Fast Girl: Don't Brake Until You See the Face of God and Other Good Advice from the Racetrack

Life in Ingrid Steffensen’s New Jersey suburb was safe, comfortable, and predictable. A college professor, wife, and mother of a preadolescent daughter, her carefully cultivated world was comprised of the usual suspects: family, work, book clubs, yoga classes, and date nights. Then, one day—thinking she’d be a good sport and maybe learn something about what made her car-crazed husband tick—she put a helmet on her head, took her Mini Cooper to the racetrack, and learned how to drive it really, really fast. Soon, what began as a whim became a full-blown obsession—and a freeing journey of self-discovery.

In the eventful, exhilarating year that followed her first lesson, Steffenson dove head-first into high-performance driving. In the process, she discovered the terrifying and addictive thrill of pushing her limits, learning an entirely new set of skills, and tackling danger head-on—and found that doing so liberated her in a way that she hadn’t even known she needed. Fast-paced and fun, Fast Girl is the quirky, real-life chronicle of how one woman stepped outside her comfort zone, shrugged off the shackles of suburban conformity, and changed her entire perspective on life through the unlikeliest of means: racecar driving.

Ingrid Steffensen holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia, an M.A. from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Delaware. She has taught art and architectural history at Princeton, Rutgers, NJIT, and Bryn Mawr, and is the author of numerous articles and books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century art and architecture. Having discovered a passion for high-performance driving and a desire to write for a broader audience, she has recently written about such topics as Frank Lloyd Wright’s automobiles, Bruce Springsteen’s dog, and the decade-long exchange of a cheap bottle of plonk between two sets of friends.

When she is not in the classroom or at home in suburban New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and tiny dog, Ingrid can be found hurtling around the racetrack with her crash helmet on and her stability control off.