Without so much as a “how-politically-incorrect” eyebrow arch from the media at the 2000 U.S. Nationals, drag-racing team owner Don Schumacher introduced Melanie Troxel as his Exide Batteries Dragster driver, casually offering, “She’s attractive and we can market her.” (Troxel, unfazed by the remark at the time, later said she never heard him say that because she “was on Cloud Nine” about the opportunity.)
 
Seven years later, Schumacher gave a shot at testing Gary Scelzi’s Oakley Funny Car to then-obscure Leah Pruett. Asked for some explanation of who this lucky racer is, Schumacher replied, “She’s 19 years old, about 5-foot-5 or 5-6, with long blonde hair.”
 
Hmm . . . Did he want a drag-racing champion or Miss America or some hybrid queen of the quarter-mile? Did a driver have be pretty to join Don Schumacher Racing? (After all, he once had told one of several dozen male inquirers about a vacancy there that he was looking for somebody — no offense, he said — better looking.)
 
“How could a compliment be bad?” the mega-team boss asked, making a logical enough point. “Let’s be realistic. We have to remember this is entertainment. We’d be foolish not to use every asset.”
 
Respected veteran journalist Cole Coonce even referred to Pruett in a Hot Rod Magazine article as a “fuel-flopper femme fatale” with a “fetching demeanor and come-hither image” and “serpentine wisps of butterscotch blond hair.”
 
In an era in which women drive station wagons on steroids, assert themselves in the corporate world, command attention that even has altered the English language, and serve in harm’s way in the military, it should follow that established female racers are recognized for their intelligence, experience, and sense of professionalism.

 In fairness to Schumacher, he did say repeatedly that Pruett has “the desire, the drive, and the determination” to excel. And Coonce counted her among the drag racers “with the demeanor and compulsion of a cold killer” and celebrated her graduation from the NHRA Jr. Dragster playground to a “blown-on-alcohol, big-block-Chevy-powered Bantam altered that her family ran with some success in the Goodguys Vintage Racing Association.”

 Any less acknowledgement would ignore her 17 straight years of NHRA competition.

And if Pruett’s confidence during an abbreviated preseason test session this month at Jupiter, Fla., is any kind of harbinger, Pruett will be a clear force in the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series’ Top Fuel class.
 
Although she is scheduled at this point to drive the Dote Racing Dragster at only 15 of 24 events this season unless additional funding materializes, she has the mindset of a winner who could pose a serious threat to actively advertised Brittany Force in NHRA rookie-of-the-year voting.
 
“If you’re going to go drag racing and do this, you can’t NOT expect to go to the final every race. You have to. And I do believe we will be in a final, and I do believe we are capable of winning this year and especially [advancing to] multiple semifinals,” the 24-year-old Redlands, Calif., native said. “As a part-time team this season, it would say a lot for a non-fulltime team to come out with a win sometime during this season.

“I know it’s early to say, but I’ve got a good feeling about it all,” she said.
 
Maybe it isn’t all that early. Granted, maybe it’s early for this season but not for Pruett’s career. She began competing not long after learning her ABCs stood for axles, brakes, and crankshafts. She even geared her course study at Cal State – San Bernardino to one that would help her advance her racing aspirations and wound up with a degree in communications.
 
Along the way, Pruett has won a nostalgia Funny Car championship in the NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series, driving the Plueger & Gyger entry. That 2010 season included a victory at the classic Bakersfield March Meet — after surviving the first 32-car field since 1976 — and another at the prestigious Bakersfield Hot Rod Reunion. During the next two seasons, she won three ProCare Rx NHRA Pro Mod Series races in Roger Burgess’ twin-turbo, 250-mph cars.
 
She had an ill-fated appearance — on a Friday the 13th, no less — at the 2009 NHRA Finals at Pomona in a nitro Funny Car. In an effort to keep her Funny Car license up to date and not squander the lessons she learned in testing the Schumacher car, she joined independent owners John Lindsay and Phil Miller and agreed to drive their DragStar-Tigerflow Chevy Monte Carlo.
 
She later told Coonce of that oil-spewing, rod-kicking, ‘chute-popping mess that rocked her immediately at the hit of the throttle, “No matter how bad I want to race, and I feel like I have dedicated my life to becoming a professional drag racer and loving the sport, that my life is not worth it. My reputation that I have been building all this time is not worth mistaking quantity for quality.”
 
Pruett is choosy, and she and Top Fuel team owner Connie Dote have chosen each other for the dragster seat that Doug Foley, Hillary Will, and Larry Dixon have warmed up.

 
“We’ve been watching Leah for years, since she had a Jr. Dragster,” Dote said. “From there right on up, she has excelled in every class she has been in. This is where she belongs. I think we’re going to do very well with her. She works really hard, and we love her over here.”
 

She got that ethic from her dad, Ron, a 12-time land speed world record-holder and owner-driver of the World’s Fastest Ford-powered Thunderbird, and older sister Lindsey, a former Jr. Dragster champion.

It helped her in the recent test at Palm Beach International Raceway. Her most recent race, in Roger Burgess’ R2B2 Pro Mod car, came last October at St. Louis, but the Doug Kuch-led, Monroe, Ohio-based Dote Racing team’s most recent outing was with driver Larry Dixon, also in October, at Reading, Pa. She said that longer-than-usual layoff made her two unexpected Thursday testing runs even more commendable.
 
She ran a 4.774-second elapsed time at 155.49 mph in her first one and improved to 4.011, 240.81 in her evening run. Both were scheduled half-track runs.       
 
“I’ve got a lot of confidence in Doug and this whole team,” Pruett said, impressed that they neither were rusty nor caught off-guard when they got the chance to make a couple of passes Thursday as the Al-Anabi Racing team packed it in and left Florida.

Pruett (far lane) racing alongside teammate Melanie Troxel in 2011 as team owner Roger Burgess looks on.

“We weren’t scheduled to run. We were scheduled for only the PRO [Winter Warm-Up] sessions,” Pruett said. “[Shawn] Langdon and [Khalid al-]Balooshi called it. They whupped up on everybody with a (3.)73 and .76. And their absence allowed us to make two runs, which got us ahead of our eight-ball.”
 
She said she thinks she’s prepared for her Top Fuel debut Valentines Day at the Winternationals at Pomona’s Auto Club Raceway. Besides, while most women prefer such fragrances as ones with celebrity signatures or ones from Juicy Couture, Dolce & Gabbana, or Victoria’s Secret, Pruett said, “I’ve always had a passion for nitro.”
 
Pruett said she is comfortable, expecting Top Fuel racing to be like all the other classes of competition, in many respects.
 
“I think it’s the same type of pressure [she has experienced at other levels]. It’s the same morale you have with the team. It’s the same services. It’s all drag racing,” she said, “but at the very highest levels it can be.”
 
She has no inferiority complex about being with a privateer team, either. She said Steve Torrence’s three victories in five final rounds last year was an inspiration.
 
“It just shows you don’t have to have a multi-team operation to win,” Pruett said. “It levels the playing field.”
 
Pruett is planning to race at the Arizona Nationals at Chandler, Ariz., near Phoenix, immediately after that and at the New England Nationals at Epping, N.H., as well as 10 East Coast and Midwest national events.
   
So her future is looking, well . . . attractive.