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Oxford woman wins race

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By John Bombatch, Staff Writer 4:17 PM Monday, June 6, 2011

It’s been kind of a passing of the torch for Carla Leach-Broshear and her son Tyler. Or maybe it’s a steering wheel they passed.

Leach-Broshear’s first drive as a 16-year-old was on a drag strip. Now some 23 years later, her 16-year-old son Tyler’s first drive came, you guessed it, at a drag strip. The rites of drag racing passage made for a special racing weekend, back on Mother’s Day weekend at Tri-State Dragway, which is located just southwest of Hamilton.

“Tyler drove his first drag racing run during a Test & Tune session on Saturday. And he felt bad that he couldn’t afford a Mother’s Day gift for me. I told him that my present would be for him to tell me that he loved me. So every half hour on the half hour, no matter what we were doing, he had to come up and tell me that he loved me,” said Leach-Broshear, of Oxford.

Call it good karma or just simple love, but whatever it was, it worked.

“Yeah, every time I race now, he has to do that,” she laughed.

Leach-Broshear, who uses the name ‘Carla Leach’ on her black dragster, went on to win the Mother’s Day “Mandhandler Showdown” – an all-woman drag race on that day. It was her first time racing this season, and because of the rainy weather, it’s been the only time she’s raced a full event so far this year.

“I won my first-round race, but then the rains came and washed the rest of the day out,” Leach said. She skipped racing at Tri-State’s three-day Memorial Day event, because her step-mother Christy Leach had become ill.

Family is very important in Leach-Broshear’s life, and understandably so. It’s intertwined with drag racing. Christy, along with Leach-Broshear’s dad, Joe, own a popular speed shop: Performance Motorsports and Machine, in Colerain Twp.

Performance Motorsports and Machine is a track sponsor at Tri-State Dragway. They also sponsor Leach-Broshear’s dragster.

Now 39, Leach-Broshear prefers to race closer to home, primarily at Tri-State or Cleves’ Edgewater Motorsports Park. But she’s garnered national attention in her racing career.

“I used to do the national circuit in the (International Hot Rod Association),” Leach-Broshear explained. “Me and my dad made IHRA history in 1997. We were the first father-daughter pair to win a national event at the same race. Dad won in Modified; I won in Quick Rod.

“What made it really special is that he and I shared the cover of Drag Racing Review magazine with my drag racing idol, Shirley Muldowney. She’s my hero. I thought that was pretty cool,” she said.

Oxford residents might recognize the Leach name. Talawanda High School had a big pep rally in support of Leach’s qualifying in the high school drag racing division of the 1988 NHRA Bracket Nationals. She raced on Team Tri-State.

“That was before there was a junior dragster racing division, and it was quite an honor to be selected as a 16-year-old to race for Tri-State in Indianapolis, against all the other high school division racers from the region,” Leach said. “I’d moved to Oxford my junior year so, before then, not many people knew me at school. They knew me after that, I bet.”

Leach-Broshear enjoys drag racing as a way to get the family together for some fun every week.

“It’s a big family event for us,” she said. “The whole family enjoys it. It’s like a family reunion every weekend, a picnic every Sunday. It’s all about family, that’s the important thing.”

And once in a while, a winner’s paycheck at the end of the day just makes drag racing with the family even sweeter.

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