(WSVN) - A South Florida woman is overcoming all odds to become the first foreign person in recent NASCAR history to work as a pit crew member.
Dalanda Ouendeno spent some time undergoing intense training at Rev Racing in North Carolina to get ready for the demanding task.
“I don’t have a drivers license,” she told 7News, “so I’m like, ‘You know the people who change the tires real fast? This is what I’m gonna do.'”
Ouendeno had to convince her family and friends in France that soccer was no longer her passion.
At a recent athlete tryout at UM, she was chosen to attend NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity pit crew combine.
She underwent some hands-on training to learn to be a tire changer.
“You want to be as fast as you can,” Ouendeno said. “It’s easy to mess up, cause you have to be really precise. If you mess up, then you have to go back and you’re wasting a lot of time.”
She had never changed a tire before this program.
“Definitely had to focus a lot, cause there’s a lot of steps you have to think about,” Ouendeno said, “like going there, moving, putting the gun, hitting hard. I knew it was hard for everyone.”
Ouendeno’s athletic background served as a plus.
To learn more about the demands of the sport, she turned to Brehanna Daniels, only one of two women working as a NASCAR pit crew member.
“She gave a lot of advice, like the position and hitting hard like the knob,” said Ouendeno. “We mostly talked about the technique about changing a tire.”
Ouendeno will soon be in Charlotte, North Carolina to begin an intense twice-a-day training program.
It’s there that teams will select pit crew members for the final races of the season in all three of NASCAR Series.
Despite the tense pressure, Ouendeno understands the risks of the job.
“The driver’s life is in your hands,” she said. “If you don’t put the nuts real well, he’s driving at 200 miles per hour. He could crash. So, something really important to do and to be really serious about it.”
Aside from the intense training, she will also attend races to watch pit crew members in action.
Pit crew members can earn upwards of $100,000 per season.
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