A Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From pro football’s Super Bowl to baseball’s World Series, from dynamic soccer’s World Cup to golf’s and tennis’ U.S. Open, major auto racing, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, more major tennis like Wimbledon, tiny connections to that NBA and a little NHL, major college football, Kentucky Derby, aquatics and Olympic Games, that sparkling little city sits around halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10. In NHRA racing, that father of this 5-foot-9 little girl got her started. – Obrey Brown
Think of Leah Pruett’s connection to the National Hot Rod Association. Figure 2013. It was, finally, part of entering its fastest group of racers, drivers, developers, model-builders, each paid by fascinating ownerships.
NHRA? So quick? So off the charts! Fans were observing. Motor builders were huge parts. The drivers? All ready to fire it up.
Every NHRA season begins and ends in that spinning city of Pomona, California. It’s an hour’s drive from Leah’s home town of Redlands. Every two weeks, there’s an NHRA blast, 24 during each season.
Leah, it seems, was all over it. She reached NHRA duels, in fact, a few years after NHRA’s 2008 rules switch.
Right up until then, it was a quarter-mile blaze. That’s 1,320 yards total. Had to be shortened, though. A racer, Scott Kalitta, was killed. Other drivers were quite concerned. Speed had been built up so brilliantly by car-contending experts, drivers, you name it, there was a danger to those quarter-mile crashes. Rules shortened those speedy events from that 1,320-yard length to just 1,000 yards. It was, they said, safer.
Leah entered this speed-oriented blazing display to a drop in distance.
Wait! Why call her Leah instead of Pruett? Easy. She’d been married to Todd LeDuc. Then Gary Pritchett. Finally, a guy named Tony Stewart — her current marital partner.
Let’s just refer to her as Leah.
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Top Fuel, the fastest land speed racing on earth, has attracted the Redlands-born racer, Leah, since she was eight. That’s when her dad, Ron Pruett, engineered a junior dragster for both his daughters — Leah and Lindsey.
“I enjoy the speed,” says Leah. “It’s exhilarating physiologically. I love speed. To get into the cockpit … I approach it with excitement.”
Top Fuel racers are closing in on 340-mph, though Pruett doubts it would occur that 2020 year. Too many distractions and delays, courtesy of COVID.
Speed? Fastest she blasted her dad-built junior dragster with a 78 mph. Leah didn’t hit 100-mph on the track until after she graduated from Redlands High. At age 18, Pruett piloted a Nitro Funny Car to a blazing 200-mph. By age 19, she hit 250.
At that same age, Leah sizzled to a 300-mph speed in a Funny Car. It’s no wonder she was able to get her Top Fuel license to blaze away at earthly top speeds.
Speed isn’t easy. Yes, there are drivers that won’t go beyond, say, those 180-mph Sportsmen division cars. Said Leah: “You just have to believe you’re bigger than your car. I’ve got a car that’s 12,000 horsepower. You’ve got to believe that you’re greater than your car.”
It must’ve been her dad, Ron — owner of 13 land speed records — who turned his oldest daughter onto speed. Ron Pruett’s the same guy who drove “Pretty Woman” to a land speed record of 250-mph back in the 1990s. That’s his nickname.
Ron, though, attacked California-based El Mirage and Utah-based Bonneville speed-racing sites often, firing out his self-built racing engines to assault the speed record book. El Mirage is where he’s part of the Dirty Two Club; last anyone heard, it numbered about 130 speed-crazed drivers.
In years ahead, those Ron’s results could amount to Leah’s next speed challenge. “I’d love to be in the Dirty Two Club,” she said.
Too bad, though. Ron died a few years later.
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Indy or NASCAR racing isn’t her discipline. There’s this, though: Leah’s third husband turned out to be Tony Stewart, who retired from his highly-successful NASCAR, eventually taking over his new wife’s spot in NHRA. The reason? She retired in 2024, blazing a way for them to start a family.
Leah and Tony. Married a few years back. At a spot in New Mexico.
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A few notes on Leah:
She sizzled to a 334-mph speed at Chandler, Arizona in February 2018 — her lifetime best. Part of a team owned by Don Schumacher Racing (DSR), Leah landed on NHRA’s top team after years of ups and downs. Back in his racing days, Schumacher piloted his way to 302 wins and 16 championships.
Eight of Leah’s now 12 career triumphs have come in Top Fuel – 18 total, adding three Pro Mod and three Factory Stock Showdown triumphs to those massive Top Fuel chases.
Incidentally, Schumacher is Leah’s teammate in Team DSR, a once-racing stable of drivers that also includes past champion Antron Brown, plus Funny Car drivers Ron Capps, “Fast Jack” Beckman of Norco and Matt Hagan, along with Pro Stock racers Tim Johnson, Jr. and Mark Pawuk.
Schumacher as a boss?
“There’s no sprinkles to someone who’s not winning,” Leah said. “He’s a tough boss. But he takes care of his people. He’s very good at separating business from interpersonal.”
Schumacher caught some mighty races from this 5-foot-9 Leah, the Redlands kid who achieved highly in both 2017 and 2018. Little Leah nailed four wins during that 2017 season, counting the Winternationals in Pomona – her first of two.
A year later, 2018, she cracked off 3.631 seconds, her best-ever ETA – that’s Elapsed Time – at the final season race in Pomona. Nine months earlier, she was measured at 334.15-mph at Chandler, Arizona.
During that 2017 season, Leah racked up 2,452 points. In an open season, it was just 238 points behind series champion Brittany Force. Another female.
Quick note: Brittany was daughter of Funny Car legend John Force.
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Top Fuel, incidentally, is the most fired-up car on NHRA’s circuit — Funny Car, Pro Stock, plus the motorcycles — that deals up wicked speed.
Leah’s been at that Autoplex Speedway in Pomona often, starting during her junior days with her dad. Those Redlands days are gone. Leah in 2013 gave a footnote about Ron and Linda: “My dad and mom got tired of tires and traffic … moved North Carolina.”
A few years later, in 2021, 64-year-old Ron died there.
Lindsey, who shared their dad’s-built alcohol-altered junior dragster, taught school in Yucaipa. At that point, Leah called Columbus, Ind. her hometown.
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A note about her first career national event at the pro level, Feb. 28, 2016. At that year’s Carquest Auto Parts NHRA Nationals in Chandler, Arizona, she finished ahead of Brittany Force in the first all-female final run at the Top Fuel level since 1982.
Leah was 34 years of age. Brittany had her by about two years. And Leah? Had nothing to do with male or female. It was about speed.
“I’ve made the proper progressions of speed,” said Leah. “Nothing is going to properly train you for 335-miles an hour.
“Nothing.”
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Stewart? Leah’s husband?
That one-time Cal State San Bernardino University graduate stepped aside from racing in 2024, replaced by Stewart – yes, her husband Tony – while she retired, marking time to start a family.
Stewart, meanwhile, has won championships in NASCAR and Indy, now seeking the top-level finishes in NHRA.
Yes, they got married in 2021.
