I really became a driver when I stopped asking myself who I was, and I just started driving.”

Mia Leroux

Every time I go out there, I feel people are against me, and that’s definitely motivated one of my biggest goals in racing — to change that dynamic. I would really like to help make a path for other girls who want to do this.”

Mia Leroux

A year ago, Mia Leroux was a high school sophomore, a distance-learning student who spent her days at home, Zooming into classes with her friends. Today Mia is going to school full-time in a dual program to earn both a high school diploma and a college associate’s degree a little more than a year from now.

A year ago, Mia Leroux was a 15-year-old who had never been behind the wheel of a car before. Today, Mia is a 16-year-old who owns two Mazda Miatas — one for driving and one for racing — and understands everything under the hood and how it works.

A year ago, Mia Leroux was living in Barrington, where she had spent her entire young life. Today Mia lives in Florida and travels throughout the Southeast, chasing her new dream of becoming a professional race car driver.

Much has changed for Mia Leroux, her parents and her ambitions in the past year. And like many stories today, it’s all because of Covid.

Bored at home

Throughout the 2020-21 school year, most high school students stayed home half the time and went to school half the time. Mia opted to be a fully remote student, so most of her life unfolded through a computer screen. She was bored. She was also getting on her parents’ nerves a little.

So last spring her mother, real estate broker Tracy Leroux, said to her husband, Michael, “You have to get her out of the house.” One day he asked Mia if she wanted to come to the race track with him, at Palmer Motorsports Park in Palmer, Mass.

“To my surprise, she said yes,” Michael said.

Michael did not grow up racing. It’s become a new passion in his life. He owned a Porsche 911 about seven years ago and wanted a chance to drive it the way it was meant to be driven. So he brought it to a road race course and rented time on the track. “It’s one of the greatest things I ever did,” Michael said. He loved the feeling and was quickly hooked.

Michael did that for a couple of years before buying a Mazda Miata race car and competing in amateur races against other drivers using the same type of vehicle. They compete in cars that have the same horsepower, same wheels, same exhaust system, same suspension, same weight. It’s similar to sail races where everyone is in the same type of boat — the winner is the person who drives best that day, not the person who drives the best car.

When Mia joined Michael at the track that first day, it wasn’t very exciting. He spent some of the time working on his car, some of the time driving. But something happened. Mia became interested in what Dad was doing. She became interested in the car, the driving, the engine, the racing, everything.

At first, she simply joined Michael in the passenger seat while he whipped around the course. “I was Zooming on my phone, maybe in a Biology class, and sitting in my dad’s car going 150 miles per hour down a straightaway … it was definitely a fun experience,” Mia said.

Getting behind the wheel

Before long, Michael gave Mia a chance to drive a little, though not on the actual track yet. “I didn’t know how to drive a car, I didn’t know how to drive a stick-shift, I really didn’t know anything,” she said.

Dad taught her the pedals, the shifting, the braking. Before long, the owner of the track asked if Mia wanted to drive on the actual course while it was empty.

“We took a Land Rover out on the track. On the straightaway she went about 35 miles an hour,” Michael said. “We did about 10 laps. Afterward, I told her, ‘you can tell mom if you want, but some secrets are better kept.’ ”

Mia kept coming to the track, and she kept driving. She was only 15. She couldn’t drive a car on roads, but she was perfectly fine on a track. She graduated to Dad’s Porsche next. He would ride in the passenger seat, telling her what to do, until he finally stopped talking. She was hitting 60 miles an hour on the straightaways and didn’t need his advice anymore.

Before long, she was ready for Dad’s race car, the Mazda Miata. She put on his race suit, wore a helmet and was strapped into the six-point harness system. At first, he rode in the passenger seat. Because of the noise, they could communicate only through headsets that they both wore while sitting next to each other.

The next milestone was to let Mia drive the race car alone. “She took off, and I could hear her go from first gear to second gear, and my gut tightened up, and I couldn’t believe I just put my daughter on that track,” Michael said. Because it’s a road course, the cars disappear from view. After a couple of minutes of anxiety, he could hear her coming. “Vrooooom.” She raced past and kept going. “We ran out of daylight fast that day,” Michael said. Mia just kept driving until the sun was setting and he finally had to wave her in. Mia was in love.

Learning and racing

The next step for Mia was racing school. She had to take classes and pass a test before she could actually get on a course with other drivers. She also signed up for an automotive course taught at Tiverton High School. Attending classes on Saturdays, she learned how to rotate tires, align wheels, change oil.

In racing school, she completed simulated races against other drivers. Then she drove on a track against other drivers and had to finish with a clean record — no accidents, no mishaps, no contact with other cars. “You basically want to go unnoticed … They want to make sure you know what you’re doing, that you’re safe out there,” Mia said.

She passed that test, too. She was still a sophomore at Barrington High School. She was still 15, too young for a real driver’s license. But her racing career had begun.

“In the beginning, it’s all about seat time,” Mia said. “You just want to be on the track, because if you make a mistake, it’s better if you’re the only one on the track. If you’re on the track with 80 people and you make a mistake, it doesn’t go well.”

