PARAGON, IN – On May 19th, Miranda Throckmorton of Coatesville, IN became the first female to win a 410 Non-Winged Sprint car race at the famed Paragon Speedway. Even more significant is that Throckmorton is believed to be the first of her gender to pilot a 410 Non-Winged Sprinter to a victory in the United States. To add to the impact of her achievement, consider that Throckmorton is a 15 year old high school freshman.

Throckmorton began her evening at Paragon with a heat race win; a race she won with a last lap pass of sprint car veteran Joe Roush. Throckmorton led early before Roush slid past her with three laps remaining. A determined Throckmorton continued to chase Roush around the bottom of the track until Roush, perhaps feeling the pressure, slid high and opened the door for Miranda who seized the opportunity and the win.

The feature saw Throckmorton starting on the pole and she was able to snare the lead at the start and run a steady line around the low side of the track. As Throckmorton tip-toed around the bottom and worked to maintain a slight lead, Kevin Chambers, Dustin Beliles, Chris Babcock and Roush were mounting a charge on the high side. The four-car express began picking up the pace and erasing Throckmorton’s slim lead. Chambers had moved along side the leader when the yellow flag flew on lap nine. This caution was a tremendous break for her. “I could see that the top was starting to take rubber and that I needed to get up there,” said Throckmorton. She has admitted she’d like to feel more comfortable running up high. “That’s one of the things I’ve been working on; to try to force myself to run the cushion and get more comfortable there,” she said. On the restart, Throckmorton immediately jumped upstairs to the grip of the top groove and drove away from her challengers. Following her to the line was Chambers, who battled a rough-running engine and held on for second. Beliles, Babcock and Roush completed the top five.

She was asked about her thoughts as the race neared it’s end: “I was just trying to keep myself calm until the checkered flag; I didn’t want to get excited and do something to throw it away.” Throckmorton, who downplays the ‘female thing,’ called the win “a good accomplishment for the whole team.” She seems to view her first win as a baby step rather than a crowning achievement. Winning a race wasn’t a stated goal for her season; improving every week has been the goal all along. She has a laundry list of things she’d like to improve upon. She still talks about needing more laps and needing to learn to run the cushion better and how she’s still learning a lot of things every time out. She wants to get better at Bloomington and she wants to race at Kokomo; but not until she’s ready, not until she gets better.

Throckmorton began racing Sprint cars last year and raced Kenyon Midgets and Quarter-Midgets before that. To call her a prodigy or a princess would ignore all of the hard work and sacrifice that she has made and will continue to willingly make to further her dreams. She is no silver-spooned kid with Daddy’s money who shows up with a helmet and says, “Where’s my car?” She is a racer who works on her own car every night after school. She is a racer who operates machines to make parts for her car. She is a racer who helped build the engine in her car. She’s a bright, pretty and well-spoken young lady. She has a maturity and confidence way beyond her years. She want to race for a living and she’s acquiring the skills – all of them; to make that happen. Miranda Throckmorton made history at Paragon Speedway, a small dirt track in southern Indiana.

In a few years she might make history at a bigger race track in Speedway, Indiana.