Diane Teel raced in the NASCAR Nationwide (now Xfinity) Series in 1982 and 1983 and was one of its most successful female drivers.
In 1982, she scored her first top ten finish, an eighth place at Hampton in a Pontiac. This was one of four races she entered that year, with three of them leading to finishes. She was 26th at Martinsville and 15th at Richmond, but did not finish at South Boston, her last Nationwide race of the year.
She followed this up with a tenth place at Martinsville in 1983. Martinsville was her home track, and it was here that she made her Busch Series debut in 1984, the first woman to race in the series. Unfortunately, it was a one-off, and her Pontiac overheated fairly early.
She had one more try at the Busch Series, as NASCAR’s second-tier championship had become known, in 1986. She finished one race at Hampton, in 21st place.
She had begun racing in 1976, when her NASCAR crew chief husband Donald Teel and Langley Park promoter Joe Carver entered her into a local race as a publicity stunt to promote a local car parts business. She spun off near the end of the race, her car dumping water on the track.
In 1977, she moved into the Limited Sportsman division and was on the pace very quickly. Her best finish was second, one of three podium finishes. Her first-ever race in her Chevrolet Chevelle stock car gave her an eighth place; she had run as high as fifth but spun on sand and water at the edge of the track going for fourth. At the end of the season, she was runner-up in the Langley Limited Sportsman rookie standings, with 16 top-ten finishes from 19 races, half of them top-fives.
As a competitive female driver, Diane gained considerable media attention. In July that year, she won a match race with Langley’s other regular woman driver, Bonnie West, who raced in a different division. Diane finished several laps in front and picked up a $100 prize. A series of profile interviews syndicated in local papers took pains to point out her commitment to her role as a wife and mother and disassociate her from any feminist activity.
She won the championship the following year and became the first woman to win an official NASCAR-sanctioned event in the process. Her first win was at Langley Park, the scene of her less-than-successful debut. As well as winning her local title, she took the next step up the NASCAR ladder to the Grand National series. Naturally, she found higher-level competition hard-going and was not always able to qualify. She was one of ten drivers who did not make the cut for the 1978 Dixie 500 and she did not start for the Martinsville Grand National race in 1979 either, finishing one place below the required eighth place in the qualification race.
She continued to be a force to be reckoned with at Langley Speedway, winning races in its Limited Sportsman category in 1980 and 1981. In 1981, she tried again at Martinsville in a Late Model Sportsman car. Daily Press journalist Bob Mings was scathing about her efforts, pointing out that she was running 18th out of 19 cars when she had to stop near the end. Several of the paper’s readers wrote in to criticise his treatment of Diane, whose car had suffered a clutch problem requiring a lengthy pit stop and dropped her down the order.
By the time of her 1982 Nationwide debut, she had mostly silenced her doubters. Her name appears on entry lists, not in opinion columns. She and Donnie spoke directly to their local paper, the Virginia Daily Press, in 1983, explaining how the rising costs of competing at the next level, coupled by Nationwide races promised at local circuits which never happened, had affected her career. Later, in 1986, the Newport News reported that she had raised some funds for her racing through hosting a series of seafood suppers, which she cooked herself.
Following her retirement in 1986, she continued her work as a school bus driver, a career she had followed alongside her racing activities. A couple of months before her on-track debut, she had won her class in a School Bus Rodeo.
(Image copyright South Boston Speedway)
