Toni Breidinger

Biography

Antoinette Marie Breidinger (born July 14, 1999) is an American professional stock car racing driver and model. She competes part-time in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, driving the No. 26/27 Chevrolet Silverado RST for Rackley W.A.R., and the No. 20 Chevrolet Silverado RST for McAnally–Hilgemann Racing. Breidinger is the first female Arab-American driver to compete in NASCAR, being of Lebanese and German descent. Raised in Hillsborough, California, Breidinger started competing in go-karts at the age of nine. After five years of go-kart racing, she moved to the USAC Western US Asphalt Midget Series at age 15 in 2014, winning the series championship two years later. Moving to North Carolina after graduating high school in 2017, she switched from open-wheel racing to stock car racing, racing primarily in late models for four years. Starting in 2021, she moved her focus towards the ARCA Racing Series, racing with Venturini Motorsports for most of her ARCA career. In her four seasons in ARCA, she amassed four top-fives and 27 top-tens. In 2025, she moved up full-time to the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series with Tricon Garage.

== Early life and family background == Breidinger was born in San Francisco, California on July 14, 1999, and raised in the nearby city of Hillsborough. She is of German and Lebanese descent, with her father being German and her mother being Lebanese. Breidinger was born alongside a twin sister, Annie. She was educated at Mercy High School in Burlingame where she graduated in 2017. In an interview with The Athletic's Jeff Gluck, she stated that she loved her high school years, stating, "There’s so much diversity there. I grew up around so many different cultures and I was almost spoiled in a sense... I took it for granted... Now that I’m not living there, I’m like, 'Dang, I took it for granted.'"

== Early racing career == When she was nine years old, Breidinger started racing go-karts when her father took her and her twin sister to a go-kart school after he saw a newspaper advertisement for the school. After the duo attended several lessons, he bought the two go-karts for them to race. In an interview with Autoweek, she stated that her introduction to racing brought her a "sense of independence" that she wanted as a child. She continued racing go-karts until 2014. In 2011, she suffered the only major injury of her career when she and competitor Logan Sargeant crashed during a go-kart race at the CalSpeed Karting Center, with Breidinger being thrown out of the car and sustaining a broken arm. In 2014, she moved up to the USAC Western US Asphalt Midget Series at age 15, finishing runner-up in the series standings in her first season. After another runner-up standings finish the year after, she won the series championship in 2016, in the process becoming the winningest female driver in any USAC asphalt division at the time.

Initially wanting to pursue a career in open-wheel racing, she switched passions to stock car racing after watching late model races at Madera Speedway while she was racing midget cars. Although her father initially refused to let her race late models, he relented after she won the Western Midget Series championship in 2016. After graduating high school in 2017, she moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, to further pursue her racing career. In 2018, she made her debut in the ARCA Racing Series for Venturini Motorsports, finishing in tenth at Madison. She later made two additional starts for the team in that year's season. Early in 2019, she applied to join the W Series, an open-wheel and female-exclusive racing series, for their inaugural season. Although she was selected to make the initial top-60 round, she was not selected to be one of the 18 drivers for the season. Later that year, she joined GMS Racing's driver development program, racing late models for the team. In 2020, she raced a full season in the Carolina Pro Late Model Series, finishing fourth in the series standings.

== ARCA and NASCAR ==

=== 2021–2023 ===

In 2021, Breidinger announced a part-time schedule in the ARCA Racing Series alongside the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series for Young's Motorsports. In her debut with the team, she finished eighteenth, in the process becoming the first Arab-American woman to race in any national touring NASCAR series. However, after five ARCA starts with the team and no Truck Series starts, she moved to Venturini Motorsports midway through the season to race four additional ARCA races for them, joining the Toyota Racing Development (TRD) team. The following year, Breidinger ran her first full-time season in ARCA for the series' 2022 season, staying with Venturini Motorsports. In the season-opener, she finished in the top-ten at Daytona. The season's opening ten rounds saw Breidinger achieve four top-ten finishes, only failing to finish once at Talladega. At the conclusion of her first full-time season, she finished sixth in the series standings, obtaining six total top-ten finishes and failing to finish four races throughout the season. Breidinger remained at Venturini Motorsports for the 2023 season, scaling back to a part-time ARCA schedule and initially signing for 11 races. In addition to her ARCA schedule, she raced full-time for Nitro Motorsports in the inaugural season of the Toyota North America GR Cup, a touring car racing series exclusively limited to Toyota GR86 cars. According to Breidinger, she raced in the series to gain more road course experience. In the 2023 ARCA season, Breidinger was able to secure her first top-five finish in the series, earning four top-fives in the season and earning a best race finish of third at Kansas. Also in 2023, Breidinger made her debut in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series for Tricon Garage, finishing in fifteenth at the Heart of America 200. Afterwards, she raced two additional events for the team in the 2023 Truck season.

=== 2024–present ===