After Hailie Deegan’s Xfinity Series split with AM Racing, only two women are racing full-time in NASCAR now. One of them is Amber Balcaen, the first Canadian woman to win a NASCAR-sanctioned race in the States. The other is her Venturini Motorsports teammate and the sport’s first-ever Arab-American female driver, Toni Breidinger.

Both run full-time seasons in the NASCAR-affiliated ARCA Menards Series. Most recently, they finished 13th and 24th, respectively, at the Circle City 200 at IRP this past Friday. While Balcaen improved two spots from her initial qualifying position, Breidinger ended her race early after making contact with Truck Series regular Lawless Alan.

This is not Alan’s first on-track incident with a female driver. Neither was this Breidinger’s first DNF caused by a male compatriot. Whether you call it a coincidence or a lack of female competition, girl dad Kenny Wallace thinks there’s more to this phenomenon than just what most would call hard racing.

Kenny Wallace rips male chauvinism for Toni Breidinger’s ARCA incident

In 76 years, more than 125 women have broken the high-speed barrier and competed in a NASCAR Touring Series race. In contrast, at least 150 drivers (mostly male but also female) will race in NASCAR’s top three series by the end of this year itself. No doubt, there has always been a huge discrepancy in collective motorsports—not one of gender but that of numbers.

This causes a massive power imbalance, with the ball typically always lying in the court of male drivers. Kenny Wallace emphasized that fact when he decided to double down on an earlier statement on Twitter that aimed to defend Toni Breidinger after her incident with Lawless Alan with video proof, captioned: “It gets exhausting, watching the guys wreck the girls @ToniBreidinger gave him PLENTY of room.”

The video shows her #25 getting sent to the wall by Alan’s #33. After coming to a stop, Breidinger’s car received another unintentional hit by Jackson McLerran. Owing to her pop-culture status, Breidinger’s wreck made headlines within hours, quite uncommon for an ARCA race.

Although nothing too surprising in the name of a racing incident, Kenny Wallace had some clarifications to make for the general audience after a friend at FOX replied to his earlier tweet with a condescending comment. As he tells the audience, “Earlier in the ARCA race, Toni Breidinger.. the girl was doing great. And a guy got loose and ran into her and wrecked her, destroyed her. So he got loose and he wrecked her and as you all know by now I’m a girl dad and if you’ve watched coffee with Kenny, my mom Judy was a good Powder Puff racer. She won a lot of races. Of course, my brother Mike Wallace. His daughter Chrissy was a good racer too.”

The term ‘Powder Puff’ historically refers to all-women competitions in sports. The Hermanator’s mother was a Powder Puff racer in her younger days, whereas his niece Chrissy, Mike Wallace’s daughter, is the first female driver to win at Hickory Motor Speedway. Chrissy has also competed in the Nationwide Series and the Truck Series. Kenny is the father of three women himself. It is safe to say that Kenny knows his share of talented women. Hence, it was understandable when he repeated himself to defend Breidinger, “So this evening I said I’m tired of watching these guys just wreck these girls ‘cause that Breidinger girl she was doing a good job…”

But the big issue? “So anyway, my buddy Erik Arneson: Erik is with FOX Sports. And he says, ‘Yeah I remember when your brother Mike Wallace wrecked… who do they say Mike wrecked? Patty Moise?” said Kenny.

Arneson’s original reply to his friend’s post read, “It’s been happening for years … some guy with your same last name had a fairly high profile one.” However, the message was clear. He was talking about that time in 1994 when his older brother Mike was accused of wrecking NASCAR’s first female polesitter at a Busch race in Atlanta. Kenny’s wife, Kim, reminded him and many others from across the table that her husband meant to say the name of Evergreen Shawna Robinson, not Patty Moise.

Regardless, Kenny defended his brother after being corrected by Kim, and said, “To this day, my brother Mike said that they are so full of s*** that he did not mean to do it.” But then he quickly switched the topic from his brother’s accident with Shawna to chastise those who do not accept female drivers too warmly for their performances. Kenny Wallace went off on this demographic with harsh words: “It’s funny cuz some male chauvinists go: ‘Wallace what you put up for them girl racers? They ought not be on the track. We like wrecking them. They ought not be there…'”

This specific statement was made partly due to the backlash he received for siding with Hailie Deegan’s situation a few weeks ago with a similar address. He continued letting those discontent with these earlier actions know that Hailie’s dad, Brian Deegan, and she still texted him because they appreciated how Kenny Wallace stood up for them. He emphasized the value of relationships in motorsports and respect for women but also pointed out how “guys just wreck the s*** out of them” Kenny opined, “They’ll be going down the straightaway at Vegas, and just turn right and wreck them. It ain’t even an accident.”

To end his message, the NASCAR star-turned-social personality reiterated, “So Tony Breidinger got dumped, and I don’t care if the guy got loose and ran into her. The situation is this: more guys always dump the girls. The girls do not dump the guys. The guys are always dumping the girls.” But to explore the contrary, does Kenny’s gist even hold up in the most recent picture of things?

Can the female drivers overcome the numbers game?

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It is a fact that females haven’t always received equal representation in not just racing, but the entire spectator sports spectrum. For example, at the first Paris Olympics in 1900, only 2.2% of all athletes were female. Contrastingly, the 2024 Paris Olympics made history by achieving a near-perfect 48% female representation. That is impressive without any exaggeration. But almost 124 years later, women still lag behind men in numbers by an ironic 2%.

As for NASCAR? In 2024, no female driver will run a full-time season in any of the top 3 NASCAR National Series (Cup, Xfinity, or Trucks) after Hailie Deegan’s infamous exit from AM Racing earlier this month. Contrarily, Balcaen & Breidinger do run full-time schedules, but that is in NASCAR’s feeder division, the ARCA Series. Hence, technically, the full-time representation of females in NASCAR currently stands at a heartbreaking 0%.

However, the flag of the Dames still flies high with Breidinger and Balcaen, who are currently 4th and 7th in the ARCA Menards Series standings, respectively. The former has been inching at the gates of the Truck Series, and it feels like any minute we might hear the news of Breidinger breaching those gates with another one of her viral announcements. Not to forget Modified Series veteran Melissa Fifield, or youngster prospects Katie Hettinger & Jade Avedisan, two drivers many believe are the future of women’s representation in stock car racing.

From Sara Christian’s first-ever NASCAR outing as a female in June of 1949 to all these bright new racers of the present day, Kenny’s words serve as a reminder that even in the most masculine of playgrounds, a female’s presence has effectively given its best competition through each decade of the sport’s diverse evolution. But to prove all the critics wrong, Amber Balcaen and Toni Breidinger must work twice as hard to make up for their deficit in numbers.