She began racing any chance she could. She and Dad would also book time at the Palmer track whenever possible. Mia also got her own Miata — she paid half and her parents paid half — and Michael and Mia would often race together on the track. He’d put her in various situations and test how she responded. She learned quickly.

From figure skating to F1

Hanging around race tracks and talking engine mechanics with grown men is quite a departure from Mia’s younger days. Her first ambition was figure skating, and she competed at the highest levels as an amateur. A bad injury created a turning point in that career, and she decided to go in a new direction. “I went from amateur to almost pro as a figure skater, then broke my ankle. I realized my time had passed with figure skating. It was a great chapter in my life, but it was time for a change.” Next came ice hockey.

“I wasn’t very good,” Mia said. But she played on a team and had fun.

Next came lacrosse. She and her club team of Bristol County teammates won a state title a few years ago. Mia was the starting goalie. She was also the goalie for the Barrington High School JV lacrosse team last spring, when her racing career was just beginning. It didn’t take long to realize racing was her future.

“At some point, it became clear that racing was taking over my life,” Mia said. “As soon as it did, I was like, ‘oh my God, I want to do this the rest of my life.’ ”

Her parents supported her but gave her a dose of reality. If she really wanted to do this, if she really wanted to go for it, she needed to make a life change. You can’t race year-round living in the Northeast, and more than anything, Mia needed time behind the wheel.

All three of them also talked about the timeline for female drivers.

“As a man, you become a professional at age 20 and you can be a professional, if you want, the rest of your life,” Mia said. “As a woman, you’re pretty much at your peak from 18, 19, 20 until about 30. Think about Danica Patrick. No one wants to watch a middle-aged woman driving. It sounds terrible, but it’s the truth. You’re not going to get as much funding, you’re not going to get as much interest. A lot of female athletes face that.”

Tracy Leroux’s mother, Donna Depetrillo, lives year-round in Florida. Last summer, the family decided Mia would move to live with her grandmother down south. She packed her stuff, said goodbye to her lifelong friends, hitched her race car to a trailer and drove to Florida.

Schooling and racing

Mia qualified for a “dual enrollment” program, which is available to high school juniors. In a wing of her high school, community college professors teach college-level courses, and the students graduate at the end of their senior year with both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree. The program includes classes that Mia took last summer and more she will take this summer.

If they can score a 1330 or above on the SAT test, students in the program also have guaranteed admission and free tuition to any state school in Florida. Mia has already been accepted to the University of Southern Florida in St. Petersburg, where if all goes according to plan, she will enroll as a junior in the fall of 2023. Her former classmates back home in Barrington will be entering colleges as freshmen. As an added bonus, St. Petersburg is also home to one of the courses in the race series she would like to reach in a year or two, the MX5 Cup. So she is hoping to race and go to school in the same place.

“When you add everything up, Florida was something I had to do,” Mia said. “I had to make a sacrifice, which was moving out of Barrington, leaving my friends … It’s definitely hard leaving a place you’ve lived your entire life, a place you love, moving somewhere where you have no friends … I had a lot of anxiety about it first, but now I feel like it was definitely worth it.”

Since arriving in Florida, Mia’s racing career has taken off.

In her first Florida race, an endurance race at Sebring that lasted about two hours and had about 35 drivers, she finished in first place. “That was a big deal for me,” Mia said.

Bumping and bias

Mia is currently racing in the Hoosier Tour of the SCCA, Sports Car Club of America. “It’s probably the most prestigious of the amateur circuits; if you can win on this circuit, you get noticed by the professional tours,” Mia said.

This is real racing, with cars banging, bumping and grinding.

“You’re racing with 80 Miatas, and they’re all out for blood,” Mia said. “It was definitely baptism by fire. I’ve found myself in the wall a few times. Rubbing is racing. That’s the number one rule. If you’re not bump-drafting, if you’re not defending your position and scraping each other, you’re not doing it right.

“I’ve gone into the walls before. I’ve had a car hit me and punt me off the track, where I’ve gone into a tire wall. I’ve had a mechanical issue, where my differential exploded on the track, and I was stuck in the center of the track with cars going 100 miles an hour around me — that was actually a little bit frightening. I’ve gotten stuck in a gravel trap before. There’s lots of things that happen, but they happen to everyone. It’s inevitable.”

Mia is one of two females on the tour. Some of the men are not thrilled to have a teenager, much less a female, racing beside them, often beating them.

“Every single time I go on the track, there’s something. They don’t like that I’m a young kid. They don’t like that I’m a girl. They don’t think that I’m experienced enough. And they don’t like that I’m winning. Just last week I got second place at Sebring, with like 60 cars out there, in a three-hour race. Most of the time I’m on the track, I finish in the top five. So they really don’t like that.”

She feels the male bias is palpable.

“Every time I go out there I feel a little of, ‘oh, here she comes.’ They don’t really come up to you directly, but you feel it. I mean, I’ve gotten pushed off the track. I’ve had people push me off into gravel traps, push me into the wall. I think a lot of the older guys are really understanding, and they enjoy seeing someone like me on the circuit, but there’s a lot who feel differently.”

