Vegan Drag Racer Angela Proudfoot Continues on a Winning Streak

In 1998, Angela Proudfoot had just graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, when she bought a new Honda Civic. Some friends coerced her into taking it out on a dragstrip, and she was instantly hooked on the fast driving she would never think to attempt on city streets.

"It is an extreme rush with immediate gratification, and I fell in love with it right away," Angela said. "I began researching different ways to make my car faster and soon found myself working two jobs just to buy go-fast parts for my car."

The Baltimore native competed in her first sanctioned race in October of 1999 and has since made the rounds of professional circuits nationwide. Now, she races in the Hot Rod class, the most competitive in the series. During each quarter-mile race, she takes her car from 0 to nearly 160 miles per hour in fewer than 10 seconds, a miniscule amount of time that leaves no room for equipment failure or human error.

Angela typically attends 12 to 16 races and 3 to 4 trade shows each year, making her quite a novelty in the male-dominated world of drag racing. However, she is even more unique in this arena because she has been a vegetarian for 13 years and a vegan for the past two.

"I first became vegetarian for health reasons," she said, having read about the correlation between meat consumption and diseases that ran in her family. "Then, one day I realized what a hypocrite I really was. How could I justify the killing of animals for shoes and coats when there were cruelty-free options readily available that did not cause any suffering?"

Not only does Angela personally live by these ideals, but she uses her frequent position in the public eye to promote them. She hands out Vegetarian Starter Kits from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) before and after each race. In fact, she has secured PETA as one of her team’s four sponsors and sports their logo on her cars and her gear. This gets a tremendous response in track environments, where concession stands typically sell burgers, fries cooked in lard, and pizza. "Many fellow vegetarians have approached me in the pits to tell me how delighted they are that I am promoting vegetarianism at the track," she said. "I have a unique opportunity, being a racecar driver, to educate the public about vegetarianism during interviews or press conferences both on television and in magazines."

And her record gives her plenty of chances to do so. She won the Import Survival Series 3 and the National Import Racing Association (NIRA) Fall Nationals in 2000 and was a Semi-Finalist at the NIRA Import’s Mid-Summer and Fall Nationals in 2001. She secured the rank of sixth in the national NDRA series and ninth in the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) series for the year 2002. Then, she placed as a Semi-Finalist at the Nopi Drag Racing Association (NDRA/NOPI) race in August 2003.

Though Angela is a Human Resources Manager in the Washington, D.C., area by day, she is finding that competing in races and promoting her team is becoming a full-time job for her now. By next year, she hopes to have a full-time pit crew and compete in at least 20 races annually. "My goal is to someday win a championship, promoting vegetarianism every step of the way."