Courtesy of Dispatch.com

The crowd sang Happy Birthday for the woman who turned 18 last Saturday, from the stands at the Columbus Motor Speedway.

And the first female to win a late model event there could only blush.

“I get embarrassed,” said Sloan Henderson.

Henderson, a Dayton Christian High School senior, had the fastest qualifying time for the NASCAR Whelen All American Series race. She passed Ray Muncy to take the lead for good less than halfway through the race, going on to win comfortably by half a straightaway on the one-third-mile oval.

The postrace emotions were rare from a woman who has learned to keep her cool. When a worn tire bared the cords of her first go-cart, and made it spin around the track, she kept racing. When men tried to drive her into a wall or bumped her car, she assuaged her angry father.

“It makes me a better driver,” she told dad, Steve Henderson.

Almost nothing fazes the native of Franklin, near Dayton. It’s a mindset Sloan will carry onto the Columbus Motor Speedway for the 27th annual John Nuckles Memorial on Saturday.

“I get tons and tons of butterflies before the race, and it just all goes bye,” she said. “When you’re racing, you’re not focusing on winning. You take it car by car. Just try to stay cool.”

What comes naturally for Henderson may be more difficult for others. Take her father, for example. About a decade ago, he got a phone call telling him that his 8-year-old daughter was in the hospital, having been trampled by a horse.

“It was a scary moment” when he found out Sloan’s jaw was broken, Steve said. “We’ll get rid of the horse. We’re going to shoot it.” They later sold the horse, named Rocky.

Steve put Sloan into a quarter midget, a one-cylinder vehicle whose driver is encased by a roll cage.

“It was safer,” he said. “In my mind, the horse has a personality and the (car) doesn’t. That’s what I thought, but now I don’t know what’s worse.”

In her fourth race, Henderson was taken from first place by a blind-side pass that knocked her into last place. But with only a few laps left, she reclaimed her lead to win the Senior Novice Eastern Grand National Championship.

Some male racers are uncomfortable losing to a female, she said, but Henderson has earned the respect of many.

“Most women can’t get up and go as fast as she does,” said Shawn Gray, who has raced for 17 years and finished fifth in the race Henderson won. “She’s just as good as the guys are.”

He said he feels privileged to race against a woman who can compete with the field.

“I think she’s going to be a front-runner every weekend now.”

That’s the plan for Henderson, whose progression from carts to 5/8-scale Legend cars to late model has left her more cool and comfortable in her seat.

After winning the 35-lap series event last week, Henderson will race 75 laps on the same course, the one where she crashed her go-cart and came back to win from last place.

“I’ve realized how comfortable I am,” she said. “I almost feel when I’m in a race car that I’m at home. It’s where I’m supposed to be.”

[News & Picture Source]