Race Car Driver Taylor Nesbitt Talks About Life on the Track as a Female Race Car Driver

Photo Credit: Kristy Smith-Palmer

Race car driving has always stereotypically been a male-dominated sport, but men are not the only ones who enjoy the thrill of racing and the smell of burnt rubber on a track. For twenty-four year-old female race car driver and Asheville, N.C. native Taylor Nesbitt, racing is a lifestyle. Nesbitt grew up in a “racing family,” as she describes it. “My dad got into it, and he fell in love with the sport,” she says. 

Growing up she spent many of her days at the race track with her dad. Nesbitt soon found herself falling in love with the sport and wanting to pursue it as a career. She began racing Limited Late Models at just thirteen years old. “I love the adrenaline and the successes,” she says. “Having the opportunity to chase a dream that many do not get to do is a blessing.” 

Being a female in the racing industry, Nesbitt has experienced discouragement from the outside world, but she doesn’t allow the negative comments to stop her from doing what she loves. There are many qualified women behind the wheels of race cars in numbers never seen before, and the racing industry has become much more respectful of women drivers. “In the racing world, it does not matter whether you are a male or a female,” she says. “When you have a helmet on, you are a racer.” 

During her racing career, she has enjoyed several victories. In 2017, she became the first female to win the Greenville Pickens Speedway Limited Late Model Championship in Greenville, South Carolina. She remembers the day leading up to the championship as being “the perfect racing day” where almost nothing went wrong. 

“You never get that. Often, you’ll have a car that’s not handling quite the way you want or something is not going your way,” Nesbitt says. “But that day, the car was perfect all day, and we had a good weekend. It was an exciting race that I look back on as being my favorite race.”  

Nesbitt also won a race at Anderson Motor Speedway in Anderson, South Carolina during the first weekend of August 2021. She was the first female race car driver to win an event with the Southeast Super Truck Series Limited Late Model Division at this race. “We run all the races the Southeast Super Truck Series has scheduled, and we fill in races at local tracks. We do 12-15 races a year,” Nesbitt says. 

While she loves racing, it does not come without certain challenges. The sport of racing is unlike other sports, such as hockey or football, where players can practice whenever they want to. In racing, it requires a significant amount of funding just to get behind the wheel and practice. The racing industry is more of a business than it is a sport, Nesbitt explains. 

“Racing is very expensive, and there are a lot of partnerships where companies will put their logos on cars or sponsor a team to get to a track,” she says. “It’s an advertising partnership. Anything helps in racing because it is expensive.” While she would love to race NASCAR, Nesbitt’s ultimate dream is to make it as far as she can. “If I just continue racing like I am, I’ll be happy with it,” she says. “I just want to keep doing it, regardless of whatever it looks like.” 

Photo Credit: Melody Chandler

When she is not racing, Nesbitt supports her husband Chase Campbell at his races. Campbell races all-terrain (ATV) vehicles on the weekends. She also works a full time job as a financial planning associate and is a proud mom of her two-year-old daughter, Brylin. When she was pregnant with her daughter, Nesbitt took a year and a half off from racing. She says it was a challenge getting back into the racing seat afterward. “I feel like your whole body and mind is not the same after you are pregnant,” she describes. 

She is now fully back in the swing of things in her racing career, and her daughter Brylin gets to tag along with her and Campbell to races on the weekends. “Having my daughter around is a whole new experience,” she says. “Just seeing her enjoying it is so much fun.” Maybe one day, Brylin will develop the same passion for racing as her mom, but even if she doesn’t, Nesbitt will support her in whatever it is she wants to do. She believes everyone should chase their dreams, no matter what anyone else says. For Nesbitt, living out her dream is worth any of the struggles that might come along with it. 

Photo Credit: Keith H. Anderson

“Definitely live for the good times in racing because they all outweigh any bad times,” she says.

Written by Rosa Linda Fallon