Aurora Straus never intended to become a professional race car driver.
But when she was 13, her dad signed her up for a safe-driving lesson at the Monticello Motor Club in the Catskills.
“My dad’s intention was for me to learn car control skills,” she told The Post of her father, Ari Straus, the CEO of the club. But during the one-on-one session (private tracks allow drivers as young as 13 to take the wheel), instructor Stevan McAleer let her drive a few fast laps for fun. It was like a switch was tripped.
“I will never forget the feeling of the machine under me. I was so small, and I had never experienced so much power. It was the first time I had ever gone into the triple digits,” said the now-19-year-old from Cold Spring, NY.
Fast forward to 2018, her most challenging year yet in the sport. Aurora — who, after graduating from her Westchester high school last year, deferred her admission to Harvard until the fall — will drive a $190,000 BMW M4 GT4 at the Pirelli World Challenge series in Austin, Texas, Friday through Sunday.
It’s her 35th race — and she’s kicking butt, having ended 2017 as the highest-finishing rookie in the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge. In Austin, she’ll be one of just three women among the 150 drivers in the series.
After the safe-driving lesson, she started racing go-karts in 2014 and then, under McAleer’s tutelage, entered her first pro race — the Battery Tender Mazda MX-5 Cup, a series of 45-minute sprints.
“I was 16 and 17, and the drivers of other cars were early to late 20s, and mostly men,” said Aurora, who has a younger brother and sister. “It’s really hard to move up because all the cars are the same [make and model], so it makes for close car-to-car contact and wheel-to-wheel racing. It’s some of the most brutal racing I’ve done. If you breathe the wrong way, it can cost you the race.” In 2015, she finished 20th out of a field of 35.
In 2016, she took the wheel of a Porsche Cayman in the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge as its youngest driver ever. The pupil had caught up with the master: McAleer couldn’t coach her anymore because he was competing, too. Aurora finished in the middle of the pack, then rose to 11 out of 41 drivers in 2017.
An amateur guitarist and singer, she also belted out the national anthem before taking part in one of the Continental races.
Being a girl in a male-dominated field isn’t easy — and Aurora first saw that at 14, when she attended a racing retreat in Florida.
“One of the instructors . . . told me I braked like a girl, that I handled the car like a girl,” she said. “I was so discouraged that I almost quit.”
More recently, a team owner made an offhand comment about how she’d lure more supporters if she wore revealing outfits.
“I’m not here for people to take photos because I’m in a tank top, but because I’m a driver they want to follow,” she said. “I have encountered more men than I would have expected who would rather push me off the track than race side-by-side with a 19-year-old girl. [But] I want no business in victimizing myself.”
And Aurora may have more female competition soon.
“I’ve seen more girls coming to races with their dads,” she said. “I’ve had dozens of girls come up to me at race weekends saying, ‘I didn’t know girls were allowed to race!’ ”
‘One of the instructors . . . told me I braked like a girl, that I handled the car like a girl. I was so discouraged that I almost quit.’
Although she’s never been involved in a major crash, earlier this year, Aurora was testing a Porsche Cayman ahead of a race at Daytona International Speedway when her brakes failed during a turn. She downshifted the engine and managed to avoid hitting anything, but the experience was a bracing reminder of the risks of the sport.
During races, she’s strapped in a cockpit that heats up to more than 100 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour and a half, and her internal body temperature can spike to 103 degrees. So she works on her ability to withstand the heat by doing cardio at least five days a week.
And it’s not as simple as just getting in the car and driving. “I spend hours before I go to each new track watching video of past races or practices,” said Aurora, adding that she also crunches crucial numbers. The drivers “are separated by tenths of seconds if that. The only way you can get better is [by] collecting data from the car — speed, acceleration, time differences per corner.”
At Harvard, she plans to study English with a minor in mechanical engineering — and race on the weekends. During her year off from school, Aurora is working weekdays at Boston-based startup ZappRx, an online platform for specialty drugs.
Sponsored by watchmaker Richard Mille and ModSpace Motorsports, she is, in addition, raising money for a nonprofit that will support women trying to kick-start careers in fields from racing to tech.
As a result, she joked, she doesn’t have time to do anything else — including date. But there’s one personal indulgence she’s looking forward to.
Now, when she makes the podium, “I get sparkling cider,” said Aurora. But once she turns 21 in September 2019, “I’ll get real Champagne.”