Cronrath always will have burning desire to race (link)

By Beau Estes, Special to NASCAR.COM
May 22, 2007

03:24 PM EDT

She walks over, smiles and shakes his hand. Small talk follows and before he leaves, she gives the man her card. The encounter lasts maybe a minute and then with another handshake and a smile -- whoosh -- Richard Childress is gone ... on to meet the next person wanting his attention at Lowe's Motor Speedway. He'll do this routine ad nauseam on the day of the Nextel All Star Challenge, yet she sees the meeting quite differently. In the sport that values time more than the Swiss -- these could be the most important 60 seconds of Brianne Cronrath's career.

For the Pennsylvania native, though, it's the handshakes and small talk that may be the most difficult aspect of her racing life. "Having to go and sell myself to owners is an uncomfortable thing because there are millions of us out there that are trying to do the same thing," Cronrath explains. "I would much rather come in on the quiet, have the results and have them meet me personally rather than kind of trying to sell myself in five seconds."

As long as she can remember, Brianne has been a racecar driver. In fact, it's not a metaphor to say it's in her blood -- it's just plain fact. Her dad, Bret, raced on the back tracks and since the age of 3 she has had a single favorite driver: " Dale Earnhardt is my idol." And with that kind of inspirational role model it's no surprise that she'd rather be in a racecar than on a television commercial.

Still, if ever a driver was born marketable -- it's Brianne. She has a down to earth personality combined with a smile that screams Madison Avenue. Truly, it seems in this day and age she'd be fast-tracked to the big leagues of the sport -- but Brianne doesn't want anything handed to her, especially a ride in NASCAR. She prefers to pave her own way around the track.

"To me that is the most important thing," Cronrath said. "I want to be there for the right reasons. I want to be there because I made it there. Marketing is a huge part of the sport and I'm well aware of that and that's fine but I don't just want to be another face out there."

Well, suffice to say she wouldn't be just "another face out there." Right now there are exactly zero drivers on the Nextel Cup circuit with a face like hers and to Brianne's way of "earn it" thinking, that's just fine.

"I think to a point NASCAR is a boy's sport -- racing is a boy's sport and that's OK with me," says Cronrath, who's quick to add, "The racecar doesn't know what parts you have and what parts you don't have."

So until the day arrives when the she gets "the call" from one of the big team owners, the girl who spent a year-and-a-half in NASCAR's Drive for Diversity program works three jobs that includes picking up some spare change babysitting to help fund her love for driving racecars. Sometimes this is the only road if you are not born into one of the royal families of racing and next year her path will take Cronrath to the inner city of Charlotte where she will begin a new career as a kindergarten teacher. "It's a move I had to make financially, and I love kids. They are our future and they need us."

But before her fall of finger-painting commences, she has 18 races in her family owned car that Checker's has sponsored in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series . Last year she was rookie of the year in the Late Model division at Caraway Speedway and if the results keep coming so will the meetings with racing's luminaries like the face-to-face with Richard Childress on the day of the Nextel All-Star Challenge. "Competitively racing in the Nextel Cup Series," she says, "that is the ultimate goal for me. I want to be there and I want to be competitive."

For Brianne Cronrath, a ride in a Nextel Cup car may well be in her future, however, right now my guess is that Childress has his eyes squarely set on another very marketable driver.

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