TCU student trades in pompoms for the racetrack as she chases Daytona dreams
TCU student Maddie Aust’s father took her to the racetrack with the idea of preparing her be safe while driving, but instead it ignited a new passion in the former cheerleader.
“My dad is kind of a big car guy, took me out to the track,” she said. “But this was not necessarily in a race car. This is my daily driver, trying to learn the full extent of what a car could do to be safer on the road. And during this, I convinced him to let me into more of a race car, and just enjoyed it a little too much. I tell people, I kind of caught a bug and just kept making him bring me back to the tracks. I loved it so much, and that was really my introduction.”
Aust, who is about to turn 21, is now a professional driver heading into her second season in IMSA’s Michelin Pilot Challenge racing series. She finished fourth in her class Jan. 23 in the BMW M Endurance Challenge at Daytona, one of the preliminary races before the famed Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona last weekend in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Aust is moving into the Bryan Herta Autosport team’s flagship No. 98 car for her second campaign.
“Last year, for me, it was definitely a development year,” Aust said. “I had only been to half of tracks on the calendar. Therefore, there were a lot of tracks I had to learn last season, along with it being my first year and endurance racing.
“So I had to learn about driver changes and fuel conservation and things of that nature. ... So this year, I’m really hoping to expand on that. I think now, going back to tracks that I’ve been to before, not having to learn them all, I’ll be able to focus more on my racing.”
Aust got into motor sports after leaving cheerleading behind during the COVID pandemic. She had been a successful cheerleader with Spirit of Texas, winning national championships and placing second in The Cheerleading Worlds.
An avid athlete growing up, Aust also competed in gymnastics, tennis and other sports until she fell in love with motor sports.
Aust got her start at Motorsport Ranch in Cresson, first racing formula cars with Crosslink Kiwi Motorsport.
Aust didn’t start racing until she was 15, a late start in the sport, a situation that has had benefits and pitfalls.
“To be completely honest, when I first got into it, I really didn’t understand how hard it would be,” she said. “At first, the only goal was kind of to do some club racing, just for fun. It was never really to go and try to be professional with it, and then within that first year, I was like, ‘No, this is something I really want to do.’
“As someone who started so late, there’s people that I’m racing against that are my age [but have] seven, eight years more experience than I do in racing. So it is a bit hard, and it’s a challenge I’m still working on, but I realize it’s pretty worth it.”
On top of that, Aust has to juggle her school schedule as a third-year TCU student in mechanical engineering. Because she doesn’t compete in a school-sanctioned sport, she isn’t given as much leeway to take makeup classes.
“It’s definitely a lot more difficult,” she said. “Especially the drivers that I drive with, they usually are not in school. This is all they do, and so they’re really able to solely focus on racing. Meanwhile, I’m missing class and missing exams, so I have to be really good at teaching myself and with time management. ... I’m actually not able to make up a lot of my quizzes and tests, so it makes it a bit more challenging to pass classes when I know going through the semester that I’m already gonna have some zeros.”
Aust is also a young woman in a sport dominated by men. She is the only woman on her racing team.
“Going from one sport that is completely female-dominated to a sport that is male-dominated, it’s a bit of a challenge at first,” she said. “It’s just a completely different atmosphere, for sure. I’m very fortunate with [Bryan Herta Autosport] that my engineer is also a female, Megan, and so that helps a lot. But it definitely is a bit different. You get used to it, and you kind of just become one of the guys.”
While Aust is now competing in the opening days of one of racing’s most iconic weekends, she has even bigger dreams of racing in the 24 Hours of Daytona, and she is prepared to hone her craft until she reaches that start line.
This story was originally published January 23, 2026 at 1:11 PM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated Aust’s career goal and where she finished in Friday’s race. She eventually wants to race in the 24 Hours of Daytona, and she finished fourth in her class Friday.
