This year, 21-year-old Toni Breidinger became the first Arab-American woman to race at the Daytona International Speedway.
Her magnetism to racing started early. “As soon as I got into a go-kart (at age 9), I really just knew,” Breidinger told CNN. “I’ve always had so much passion for it. I love the competition, the adrenaline rush. I’m hooked on it. When the helmet comes on and I’m racing, it’s not about being a female driver anymore. I’m just like anyone else trying to get to the finish line.”
While Toni follows a proud legacy of women in NASCAR including Sara Christian, the first woman to drive in NASCAR (1942), and Robin Dallenbach the youngest driver to qualify for a race at age 18 (1982), there are still gaping disparities in representation across the largely white-male dominated sport. Toni aims to help change that, “I’m honored and excited to be the first (to race at Daytona), but I don’t want to be the last,” Breidinger says. “I hope I can pave the way for future female Arab drivers as well.”
In this piece we want to highlight women breaking barriers and the intricate relationship between speed and sleep. Sleep impacts reaction times, alertness, endurance, and mental agility critical to the split-second decisions when racing at 200 mph. These factors matter whether you’re a parent driving your kids to practice or a millennial on your way to work, poor quality sleep can have the same harmful and potentially dangerous impacts on your ability to perceive and react. These consequences ripple out further than intended every day as a bevy of accidents are cited as being caused by sleepy/drowsy drivers.
How can you take better care of your sleep so we can take better care of yourself (and others)? We’ve worked hard to make it easy for you to receive the benefits of sleep assessment, monitoring, professional guidance, and ongoing care from wherever you are via our telehealth platform SLaaS™.
Connect with us to learn how you can be a better you on the road (and just about everywhere else).