De Sousa makes history at Ocean Speedway
WATSONVILLE
Strapped into her 1990 Acura Integra, it doesn’t take Adriane De Sousa very long to speed around the dusty oval race track at Ocean Speedway in Watsonville.
An average of 18 seconds is all she needs to tear around the quarter-mile short-track dirt surface, navigating and maneuvering through the organized chaos of a 20-lap sprint to the checkered flag.
It’s an adrenaline-packed sequence unmatched in here eyes.
“It’s fun. You never know what the car next to you is going to do,” De Sousa said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”
Last Friday night in the finale of an eight-month amateur racing season, De Sousa accomplished something that no female had ever done in the history of Ocean Speedway. De Sousa, 28, a Gilroy resident and graduate of Live Oak High, became the first female race car driver to win a division championship.
“I still can’t believe it. I’m still kind of in shock. It hasn’t settled in,” she said. “It takes such hard work and such devotion.”
De Sousa locked up the season championship in the 4-Bangers division — four cylinder, front-wheel drive cars — with a first-place showing in the division’s final race of the season. It was her third win of 2010.
De Sousa carried a slim three-point edge heading into the night and ended the season with 1,091 points, beating out Sean Markley, Jr. of Hollister (1,080) and E. Drew Williams (958) of Salinas.
“In 60 years, no chick has ever won a championship,” she said. “I was in second place the entire year going into the race before last. So, going into the last race, it wasn’t stressful because finishing first or second was a great accomplishment. But I didn’t give up and kept trying.”
The race track has been a second home to De Sousa for longer than she can remember.
“When I was in my mom’s belly,” she chuckled as she discussed when her passion began. “I remember going when I was 5 or 6 to the San Jose Speedway to watch a friend of ours race. And to me, it was just the coolest thing in the world — the smell, the noise the motors made.”
Surrounded by everything cars since her childhood, De Sousa would help her dad tend to the family-owner race car in the mid 1980s. More recently, De Sousa spent time on various pit crews for friends. The one constant throughout all that time was racing.
Three years ago, a friend of a friend noticed De Sousa’s commitment to the sport and rewarded her with her Integra.
“He really liked my attitude toward racing,” De Sousa said. “He came across a car, bought it for me and turned it into a race car.”
De Sousa spends about eight to 10 hours per week tweaking her car, making sure it is in prime condition each trip to the track.
“It’s definitely a hobby, but I’d love it to be a profession,” she said.
De Sousa will be recognized along with eight other division winners at a trophy ceremony in January.
“I never thought it would happen to me in a million years,” she said.
