Longtime motor sports reporter Jamie Little never imagined herself in the broadcast booth. After nearly two decades of broadcasting, she liked working from pit road, and understandably so, because that’s where all the action is.

Going into the 2021 racing season, Little will still be FOX Sports’ pit-road reporter for NASCAR’s Cup, Xfinity and Truck series.

But she’ll also work as the play-by-play announcer for NASCAR’s feeder ARCA Series, making her the first woman to serve as the TV voice of a national motor sports series in the U.S. Her first ARCA broadcast is the series season opener, the Lucas Oil 200, on Saturday (1:30 p.m. ET, FS1).

Rehearsals aside, Little’s only previous play-by-play experience was in June of 2018 when she filled in during an Xfinity Series practice. She said she enjoyed it, but she wasn’t seriously considering switching to the booth. Not until friend and competitor at NBC Sports Leigh Diffey called her last year and encouraged her to consider doing play-by-play, especially as other women have moved into that role.

“That is the kick in the butt that I needed,” Little said.

“I emailed my boss, Jacob Ullman at Fox Sports LA, and said, ‘Hey, I’m ready to do play by play. I don’t know what that means or where it’ll happen, but I just want you to know that I’m ready to do what if you guys have an opening.’ Literally, a week and a half later, he calls, and he’s like, ‘Hey, we just had some meetings. What would you think about being the voice of the ARCA series?'”

For The Win recently spoke with Little about her new job and the history she’s making, the upcoming NASCAR season and what it was like to be in the middle of a giant brawl between Jeff Gordon and Brad Keselowski.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Did your play-by-play stint in 2018 make you wonder hypothetically or in the back of your mind about doing it more consistently?

I just was always content where I was in the pits. I just loved it so much. And I’ve always gotten that question over the years: “When are you going to do stick and ball sports?” and I’ve always said, “That’s not my thing. That’s not what I’m passionate about.” So many people will use different sports as a stepping stone to get to the NFL. And that was just never my thing. Motor sports I fell in love with, and I found my career because of it.

When people [tell] me, “Well, this is a big step, the first time a woman has done play-by-play in a national motor sport series for television,” I think there’s a lot of added responsibility that comes with that, and I’m ready for it. But at the same time, it’s also the natural next step, so I just feel like it’s time.

When you when you put this job into the context of breaking glass ceilings or whatever cliché you want to insert there, is that a context that you embrace or do you wish the “first woman to do something” element wasn’t always the focus?

I embrace it. I’ve always been an optimistic person, and I think if people are celebrating something or bringing light to something because it hasn’t been done before, then that’s awesome. But most importantly, maybe it’ll open eyes to those younger girls. They’re like, “I love sports. But could I ever do that job?” Well, now you see that every job is attainable when it comes to being a reporter or journalist for television or as a writer.

Back in 2004, I was the first [female] pit reporter for the Indy 500 on television. That was a big deal. In my mind, I couldn’t believe that a woman hadn’t done that already. And I thought, “What the heck? Why not?” I’m super competitive. I love a challenge, and somebody saying, “Well, nobody’s done it before, so what’s she gonna do? How is she going to perform?” And I love that. I love that extra pressure.

What impact do you think or hope doing play-by-play will have on racing and broadcasting?

I hope that people embrace it. There’s a lot of people out there that are like, “Yes, this is gonna be awesome!” But it’s those people, maybe the outliers, that are the traditionalist, that are used to hearing a man’s voice call a race — that’ll be different. So I hope that those people embrace it. And I hope it becomes the norm.

Looking at motor sports through a larger lens, what do you think the greatest challenge for it is in this moment compared with more mainstream sports?

Gosh, I think we’re on such a good trajectory up. One thing that we were battling is the younger generation. They don’t care too much about cars. How do we get these younger fans to care about racing if they don’t care about cars? Well, I think that NASCAR is doing a really good job with that, first and foremost with iRacing. I think that excites kids. They can join in, they can race at home, they can race against the drivers that are out there doing it for a living, and, hopefully, they’ll tune in on the weekend.

And now, we have Michael Jordan as a team owner. Pitbull just announced that he’s a co-owner of a team. So I think we’re getting that reach out there, and minority audiences that maybe felt like NASCAR was just kind of a southern, white sport. It’s not that way anymore, and I think NASCAR has done a tremendous job over the past year of really embracing the change and saying everybody is welcome.

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Michael Jordan and Pitbull becoming team owners is a big deal, but what do you think the actual impact of that will be on NASCAR?

You hope that it just brings more eyeballs and that people feel comfortable, and they think, “Man, this is pretty cool. This sport’s fun.” And Pitbull saying he’s been a fan of it, and he goes to the races, and Michael Jordan, the greatest athlete of all time, is part of this sport and believes it so much that he’s opening as well and spending millions of dollars because he believes in Bubba Wallace, [people might think,] “Well, maybe we should take a look at it.”

Do you have a favorite broadcasting moment or one that you’ll never forget?

Gosh, in 2014 at Texas [Motor Speedway] when Brad Keselowski and Jeff Gordon got in a fight, and it was the biggest fight that I think has ever happened in NASCAR. There was probably 250 people throwing punches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mILY6YnGkE

I think I [covered] Jeff and Brad that night, so I knew what was going down and I could hear the radio. So before the race was over, I ran down to where they were going to stop the cars. So I stopped right next to Brad’s car, and when Jeff got out, I was right next to Brad. So I was literally in the middle of this melee of fighting, and everybody’s punching and something I will never forget.

It was a funny moment, for sure, especially because I work with Jeff now. And Brad does a lot of our broadcasts too. So that was one of those moments that you look back, and you’re like, “Thank God that went OK.”

[NOTE: We corrected the name of Little’s boss — it’s Jacob Ullman, not Bowman. We regret the error.]

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