Could the technical difficulty have happened because CBRT, Julia’s team, isn’t as flush as some of their competitors? When I asked Jeff Pappone, the motorsports journalist, if a sponsorship might have made the difference in something like a sway bar or axle breaking, he told me that a very well-funded team could afford to simply replace a sway bar that looked the tiniest bit unstable. Better-funded teams also have more people checking all the parts to be sure they’re working. “The teams at the front don’t have as many failures,” he said. Stuff like this still happens to well-funded teams, but not as much.

After the race, two men walked over to Julia to tell her she’d have been in the top ten if her car hadn’t failed. Another driver grabbed her by the shoulders for a fan picture, and she smiled gamely.

Kevin McColm took her to the side for a rare serious moment. “I’m so proud of you,” he said.

Given the long stretches between wins, the lack of consistent sponsorship, and the dearth of other women to commiserate with, I was at times baffled by why Julia was able to handle her outsider status so well. What made her so resilient in the face of so many setbacks?

She’s clearly in love with racing, for one. No matter how many times journalists ask her, she’s easily able to come up with new ways to describe the high of making an incredible pass or falling into a fluid rhythm on the track.

“I’m probably a little crazy and very optimistic,” she told me, by way of explanation. “You can’t just get frustrated and give up. If you did that and you were a parent, your kids would be neglected. If you were running a company, your company would go under.”

It probably helps that she isn’t easily “triggered,” to use modern parlance, by low-level sexism, or even by the kinds of outright insults hurled her way on Survivor.

Lastly—and this is the frustrating one, the one where people don’t have as much control, where they can’t just cultivate themselves and try harder—it helps that Julia’s family is so involved and supportive.

Julia and her two siblings are still so close that they Skype once a week for an hour. Once, her little sister, Emma, accidentally broke her brother Aidan’s wrist while playing basketball, and Aidan kept it a secret for weeks so that Emma wouldn’t get in trouble. Aidan, who is now in his early twenties, has also advanced far in racing, and he peppers Julia with feedback after he watches her practice. Both siblings attend as many of their sister’s races as they can.