DURHAM -- Paulie Harraka, a rising junior, is not your typical Duke athlete.
Harraka's sport is auto racing, not basketball or football. He is set to make his NASCAR Nationwide Series debut in Montreal in the No. 87 Chevy for NEMCO Motorsports on Sunday, and the track isn't all he's had to navigate.
NASCAR has been trying to diversify its driving ranks, and Harraka, 20, who is of Syrian heritage, is part of the process. Harraka, a sociology major from New Jersey, is one of 10 drivers who will be appearing in a new racing reality TV show called "Changing Lanes" that bills itself as part of the search for "the next female or minority driving sensation," according to a news release for the show.
The eight-episode series has already been filmed and will air on BET starting Wednesday.
In 2004, NASCAR, which says 40 percent of its fans are women and 20 percent are minorities, started the Drive for Diversity initiative, which seeks to develop minority and female drivers and crew members. Harraka went through the program in 2007, where he emerged as the fastest driver in that batch of participants.
"One of NASCAR's key goals is to have the sport look more like America," said MarcusJadotte, NASCAR's managing director of public affairs. "In order to continue to be the premier racing series in the world, we need to expand the pool of talent. That was the thinking behind it."
The program has yet to produce a driver in its premier Sprint Cup Series, but Mark Davis, who is black, has been racing on the Nationwide Series. And Harraka is also considered one of the program's top success stories.
"We're measuring success by the opportunities they're getting that they otherwise wouldn't get," Jadotte said.
Racing team owners keep an eye on the program, and that's how Harraka met Bill McAnally, who brought Harraka onto his racing team.
Harraka has been racing go-karts since he was 7 years old.
His parents, Paul and Donna, bought him one when he showed an early interest in racing, and he drove it around private parking lots.
"I guess you could say I became obsessed with it," Harraka said.
By age 9, he was competing.
Through 2005, Harraka won 13 national championships and six world championships in go-karts. He was sponsored quickly, which allowed him to participate in a sport that isn't cheap, even at the go-kart level. That led to H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler, the former general manager and president of Charlotte Motor Speedway, and a chance to race a Legends car in 2005.
Harraka won his first race at Charlotte Motor Speedway and was ultimately selected for the Drive for Diversity program, where he connected with McAnally, who let Harraka continue his climb in late model stock cars.
McAnally's only concern was that Harraka was 17 years old and living on the East Coast.
"I didn't know if I wanted to put him through the trouble of racing out here [on the West Coast]," McAnally said.
In 2008, just before he entered Duke as a freshman, Harraka moved up to the NASCAR's Whelen All-American Series.
On five of the first six weekends after he started college, he was racing in California, forced to handle the responsibilities of professional auto racing on the weekends on top of the demands of attending Duke.
"When you've got two opportunities like that, you don't want to pass either one up," he said.
Last year, Harraka moved up to the K&N Pro Series, where he's currently No. 3 overall in the K&N East standings, with three races left.
A second-place finish this summer got the attention of Joe Nemechek, the owner of NEMCO Motorsports.
For now, Harraka has been guaranteed only one race in the Nationwide Series. He practiced last week in South Carolina with one of the 700 horsepower stock cars.
Harraka isn't just happy to be there, though he's not sure what it will take to be given another chance to race at this level.
"I'd like to come home with a solid top 10," he said, asked about his goal for the race. "That would be a good race for me. That and bringing the car home without any scratches."
