Shawna Robinson | |||||||
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Born |
Des Moines, Iowa |
November 30, 1964 ||||||
Awards | 1988, 1989 Charlotte/Daytona Dash Series Most Popular Driver | ||||||
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career | |||||||
8 races run over 2 years | |||||||
Best finish | 52nd (2002) | ||||||
First race | 2001 Kmart 400 (Michigan) | ||||||
Last race | 2002 Pepsi 400 (Daytona) | ||||||
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NASCAR Xfinity Series career | |||||||
61 races run over 7 years | |||||||
Best finish | 23rd (1993) | ||||||
First race | 1991 Roses Stores 300 (Rougemont) | ||||||
Last race | 2005 Sharpie Professional 250 (Bristol) | ||||||
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NASCAR Camping World Truck Series career | |||||||
3 races run over 1 year | |||||||
Best finish | 72nd (2003) | ||||||
First race | 2003 O'Reilly 400K (Texas) | ||||||
Last race | 2003 Silverado 350 (Texas) | ||||||
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Shawna Robinson (born November 30, 1964) is an American retired professional driver. She was a competitor in all three of NASCAR's national touring series, as well as the ARCA Bondo/Mar-Hyde Series and the Charlotte/Daytona Dash Series. Robinson is one of 16 women to participate in the NASCAR Cup Series, and one of three females to race in the sports' premier event, the Daytona 500.
Robinson started competing in her childhood and, after graduating from high school in 1983, she began racing in semi-tractors. She achieved early success with 30 victories, and moved into the GATR Truck Series becoming the championship's rookie of the year for 1984. Four years later, Robinson started competing in where she became the first woman to win a top-level NASCAR- sanctioned race that same year, finishing a career-high third place in the points standings. The following season, Robinson won two races and battled for the Charlotte/Daytona Dash Series championship in which she finished third overall. She was twice voted the Charlotte/Daytona Dash Series Most Popular Driver.
She moved to the Busch Series (now called Xfinity Series) in 1991 where she struggled to perform well but achieved one pole position in 1994. Robinson left a year later to start a family and began an interior decorating business. In 1999, she returned to active competition in the ARCA Bondo/Mar-Hyde Series where she ran strongly, and finished sixth in the series championship standings the following year. Robinson returned to NASCAR in 2001, and made her debut in the Winston Cup Series (now the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series) but was unable to compete successfully. She retired from racing four years later to focus on her family and concentrate on running her interior design and furniture business.
Robinson was born on November 30, 1964 in Des Moines, Iowa. She is the youngest of five children of former race car driver Richard "Lefty" Robinson, an amateur diesel truck racer who worked on cars in his home garage and promoted races in the Midwestern United States, and his wife Lois who competed in auto racing before she flipped a car, and was asked by Lefty to stop racing. She grew up in a poor family. Lefty and Lois were also known for innovative ways of entertaining crowds at stock car races which garnered national recognition. Robinson was inspired by race car drivers A. J. Foyt, Sammy Swindell, and Steve Kinser in her teenage years, and found inspiration in woman driver Janet Guthrie by her early twenties, as she had more interest in NASCAR than open-wheel racing. She and her siblings were taught that they were allowed to do anything they wished and drove minibikes, motorcycles, and snowmobiles.