When Natalie Decker took the green flag for the NASCAR Xfinity Series’ Wawa 250 at Daytona in August, she was just six months removed from giving birth to her son Levi.

In doing so, Decker also became the sixth driver to compete in any of NASCAR’s national series following childbirth, the seventh mother overall, and eight if one includes NASCAR’s lower divisions. Unlike those before her, she’s the first to do so within the same calendar year as her child being born.

While NASCAR is unsurprisingly dominated by men, the sport has a long history of women and especially mothers as racers as far back as its inception in 1949. It’s understandable that parenthood would take priority for any person, and male drivers often have substitutes at the ready whenever their wives are about to enter labor (Denny Hamlin missed the Mexico City race in June for his son’s birth, for example). For women, the physical strain of childbirth obviously also takes away energy and from her racing.

Still, Decker felt she was ready to race again after raising Levi alongside her husband and PR manager Derek Lemke. She married Lemke in 2023; also that year, Lemke debuted in the Truck Series after his then-fiancée arranged a ride for him with one of her old teams.

Hailing from a decorated snowmobile racing family, Decker’s competed sporadically in the Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series since 2019. In 2020, she scored the highest finish by a woman in Truck Series history when she placed fifth at the season opener at Daytona. She entered the Xfinity Series the year after, and her best finish to date is 18th at Daytona in 2024 with DGM.

Decker entered Daytona facing some tall odds as she wasn’t guaranteed a spot in the Wawa 250. Since the #92 races part time, it was only 45th in owner points so she had qualify on speed. Ultimately, she succeeded and went on to finish 22nd.

Sara Christian

Christian was the first woman to compete in NASCAR, taking part in the inaugural event at Charlotte Speedway in 1949. The wife of fellow driver Frank Christian, she scored two top tens in seven Grand National Series starts in 1949 and 1950.

When NASCAR was formed, her daughter Patricia was already 11 years old. She also had an adopted son Tommy, who was born a year prior to that maiden season.

Although seen as a housewife off the track, she was respected by the sport’s early pioneers. The Christians were in essence the first stock car racing royal family too as Frank was close to founder Bill France, having loaned him the money to start NASCAR; France offered him stock in the series in exchange, but Frank wanted the money back. Tommy was considered the “official mascot” of NASCAR as a toddler in the early 1950s.

Ethel Mobley

Another member of the 1949 NASCAR driver roster, Mobley was a stalwart in the Modified Division. Like Christian, Mobley also came from a decorated racing family as the sister of the “Fabulous Flocks”: two-time Grand National champion Tim Flock, 1951 runner-up Fonty Flock, and inaugural NASCAR race winner Bob Flock.

Her husband Charles Mobley owned her and Tim’s Modified cars and also fielded the Cadillac she’d race in NASCAR. In her first race on the Daytona Beach and Road Course, she finished 11th ahead of Bob and Fonty.

She had two daughters, Debbie and Darlene.

Shawna Robinson

Robinson won regional truck championships before starring in the Goody’s Dash Series in the 1980s. She competed part-time in the Busch Series throughout the ’90s with modest results but plenty of flashes that included being the first female pole winner and scoring a top ten at Watkins Glen.

Her son Tanner was born in 1996 followed by daughter Samantha a year later. With focus on motherhood and a new side gig as an interior designer, she did not race in NASCAR again until 2000.

“Racing is part of who I am,” she told Sports Illustrated in 2000. “If I became a different person because I had kids, then the kids were not going to know who I was my whole life before them.”

She made her Cup Series debut in 2001. A year later, Robinson became the second woman to race the Daytona 500.

Kelly Sutton

Sutton was the first person to race in NASCAR with multiple sclerosis. A third-generation driver, she hoped to follow in her father and grandfather’s footsteps until she was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, a disease that left her in a wheelchair at one point. Once it was in remission by the late ’90s, her career finally took off with her daughter Ashlee among those supporting her.

After four seasons in the Goody’s Dash Series, Sutton moved up to the Truck Series in 2003 when Ashlee was 13. Racing for the family team, she finished 26th in points as a rookie the following year. Injuries and an underfunded operation ended her time in the Trucks in 2007.

Alli Owens

Owens knows her way around on four and two wheels. She grew up on BMX bikes before switching to auto racing in her teen years. After three years in ARCA and failing to qualify for the 2011 Truck race at Daytona, her career went on hiatus due to a lack of sponsorship and focusing on family after her the births of daughters Braelynn and Addisyn. Her son Hayden was also born later on.

In 2016, she did a one-off in the Xfinity Series at Richmond and finished 36th.

Owens eventually returned to her BMX roots by joining the nascent American Bicycle Association (USA BMX) in 2018.

Jessica Friesen

Friesen is the wife of Truck Series regular Stewart Friesen, and the two typically race together in dirt track competition in tandem with running a t-shirt business. They have a son Parker.

When the Truck Series expanded to two dirt races in 2021, the family’s Halmar Friesen Racing prepared a second truck for Jessica to drive alongside her husband. She never had much success at the Bristol Dirt Race, failing to qualify for all three attempts during its existence, but did make the two events at Knoxville Raceway in 2021 and 2022. Jessica finished ahead of Stewart in the 2021 race (26th to his 27th) before retiring from the 2022 edition after a bizarre crash in which she hit the berm and flipped before landing on her wheels.

After dirt was removed from the Trucks in 2024, Jessica returned to her usual discipline whilst supporting her husband’s NASCAR endeavors. She remains involved by co-leading HFR following Stewart’s injuries in a dirt crash in July.

Angela Ruch

Ruch is a bit of an honorable mention.

The niece of 1990 Daytona 500 winner Derrike Cope, she doesn’t appear to have biological children. However, she and her husband have three kids whom they adopted as infants. One was born just days after she finished eighth in the 2019 Daytona Truck race, the third best run for a woman in series history.

She committed to the 2020 Truck season afterwards, though she only ran seven of the first eight races before losing her ride to a lack of funding.

Sarah Burgess

Like Ruch, Burgess is somewhat murky. In her case, it depends on if your definition of NASCAR includes the ARCA Menards Series. While ARCA is owned by NASCAR and doubles as a grassroots-slash-feeder series of sort, some tend to keep those two separate due to their historical differences.

For the sake of completion (and because we are an off-road site), we’ll count her.

Burgess is an Australian off-road and drift racer who raced Pro Lites in LOORRS, even being Axalta’s official short course driver during the mid-2010s. She finished seventh in the LOORRS SoCal championship twice in 2015 and 2017 before pausing her driving to focus on supporting her daughter Bridget’s career.

Bridget competed in the ARCA Menards Series West in the early 2020s, with her mom serving as crew chief and head mechanic. In 2022, the Burgesses became the first mother/daughter duo to do a NASCAR race together when they ran the Star Nursery 150 at Las Vegas; Bridget finished 12th to Sarah’s 17th.

Featured image credit: Axalta Racing