Aaron McFarling

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MARTINSVILLE -- Chrissy Wallace received three full scholarship offers to play softball in college.

She turned them all down.

Wallace played basketball for four years at her high school in North Carolina. Now, she barely has time for a shoot-around at the Y.

Wallace is an athlete, but she is also a Wallace. -- daughter of Mike, niece of Rusty and Kenny.

Which means she was born to race.

Today at Martinsville Speedway, Wallace will try to take another step along a career path her bloodlines destined her to travel. She is one of 38 drivers hoping to qualify for the 36-truck field in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race. If she makes the cut, she'll make her top-three-series debut when the green flag drops for the Kroger 250 at 3 p.m.

"The closer it comes, I'm more nervous than excited," Wallace said by phone earlier this week from her home in Concord, N.C. "I've never been that good of a qualifier, but whenever I've been in the race, I do really well. I know Friday night I'm not going to be able to sleep, because I'm going to be so nervous."

Not surprising. Those two timed laps shortly after 10 a.m. will mark a moment 10 years in the making for Wallace, who's made a steady climb through the ranks of weekly racing.

Last year, she was voted rookie of the year and most popular driver in the Late Model Stock series at Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway. In June, she became the first female to win a Late Model race at Hickory, then followed that up with three more wins.

"About three or four years ago, I really started getting serious about it," Wallace said. "And what really made me serious was having all the fans there supporting me, saying, 'We think you can be the first successful female NASCAR driver and go to the top and make a living out of this.'"

With her father an 18-year NASCAR veteran and current driver in the Nationwide Series, Wallace spent much of her youth at the track. But her love of racing is more nature than nurture, a genetic predisposition that Mike says he's never really had to cultivate.

"We probably went the other direction," Mike Wallace said. "[Asking her] 'Are you sure this is what you want to do? You know this is a hard business. Maybe you just want a regular job, where you can predict the highs and lows.'

"Finally she looks at you like you're kind of dumb and says, "Look, I want to race. It's all I want to do.' "

It's been that way since she was 9 years old and took a trip to Lowe's Motor Speedway to watch Rusty's son, Steve, race in the Summer Shootout Series. As soon as she got home, Chrissy asked her father if she could get started in racing. They went to a dealership about a week later and took a ride in a bandolero car, a 550-pound vehicle that serves as step between a kart and a race car.

"We went out and tested really good, didn't spin out or anything, and I was happy," she said. "It was something that I really wanted to do. This whole racing deal, even if my dad wasn't racing, I honestly think it's something that I'd want to do."

With development support from Toyota and a ride in the No. 03 truck owned by Germain Racing, which also owns her father's Nationwide car, Wallace added Martinsville to an already busy schedule that includes two Late Model races in Carolina next week. The plan is to run five Craftsman Truck races and five ARCA races this season to prepare her for a full-time ride in the truck series in 2009.

She credits truck veterans such as Jack Sprague and Ron Hornaday for helping her feel more comfortable in a truck during testing for Martinsville. Mike Wallace, who also has truck experience, will be her spotter today.

"That helps a lot," Wallace said of her father's assistance. "I may not want to hear it half the time when he's on the radio with me ... but my dad knows what he's doing. Having him tell me what I'm doing wrong or to try something different has been a big thing to help me out."

She misses softball and basketball, but not enough to drag her away from the track. Besides, once she gets her bearings in the truck series, she could always slip in a game of 1-on-1 hoops with fellow driver Brendan Gaughan, a former guard at Georgetown.

"If he's ready, I am definitely ready," she said with a laugh.

But first -- like the other Wallaces before her -- she's ready to race.