Because of all of this, Julia told me as she drove me to the CBRT shop, she’d be happy to finish in the top five in her upcoming race.

By race day, she had adjusted that expectation to the top ten.

One day, Julia drove me to the team’s shop, which is situated in an industrial part of a small town outside Toronto. Joey’s father, a middle-aged mustachioed man named Kevin, showed me the car Julia drove in Halifax the previous weekend. “She brought back half of Nova Scotia with her,” he said, pointing to its tires, which had heated up so much that they were now covered in a layer of gravel.

Drivers reuse the car’s metal bodies until they get too smashed-up to drive. The vehicle is called a “stock” car, but it’s actually built solely for racing. There’s nothing inside but a driver’s seat and a bunch of equipment, bolted down and unadorned. Even the headlights are just taped-on stickers.

When you’re Julia’s size, pretty much everything has to be custom-made. She wears the smallest possible Hans device, a neck brace meant to prevent whiplash. She has the smallest possible seat, the better to cushion her lithe body in case the car crumples into a wall, as occurred once in 2008.

She climbed into the car and asked Joey to tighten the seatbelt. Being tightly strapped in gives her more leverage when she steers and keeps her safer if she crashes.

As a final flourish, she and Joey cut out the decals for the nonprofit she works with—called One Love—and stuck them to the black metal sides of her car, along with her racing number: 25.

Julia went back to her hotel room to watch more racing videos and eat the remains of her pad thai lunch. Eating leftovers saves her money she can put toward racing.

Her uncommon attributes and hard work helped Julia get into the race. But they were no match for Canada’s weather.

“I hope you brought your rain gear,” Julia said when I arrived in Ontario to watch her prepare for the race. “Because it’s gonna rain all weekend.”

This was important because if it rained, there would not be a qualifying session to determine the order in which the cars lined up to race that weekend. If there is no qualifying session, the cars start in order of how many points they’ve accrued in past races.