends with a few of her competitors, those feelings change during a race. "Once you're on the track, you don't really have friends out there," she said. Throughout the season, Breidinger – who joined the Young's Motorsports racing team earlier this month – will compete in the ARCA Menards Series stock car competition and NASCAR's pickup truck competition, the Camping World Truck Series. [custom_adv] She'll be driving a Chevrolet SS car for the ARCA Mernards Series and a Chevrolet Silverado for the Camping World Truck Series. For now, she's got her eyes on the Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Arizona, a track she's familiar with. [custom_adv] The trio are all graduates of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity program, an initiative by the organization to create diverse and inclusive pit crew teams. With the help of this program, Daniels, 27, became the first Black woman to be a NASCAR tire changer. [custom_adv] Both O'Leary, 27, and Daniels became the first female pit crew members to go over the wall for the same team in a NASCAR Cup Series race in 2018, and in February that same year, the two became the first female NASCAR Drive for Diversity graduates to pit in the Daytona 500.
