The Feministing Five: Leilani Münter

In the words of Leilani Münter, “Never underestimate a vegan hippie chick with a race car.”

For this week’s Feministing Five, we were so excited to speak with professional race car driver and environmental activist Leilani Münter. While on and off the race track, Leilani uses her unique perspective to bring awareness to climate change and renewable energy solutions. Whether it is bringing vegan food to her fans at her races, committing to travel to races with only green energy, or representing animal rights’ documentaries on her race car itself, Leilani demonstrates how women continue to find innovative ways to speak up for the environment.

Suzanna Bobadilla: To start off: How did you first become interested in professional racing? 

Leilani Münter: I started when I was in college. I have a degree in biology from the University of California in San Diego. I always had a lead foot, I had gone to some amateur events, but I wanted to really try it out. I went to a racing school and I ended up being the fastest car on the track. There was an owner of a local race team there and he encouraged me to pursue a career as a driver. A fifteen-minute conversation with a total stranger ended up changing the course of my life forever!

SB: Here at Feministing, we are always excited to see how activism can exist in unexpected and exciting ways. What was the process of connecting these two apparently disparate communities of racing and environmentalism? 

LM: I was an environmentalist before I started racing. Around 2006, An Inconvenient Truth came out. I felt that my personal efforts of being green were not enough, and I started to use my voice as a driver. I began to post news about wind power and climate legislation on my personal website. I noticed that I started getting an unusually high amount of online traffic from a NASCAR forum. Someone there was not happy that I was posting articles about environmental activism. They were saying that I was brainwashed, that it was inappropriate to bring my activism into the sport. As a female driver, you quickly get a thick skin for being called names and things like that, but still, it was surprising to see that this person was so angry.

I read through the discussion on the forum, and I noticed that someone challenged the original post, asking if that person had seen An Inconvenient Truth and why they were so upset. The conversation then shifted to be about global warming and climate change. By the end of the thread, people on the NASCAR thread were posting graphs about carbon in the atmosphere and other information. That was a huge moment for me because I got them to talk about carbon dioxide on a NASCAR website. When I saw that I was able to start a conversation about the environment, I realized that as a driver I have an unique ability to bring these issues to a group that, typically, are not really talking about it.

That became my number one goal: to be a bridge between the environmentalists and the NASCAR fans. If you really want to make change, you have to get out and talk to the people who don’t agree with you. It’s all good and well for me to go to renewable energy events where I am around people who agree with me, but I really don’t feel like I am making that much of a difference by mingling with people who get it.

When I want to make a difference, I feel like I am doing that at the race track, where I am having conversations with people who don’t know that much about electric cars, renewable energy, or veganism. My voice as an environmentalist is amplified because I have a race car. It is only because I have that race car that I have a voice to speak to all of these people in the racing industry. For me, the two — racing and environmentalism — are endless intertwined. Without one, my activism for the other becomes a lot quieter.

SB: You are an unusual driver not only because you are a woman in a male-dominated field, but also because of your environmental activism. How does this unique perspective influence your involvement in the racing community? 

LM: There are so few women in our sport that you are usually the odd person out. There are automatically a lot of eyes on you, so if you do well you will get a lot of praise. But if you make a mistake, it’s that much more obvious. So on top of that, I’m vegetarian, I had a science background, a college degree, so I was different, very different. When I first came into the sport, I wanted to be accepted by my peers. I didn’t advertise my environmentalism so much, but people realized that I didn’t eat meat.

Then I realized that I wasn’t going to fit in or be accepted, and I decided to entirely be myself. When I first started being vocal, people kept telling me that I was going to ruin my career, that I wouldn’t have sponsors or supporters. I just felt that figuring out what’s happening with the environment and how we can start living in a more sustainable way is the most important thing our generation can do. I couldn’t be quiet about climate change.

While I did lose some opportunities because I was so vocal about fighting climate change, I realized that when I did get to race, I could do it on my terms. I had sponsors from films like Blackfish or The Cove as well as solar companies and other green companies. I feel deeply about the message that I am carrying with these supporters, and it inspires me to compete to the next level.

SB: Let’s say we check in on you five years and publish an updated article. What does the headline say? 

LM: “Vegan Hippie Chick Wins Daytona!” In five years, I want to be the top in NASCAR, I want to win races, and I want my influence to be much larger. I’m currently two levels from the top of the top. I would love to reach that top level in a renewable energy car.

If I would to race at the ultimate level, we could highlight even more carbon-free technology or we could encourage people to try vegan food. (By the way, reducing meat is an amazing thing to do for the environment! Also, vegan food has gotten much better recently! You can’t even tell the difference from regular  meat!) It’s an exciting time as an environmentalist because there are innovative solutions happening every day, like with the release of the upcoming Tesla Model S and solar energy taking off.

I feel really positive about where the world is going. I want to continue bringing this progress into the racing world and getting them excited about sustainability. There would be no better way to spread that news than at the Victory Lane at the Daytona 500 in a renewable energy car!

SB: Let’s pretend that you are stranded on a desert island. You can take with you one food, one drink, and one feminist. 

LM: I would take a potato because there are so many ways you can prepare it. For a drink, I would take grapefruit juice. For a feminist, I would probably take Rachel Maddow. She is so smart, and I briefly met her while she was covering the 2010 BP Oil Spill. I would love to learn from her. If I could go back in time, I would take Amelia Earhart because I feel like we are kindred spirits in that we do sports that mostly men do and that are dangerous. I think if she was around now, she would enjoy race cars!