Mandy Chick could be the Kansas City area’s next big auto racing star

With Clint Bowyer and Jamie McMurray retired to the broadcast booth and Carl Edwards tending to his farm, Kansas City-area race fans have been waiting for the emergence of their next local NASCAR star.

They just might have someone in Mandy Chick, a feisty 5-foot-4 engineering major and sorority president who was born and raised a mere 20 minutes from Kansas Speedway.

Chick, of DeSoto, surprised the field with a fifth-place finish in the ARCA Menards Racing Series opener at Daytona in February and will fulfill her lifetime goal of racing at Kansas Speedway on Saturday in the ARCA Dawn 150.

“Driving past there and attending races at Kansas Speedway, I can’t tell you how many times I imagined myself out there on the track … a lot,” said Chick, a junior at Rose-Hulman Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Chick, 21, was born just a few months after Kansas Speedway opened in 2021 when her father, Steve, was a crew chief for the track’s inaugural NASCAR Craftsman Trucks Series race. As a child, she was turning wrenches and airing tires in her grandfather’s race shop instead of playing with toys and games, leaving little doubt that her future was in racing.

She wasn’t discouraged after flipping a four-wheeler and breaking her arm as a 5-year-old and later stripping the gears on a dune buggy by racing too fast. Chick climbed the racing ladder, starting in Quarter Midgets, running USAC all over the country and racing on the short tracks throughout the Midwest, capped by NASCAR Missouri State Rookie of the Year honors as a 14-year-old at I-44 Speedway in Lebanon, Missouri.

“Mandy has been around racing her entire life,” said Steve Chick, who will be atop the pit box as crew chief for his daughter on Saturday in the family-owned No. 74 Chevrolet. “Until she went to college, she would do her own suspension setup before we’d go to a race.

“When she is here, she will pick up the wrenches and go to work just like anyone else. She actively works on her cars. She’s a driver who gets her hands dirty … grease on her face from being under the car working on it. She’s very involved.’’

That’s what made the fifth-place finish at Daytona so special, as Chick, in just her third career ARCA start, became just the fourth woman in 44 years of ARCA racing at Daytona to finish in the top five on the superspeedway.

“Mandy is third-generation,” Steve Chick said. “My dad (Steve Sr.) started the racing bug in the Kansas City area. I’m a second-generation. I raced at Lakeside Speedway and I-70 in Odessa. And for all of us, it was the highlight of our careers to see Mandy run top five at Daytona. That’s beyond what any of us thought of when we started racing Quarter Midgets with her at age 6.

“There’s a great deal of pride on two levels: My daughter is capable of doing that, and second of all it was a family-built car in town. This car wasn’t built in North Carolina or by big money. It was put together with a family effort, with our friends. We took that car to Daytona and finished fifth. That’s a huge accomplishment.”

That kind of finish on an iconic track like Daytona could lead to bigger and better things for the Chick racing team.

“It’s given us the recognition and respect in the series, and a lot of other people and a lot of other teams have been willing to work with us because of that solid finish and the fact we showed we could be trusted,” Mandy Chick said. “Plus, we have gotten media attention and a confidence booster going into other races.

“Before, we would be looking for top 10 or top 15 finishes with the car in one piece, but now we’re looking for maybe top 5, top 10, maybe even contending to win. It really sets our expectations high.”

In her last start, Chick got caught up in an early crash at Talladega and finished 27th in a car that was among the fastest in practice rounds. With experience, she is learning to be more aggressive on the track while still taking care of her race car.

“Recently I’ve been a little more of a risk taker, but historically people would say I’m more conservative and patient and make smart moves,” she said. “I’d like to say I do, but I also think being in the series means I know that it takes taking risks to advance our position.”

More than just a driver

The No. 74 team is hopeful of competing in 10-12 more ARCA races this season — after Chick completes final exams later this month — but that takes funding to race at a competitive level. Rose-Hulman supplies some sponsorship, but in racing, it’s never enough.

Steve Chick, whose day job is fire chief for eight Johnson County communities, depends on some retired firefighters and other volunteers to help on the pit crew to curb expenses.

“They take time off work, we pay their expenses and feed them and put them in a hotel and take as good of care of them as we can, but they do it for the love of the sport and in their belief in Mandy,” her dad said. “We would like to do a full a season, but a lot of that depends on sponsorship.

“We’re working on corporate partners right now. Being from Kansas City, there are a lot of great companies that could benefit from being in motor sports, so we’re hoping to build those relationships and find somebody we can represent on a national level. We’re putting the pieces together and, as much as funding would allow, we’re going to race. She would race every week if we would let her.”

Mandy Chick is not limiting her future to driving the race car. She also handles the marketing of the team, manages social media and is involved in the business side of the team.

All the while attending school full-time majoring in mechanical engineering and minoring in economics and entrepreneurial studies and serving as newly elected president of Delta Delta Delta...

“Down the road, my big goal would be to work my way through the NASCAR ranks, through trucks, Xfinity, Cup series as a driver,” said Chick, “but aside from that, have some sort of position from the technical engineering side as well because of my passion for it. So maybe finding a way to mesh that technical side with the racing and still be a driver long term.”

“There is no give up in that kid”

Chick is one of four women competing in the ARCA Series, and there are no women actively driving in the Cup or Xfinity series. In the trucks series, Hailie Deegan will be joined by Toni Breidinger, who will be making her series debut at Kansas Speedway on Saturday after competing in the ARCA event.

More success in the ARCA series could lead Chick to the next level, following another local driver, Jennifer Jo Cobb of Kansas City, Kansas, who made 231 starts in the trucks series and 31 starts in the Xfinity series from 2004-22.

Back in 2003, Bowyer was discovered by Richard Childress Racing during a second-place finish in an ARCA race at Nashville, and Edwards caught the attention of Roush Racing when he finished eighth for a Missouri-based team in a 2004 trucks race at Kansas Speedway.

So ... anything can happen.

“That would be a dream come true,” Chick said. “Those are people I’ve looked up to since I was little, because they do so well and stay humble. They accomplished great things in their careers, and they come back and they’re so loyal to Kansas and share the Kansas values and really represent very well. I would be proud to represent my hometown and home state.”

Her dad has full confidence that Mandy can make it to the big time.

“My daughter can do anything she puts her mind to,” he said. “She is a talented young lady, she’s strong willed and there is no give up in that kid. At Talladega, her car was wrecked, she was fighting it, and right up until she blew a tire and a caution came out, she was going to race that car for everything it was worth. That’s what you’re going to get out of her is maximum effort all the time.

“I grew up racing with Clint Bowyer and know Carl Edwards and to even be mentioned in the same sentence with those guys would be quite an honor.”