She’s also heard it directly. “When my differential exploded — and that wasn’t my fault — guys came up to our trailer and said, ‘she doesn’t belong out here.’ You have to take it with a grain of salt, and laugh and say, ‘okay, this middle-aged guy is intimidated by a 16-year-old girl.’ ”

A role model for girls

When she talks, Mia sounds mature beyond her years. She has accepted a new challenge, to not just be a race car driver, but to be a role model for girls.

“Every time I go out there, I feel people are against me, and that’s definitely motivated one of my biggest goals in racing — to change that dynamic,” she said. “I would really like to help make a path for other girls who want to do this.

“I want to make sure that I’m showing people this is attainable, that a girl can totally do this. This is not a sport that is meant for just older men … It’s not like I’m the first girl to ever do this, but I still feel an extra burden. I want other girls to know that, if you want to come out here, it’s safe to be out here, that you can do this. You belong here.”

She knows the guys look at her, talk about her. “They all know who I am. They all know there’s a 16-year-old girl out there on the track with them … I had to get to the point where I realize that when I’m out there on the track, none of it matters. There’s only three people who matter in a good race — the person in front of you, you, and the person behind you.”

Michael said the same thing about racing, and he sees even deeper meaning in that perspective. “When you’re driving, you have no past, you have no future. All you have is that split second in time. You have to turn. You have to accelerate. You have to brake … It’s such a feeling of peace. All you have is the car in front of you and the car behind you .. It’s such a great way to live life.”

The point is to live in the moment, stay in the present. “I really believe that Mia being fully present in driving is going to help her be fully present in life,” Michael said.

Father and daughter

Racing brought Michael and Mia closer than ever. In her younger years, when Mia spent hours of life inside a cold ice rink, Tracy was the lead parent. “That was really a Mom thing. Mom drove me to the most of the rinks. Mom picked out the dresses,” Mia said.

Racing is obviously a Dad thing, and the two have spent countless hours together, talking, learning, racing.

“My dad and I were close before, but racing brought us so much closer,” Mia said. “I feel like a lot of girls and their Dads don’t have much in common. Most of the time it’s very hard to find common ground. Dad wants to wash the car, and girls want to do other things. This really helped me understand my Dad better … Now it seems like my Dad and I are spending every waking moment together. In a way, it gives us so much more to talk about, so much more to do … There’s something special about the dynamic, too. It’s so much better that we’re working on a project together, working side by side, rather than just watching a movie together.”

Their strong bond made moving south that much more difficult. Michael has an established career here in Rhode Island. He decided to remain here while his only child moved away.

“It was hard for me at first,” Mia said. “I really missed my Dad. I wanted to ask him about things and talk to him.”

It was hard on Michael, too. “What I miss most of all is the driving time with her, traveling from Barrington to the race tracks. I could use that time to sort through a lot teenage stuff along the way,” he said.

Though racing is not her “thing,” Tracy has become an integral part of the team. She went south with Mia to get her settled in Florida last summer, and she has made frequent trips ever since. She’s also learned how to drive the big truck that tows Mia’s race car to tracks throughout the southeast, when they travel to races in Georgia, Virginia or the Carolinas.

“Mom has kind of become my truck driver,” Mia said. “It’s very impressive. My Mom is used to selling beautiful mansions and having manicures, and now she’s a truck driver.”

Part of a racing team

Mia is now part of a team, BSI Racing, which is managed by professional F1 driver Shea Holbrook. “She has definitely taken me under her wing,” Mia said of her new boss. “She’s a great driver. She’s a great Mom. She’s really become a role model for me. She’s really an amazing person, and it’s such a great team.”

The team provides mechanics, training, logistics and support. “It’s not that the racing team replaced my Dad, but they helped me transition from a backyard hobby between me and my Dad, to now I’m on the road to being a professional,” Mia said.

For now, she’s competing on the Hoosier Tour. Within a few years, she hopes to graduate to the MX5 Cup, where drivers use a more advanced Miata. If she can get there and excel, the next step would be professional racing, perhaps in Europe, where the LeMans style of racing is wildly popular. “I’d love to travel throughout Europe and race cars,” Mia said.

If she can advance to the MX5 series, she would be the only woman on the circuit.

“MX5 has no women right now,” Mia said. “We’re 50 percent of the world’s population, but we’re less than 1 percent in racing. So it would be good to have a woman on the circuit.”

Mia is living in the moment, getting good grades in her college-level courses during the week and trading paint on race courses throughout the country on her weekends. Things have changed dramatically in just 12 months, since her days sitting at home and staring into a computer screen.

“It’s all about the journey for me,” Mia said. “I want to show people, this is where I came from, and this is how far I’ve progressed.” Said the 16-year-old who finally got her actual driver’s license about six months after she began zipping around race tracks at 100 miles an hour, “I really became a driver when I stopped asking myself who I was, and I just started driving.”

Her parents hope she stays humble and realizes she still has a lot to learn about racing. Nonetheless, they can’t help but beam with pride.

I’m so proud of her … I could not have planned this,” Michael said.

To follow Mia and her career, find her on Instagram at: mia.onthegrid.