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DALLAS STAR TELEGRAM: Chat Room with Leilani Münter
By David Martindale
Special to the Star-Telegram
Dallas, TX (May 26, 2004) Leilani Munter, a Late Model Stock Car driver, doesn't need help getting dates.
She's a beauty who has worked as a photo double for Catherine Zeta-Jones in the movies Traffic and America's Sweethearts, appeared as a "band-aide" in Almost Famous and did photo layouts for FHM and Esquire magazines.
Yet Munter is letting cable's Speed Channel find her a guy. She's one of five racers (and the only female) participating in I Wanna Date a Race Car Driver, the latest in a long line of TV reality/relationship shows.
The reason she agreed to play along? "Because they came up with some money that I could use to buy some racing tires," said Munter, who plans to drive in the Romco 100 at Texas Motor Speedway on June 12. "It's all about tire money."
Other drivers participating in the series, which premieres June 9, are NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver Jon Wood, NASCAR Busch Series driver Tim Fedewa and AMA Superbike racers Eric and Ben Bostrom.
What do you hope to get out of this show? Are you looking for love? No, it's just for fun. I'm pretty busy most of the time. Between racing and putting together sponsorship meetings and my work as a correspondent for nascar.com, there isn't a whole lot of time for a social life and for dating. But I definitely am open to doing it because I'm single and it just seems like fun. So I figured, "Why not?"
Yet if Speed Channel hadn't kicked in a few dollars for racing tires, you wouldn't have done it? I initially had said no. Because I really don't want to waste my time doing things that are not helping me get into a race car. My main goal is to be racing cars, not going on dates. It's just not on my priority list.
What are you looking for in a guy? Does he have to be a die-hard racing enthusiast? Does he have to know a lot about cars? No, not really. He has to be understanding that my career comes first and be supportive of it, obviously. But he really doesn't need to be in racing. I've found it fairly difficult to meet people outside of racing, because that's what I'm surrounded by. But the guy that I date doesn't have to know anything about race cars or anything. That's not important to me.
Was driving cars something you always wanted to do, even as a young girl? No, initially, as a young girl, I wanted to race horses. But I started amateur racing and I just enjoyed it. I like speed, whether it's on a race horse or in a race car.
What are your goals? How far do you hope to go in racing? I want to be out there racing full-time hopefully this year in a Late Model Stock Car. Everybody asks me if I want to go to Cup racing. Of course, any stock car driver wants to make it to the top of racing. But right now, my goals are to be racing Late Model full-time, and get the sponsorship money to race full-time on this level. This is the level where a lot of people start at. You don't just jump into a Busch car and go racing. So my goals are to be competitive and to win some races on this level. If I do well, yeah, I'll move up. But I'm not going to move up unless I'm ready to move up.
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