Before race cars, SCCA® Texas Region’s Leann Falk wanted to race horses. Growing up in San Antonio, TX, she dreamed of becoming a jockey – then reality intervened. “I’m five-foot-eight,” Falk laughs. “My family kept telling me I’d better put a brick on my head because I wasn’t going to be a jockey.” So she found another kind of horsepower.
At age 18, after watching IMSA race through the streets of San Antonio, Falk knew exactly what she wanted to do. Then someone pointed her toward SCCA and explained the path to becoming a race car driver.
Unlike a surprising number of SCCA members, Falk didn’t grow up in a racing family. There wasn’t a trailer in the driveway or a family rig dedicated to motorsports. There was simply determination. She rented a race car for Drivers’ Schools, then scraped together enough money to buy a Volkswagen Rabbit, installed a roll cage with help of her father, and built her first race car herself. She drove that same car to race weekends, competed, then loaded the tires into the back and drove it home.
Everything revolved around racing.
She worked three part-time jobs while attending college, eventually moving to Wisconsin so she could race more often. Later, she became an instructor with the Skip Barber Racing School before building a career in automotive training. Today, she serves as Kia’s Southwest Region Product Trainer, helping dealership teams understand new vehicles and customer experience.
This season, Falk captured both the Southern Conference U.S. Majors Tour® Championship and the SowDiv championship in the Touring 4 class, sticking with a challenging first year developing her 2009 Mazda 3.
“It would’ve been easy to give up,” she admits, “but I knew we had something.”
Away from the track, Falk’s energy doesn’t slow down. She owns Black Cat Ranch near Granbury, TX, where retired Thoroughbred horses, a donkey named Katie, and a collection of other animals keep her busy.
That same drive carries into her training. Falk credits functional fitness with making her a stronger racer, especially during brutally hot Texas race weekends.
“It’s not just physical,” she says. “It’s mental. You learn to be uncomfortable and keep pushing.”
When asked what it was like entering a sport where women were still relatively uncommon, Falk’s answer was surprisingly simple: “I was kind of oblivious to it.”
Her parents never told her there were things girls “couldn’t” do. They simply expected her to work hard, and that’s exactly what she did. Today, it’s the same advice she offers women considering motorsports.
“Ask yourself how bad you want it,” she says. “There will be people who tell you that you shouldn’t do it. But if you want it badly enough, you’ll find a way.”
Looking back over a lifetime spent chasing horsepower, that message feels less like advice and more like the story of Leann Falk herself. She never waited for permission, she simply found a way.
Photo courtesy Leann Falk