Behind The Wheel - #20 - Nicole Bemiss

From her early childhood, Nicole Bemiss heard story after story from her father of his days spent racing, and doing wild things with cars. Those stories ignited a fire within her that sent her down a rabbit hole of a strong passion for cars, specifically mustangs, and a want to find herself drag racing her own car. Nicole is married, with 2 kids, and has worked at the daily news as a sales representative for the last 14 years.

Nicole wanted more than anything for her first car to be a Mustang, and at 16, her dad presented her with a red one. She wanted badly to get involved in drag racing, but her dad told her he didn't want his 16-year-old to be drag racing, and that was the end of that idea… for a while. When Nicole started to grow her family, she found that Mustangs were not the most practical thing and decided to take the backseat and get out of Mustangs for the time being.

 In March of 2020, Nicole went to the dealership where she got to purchase her 2015 Mustang GT. From there, she found herself spending her free-time testing it at the track and modifying it. She finds her biggest supporters are her husband and kids, alongside her brother who has been there every step of the way spending his time at every race and track with her. Nicole told me about her role models, both Leticia Hughes and JoAnna Iacobelli, who she says have both been there to answer questions and been in her corner to guide her when needed.

Jumping into the Women & Wheels class at Streetcar Takeover was no question for her, she told me why she decided to race in the class, “I knew being in the class would be fun, being surrounded by women who all love doing what we’re doing!”. The class she competed in was in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and she found fun in the involvement and support from other women. 

Her car, a 2015 Mustang GT is modified with plenty of goodies, and she told me how thankful she was to have every company that supported her racing program. Those modifications include long tube headers, Circle D Specialties torque converter, Baer brakes, Steeda suspension and K-member, and it is tuned by Palm Beach Dyno. New for this year, her car will also have an innovators west balancer, new RC Component front wheels, and a Brett Barber ported gt350 intake and throttle body.

 Nicole has some major plans for herself she hopes to accomplish. Her goals start with wanting to be the Hot Street N/A champion, wanting to run NMRA modern muscle and win a round, and compete at Mod Nationals. Alongside those race-specific goals, she told me about how she would love to meet more people, checkout other facilities, and broaden her knowledge.

Women & Wheels brings the support of many women around, which is something Nicole enjoys, “I love the instant support of other women in this industry!”. She told me about how she believes Women & Wheels helps women become involved, “I think it has caused more women get into sport, and not be scared to compete in male dominated sport, and I think that has got them into cars and made them want to go fast!”. Nicole’s biggest piece of advice would be, “It's a little scary at first. But once you get in the seat, it's natural. Racing is a stress reliever. Knowing only I have control of the car, is a stress relief”.

Nicole has came so far in such a short period of time and you can be sure  to watch her continuously modify her car, and race it at events.

You can find her on IG @nicolebemissracing.