Page 12 - March 2019 IWMA News Interactive

Wally Award Winner Shelby Dawson
One day in part of the Teenage
gracefully. “I believe that makes you a suc- cessful race car driver and being able to cut a light.” she said.
Her race number is 633. She chose this number because it is the ini- tials of her siblings, 6 for Garret, 3 for Mya,
and 3 for Ash.
One thing
Shelby does before ever race is to take a selfie with her Mom (her jr. street co pi- lot) before they run down the track.
Shelby is a seventeen year old and is currently at- tending her gradua- tion year at Correlieu Secondary School. She has two sisters and one brother. Her older sister Ashleigh passed away in a non racing car accident when Shelby was seven years old. Her family met Garret four years ago and realized he needed some love. Her fam- ily decided they were ready to give that love to him. He has been part of the fam-
ily ever since.
Shelby played with both cars and dolls as a kid. Her favor- ite TV show is any- thing with Mr. Alton Brown. Most people don’t know that Shel- by has very high anx- iety.
2008, the Dawson family got rained out of a camping trip and had friends racing at the Ash- croft race track. They stopped there and as Mr. Dawson start- ed to watch the rac- es, the family knew they were going to be there a long time! They have been fol- lowing racing for 10 years now and they would never go back.
Shelby Daw- son has been racing now for four years and has loved every
second of it.
Shelby’s most
memorable moment in her racing career is when she found out she won her first ever Wally. “I had been racing all day and had just won in the finals, drove back to my pit, and my best friend yells at me to get out of the car. She was ecstatic and I couldn’t figure out why. I slowly get out of the car and she tells me that I just won a Wally! I had been racing for one all day and had no clue! The funny part was that I lost the last Wally race to her with a -.002 light.” she said
Shelby, her sister Mya Dawson and her best friend Kelsey Lefebvre, are
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Dirtbag Racing Team. Her favorite driver is Andy Closkey. She has been watching him race for the last 10 years and has seen the amazing things he has
done racing.
Andy Closkey,
and her father, Greg Dawson help her with her car. Mission Race- way Park in Mission British Columbia is where they race. They travel 8 hours for every race.
Shelby races a 1990 Ford Mustang with a V8. She original- ly was given her cousins
1986 V6 but upgraded it after the first year.
Shelby raced in the Junior street class for the last four year and re-
cently the high school class. This year will be her first year in Sportsman. In 2016 she managed to cut two perfect lights back to back in her time trials. She thought the first one was crazy and then after she got the
second one she thought the tree was wrong, but the tree was right!
There are several women who race with Shelby, including her best
friend Kelsey Lefebvre, her younger sister Mya, and many more. Shelby’s racing goal is to race the world finals.
Shelby’s favorite things about racing are the feeling she gets when she sits in her car in the lanes; the feeling she gets as she revs the engine as she waits for the tree to come down; and she loves to do burnouts.
Shelby says that being successful means being able to win and lose