Who is Shawna Robinson? All you need to know about the NASCAR trailblazer

Shawna Robinson is a 60-year-old American retired professional stock car racing driver and was the first woman to win a NASCAR Touring Series race. She holds a prominent place on the list of 16 women who competed in the NASCAR Cup Series and was the second to race in the Daytona 500.

Robinson was introduced to the world of racing by his father, Richard Robinson, an amateur diesel truck racer. On her 18th birthday, her father taught her to drive the 14,000-lb truck cabs he used for racing, sowing a seed of racing in her psyche.

The former Cup Series driver began racing in her childhood, and soon after graduating from high school, she started racing in a semi-tractor racing series. She was successful in making her racing dream come true and bagged 30 wins in the series. Then, she leaped and moved to the GATR Truck Series and was awarded the title of Rookie of the Year in 1984.

Soon after four years in 1988, Shawna Robinson made her debut in stock car racing, becoming the first woman to win a NASCAR-sanctioned race, showcasing her dominance in the sport. She ended the series in a career-high third place. Additionally, she was twice crowned as the Charlotte/Daytona Dash Series Most Popular Driver.

Robinson then moved to the NASCAR Busch Series in 1991 to showcase her driving skills and became the first woman to achieve pole position in 1994. She encountered a major setback in 1994 when she got involved in a crash at the Atlanta Motor Speedway and took a break from racing to start a family.

In 1999, Shawna Robinson returned and raced in the ARCA Bondo/Mar-Hyde Series and moved to the NASCAR Cup Series in 2001. She competed in eight races in the Cup Series in her two-year stint and also ran in the Craftsman Series in 2003. She ran her last race at the Bristol Motor Speedway and then retired from the racing world.

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Shawna Robinson's post-racing career

After retirement, the former NASCAR Cup Series driver focused on her family and interior designing business. She creates her own furniture and redesigns old chairs in the name of her company 'Happy Chairs', located in the Matthews area of Charlotte.

Most of her clients were from the NASCAR community. She received critical acclaim from her customers and online magazines.

Shawna Robinson also played a part in planning and decorating the two-time Xfinity Series champion Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s sister Kelly Earnhardt Miller's wedding in 2011. Three years later, in 2014, Robinson was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer and fought her battle for one year, causing the removal of 18 lymph nodes and a lymph node in her breast. She completed her final treatment in September 2015, beating cancer.