GREENWOOD — She's a triple threat on a track made of dirt.
"I first fell in love with racing when I was 8 or 9 years old," McKenna Haase said.
Haase, 27, doesn't hail from a racing family, but the need for speed is in her soul.
"I like big tracks, I like to go fast," said Haase. "Extremely powerful, extremely fast, extremely difficult to handle. You have to be perfect. You can't make mistakes."
Haase hails from Iowa, sprint car country. The sport welcomes daring drivers to take the wheel in the world of outlaws.
"Its kind of like the rodeo really, so i love it."
She first felt her calling to the sport after meeting a NASCAR driver when on a family vacation, and also from a cousin who raced, but the racing world was really a new experience for her and her family.
"My parents told me, if you want to race, you can race when you are 16 and you are old enough to drive yourself to the track and get a job and all of that," said Haase. "I started kind of saving my money, racing in recreational carting leagues, stuff like that. And then, ended up saving up 800 dollars to help buy my first car when I was 12."
Haase was hungry. She found success early in her career. She hustled to make her dreams happen.
"I started selling Interstate Batteries door to door because they had a fundraising program for sports teams," said Haase.
When she couldn't race on the weekend, she would still go out to nearby Knoxville Raceway in Iowa, offering teams to scrape mud off their cars. She says she did whatever she could to get immersed in the racing environment and learn. Sometimes as young as 15 or 16 years old, Haase would travel with teams to races to help.
She's a bright young lady who started winning races, winning in two different divisions, and now set a goal to be successful at the 410 level.
In her upper teens, the college finance 4.0 GPA student wasn't satisfied with staying still.
She got an opportunity to come to Indy, the racing capital of the world, to leave college and continue her racing career. But before she left Iowa that offer fell through.
She didn't let defeat stop her in her tracks.
"I jumped on a one-way flight and said, I'm coming here anyway, and I'm not gonna come home until I have another opportunity," said Haase. "Showing up with a helmet bag and ya know, your seat and whatever clothes you have in your car. I didn't even have a place to live. I didn't have any opportunities lined up."
She took a literal leap of faith, and relied on her faith to get her through some challenging years.
Without a place to stay and a job lined up, she started calling on faith communities to see if anyone had space for her to temporarily stay.
"I just started calling churches," said Haase. "Meanwhile, I'm like couch hopping, staying with different families."
She eventually landed in Greenwood where a couple had a place for her to stay. She opened up her shop off County Line Road as the proud owner, driver and mechanic for McKenna Haase Racing.
Just recently, she hired her first full-time mechanic, but up until that time, she did the work on her own sprint cars,
"That was really challenging, having to get out of the car and figuring out what to do and how to tune the engine in between races," says Haase. "And then during the week, having to tear them down, clean them, rebuild them."
But she has the grit and gumption to make it work and is now a leader of her team who knows the ropes of every job.
"Especially as a leader, that's really critical I think to really know the ins and outs of what you do," said Haase. She relies on her experience working under mechanics as she showed up at different shops in the area, and says she has had to learn as she goes. "It's like drinking through a fire hose, but I just had to kind of learn on the spot, make a lot of phone calls, do a lot of Face-timing with people who know more than I do. But, we made it through and I'm proud of what we were able to accomplish despite of all that."
And that story of going door to door selling Interstate Batteries — that has come full circle.
"10 years later, when I was living in Indianapolis, I actually reached out to the CEO," said Haase, who tried her luck with a message on LinkedIn and was not expecting a response.
As a young racer, she had reached out to the company for advice on pitching her race team to sponsors. She messaged the CEO to remind him of this, and asked if now that she is older, she could pitch to them for real.
To her surprise, the company agreed to hear her out and now the Interstate Batteries logo covers the outside of her sprint car.
"It's just truly an honor to represent them," said Haase.
Haase has persevered through a lot and know it takes a lot of guts to get to where she is today, but she stays humble.
Connecting with her fans is one of the self-proclaimed introvert's favorite part of the job.
"I think for me, I just knew that this was my passion and purpose in life," said Haase. "And I think the most important part for me, is just staying true to my values and staying true to who I was and not having to be somebody else."
She founded two foundations to help young racing hopefuls get opportunities in the sport.
"I just think not coming from a racing family, and seeing how difficult it was to get involved, I just kind of wanted to help other people make that process a little bit easier, ya know," said Haase. "Making sure that any kid that is interested in racing, like has that opportunity."
As for Haase, her goal is to compete in 40 races this year and to be successful in her division. Long term, she hopes to take a shot at NASCAR and maybe someday be involved with a NASCAR team.
"When you come home covered in grease and sweat and sometimes blood and who knows what else, it makes you feel just really accomplished," said Haase. "We'll just see where it takes us."
For more information on her foundations and on her racing career, visit http://www.mckennahaase.com/
