10-year-old races her way into the record books

EATON TOWNSHIP, Ohio – Ten-year-old Stephanie Beane invited her girlfriends for a sleepover Wednesday night and they played with dolls.

On Saturday, she crawled into a stock car on the track of the Sandusky Speedway Motor-Sports Park and roared around the track at speeds of about 60 miles per hour to become the youngest stock car racer ever.

Beane finished her debut race in fifth place out of a field of about a dozen mostly adult men and plans to race again this week.

Someday she wants to meet racers Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

“I want to race against them and I want to win,” Beane said.

Derek Musso, spokesman for the Guinness Book of World Records, confirmed Beane’s place in the record book. The youngest stock car racer on record was 12-year-old Amanda “A.K.” Stroud, who competed in North Carolina during the 2001 racing season.

Permitting young drivers to race requires a higher insurance premium, which Speedway owner Kevin Jaycox gladly pays.

He tests younger drivers to make sure they are comfortable on the track. He only needed to watch Beane drive the track twice.

“She’s really fast,” Jaycox said before the race.

“My 12-year-old son runs quarter midgets, which are more like Go-Karts, and he’s pretty good. She will be in a real car. I don’t think my son could step into a real car and do it.”

There are few amenities in Beane’s stock car. She squeezes into a custom-made seat with extra padding around her head, neck and torso and wears a custom-made helmet.

Janet Beane, her mother, no longer worries.

“I worried more when she was in a Go-Kart and everything was exposed,” Janet Beane said. “In this, there are rollover bars and more protection. She isn’t likely to get hurt.”

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t risk.

Beane had to borrow another racer’s car for the 10-mile, 20-lap race Saturday when she wrecked her four-cylinder Dodge Neon trying to break the track’s all-time speed record in practice on Friday.

She hit the wall, one of her front wheels came off, the transmission busted in half and the back side of the motor fell out. She was not hurt.

“I’ve had many wrecks before that,” said Beane, who goes by the nickname “Fast Kat.”

Losing Stephanie’s own car for the race was mildly disappointing for the Beanes, who were confident she could have raced faster and topped out near 80 mph if she had the car she usually used. She didn’t have a chance to practice in the car, started in the back of the pack and followed another car’s bumper to get the feel of the race.

But Beane also said she was happy she finally got her chance in a race.

“I was pretty anxious and I’ve been waiting for that day to come a long time,” she said. “Now that it’s here, it’s like a miracle.”

The Beanes, who are divorced, share custody of Stephanie and her brother Ryan, 12, and they are united in their support of Stephanie’s goal to someday become a professional race car driver. She got into her first Go-Kart at age 4.

“She’s been driving half her life,” father Tim Beane said. “We knew we had a problem when she was at the top of the stairs in our old colonial and I was at the bottom and I held out my arms. She jumped. She was about 2.”

Wearing pink barrettes in her long brown hair and a blue jean miniskirt, Beane hardly looks the part of daredevil. “She’s very much a girlie girl until she gets into that car,” Janet Beane said.

Beane plans to practice by driving about 150 laps a day. The only place you will be able to see her drive is at Sandusky. Stephanie can’t drive on other tracks until she’s 12.

About 3,000 spectators cheered Beane on Saturday. Once her car gets fixed, it will be easy for other spectators to pick her out. Her car carries the big No. 10.