Owens, a 20-year-old Daytona Beach, Fla., native, will make her second start at Michigan International Speedway on Friday for the Racing for Wildlife 200 ARCA Re/Max Series race. The 5:15 p.m. race will follow NASCAR Sprint Cup Series qualifying.


Owens will start 24th based on car owner points after qualifying was rained out Thursday.


Defending race winner Justin Lofton of Westmoreland, Calif., and James Buescher of Plano, Texas, will start on the front row.


The field also includes past winner Frank Kimmel (1998, 2005), who will start on the outside of the second row.


Owens expects to move up quickly in the race.


Last week at Pocono, she started 28th and roared past 11 cars before completing the first lap. She finished 10th, her second consecutive top-10 finish.


She hopes it is part of a stepping-out party that will have her racing competitively on a bigger stage in 2010.


"It's been a big step for me this year, not just on the race track, but off it, too," Owens said Thursday. "It's no secret that stock car is looking for its Danica Patrick."


There are some people close to Owens on the public relations side of her racing effort who have ideas to market a driver who just might be one of stock car racing's next big thing.


"There's a right way and a wrong way to approach it," Owens said. "It's been a big learning curve for me. My whole life growing up has been jeans, T-shirts, ball caps and sneakers and just trying to blend in as much as possible at the racetrack.


"Now, it's about being proud to be a girl. The part of adjusting to high heels is worse than adjusting to a 200 mph race car."


Owens continues to test her boundaries outside a race car.


She hosts a weekly national radio show, "Gas N Go With Alli O," on VoiceAmerica Talk Radio Network that focuses on women in racing, and she was taken about as far out of her comfort zone as she could imagine on a recent trip to New York.


"There have been times this year when it has been more about marketing that it has been racing," Owens said. "They just sent me to New York for a makeover. I had a hairstylist, a clothing stylist, a makeup artist. I had five guys pulling on me at the same time for the camera. This is not me at all."


Owens is more comfortable under the hood of a car than she is in front of a camera at a fashion shoot. She has been a racer first since she started riding BMX bikes at age 8 and quarter midgets at 12.


"I'm never just a driver," Owens said. "If I was just a driver, I wouldn't be here. When I was younger, if I didn't work on my bike or if I didn't work on my car, we didn't go race.


"I remember plenty of times during spring break changing rear end axles on race cars instead of being at the beach. I wouldn't have changed those experiences for anything, because now, when I go out to the race track and I'm making adjustments and talking about it, it's not a foreign language to me."


Owens, who lives in Mooresville, N.C., said she plans to run 15 to 20 races in the NASCAR Nationwide Series next year. That would put her one step from her ultimate goal of running in the Sprint Cup Series.


"You can't expect everyone out here to understand what your life is like being a female race car driver," she said. "But hey, I put on my fire suit the same way, I put my shoes on the same way and I strap on my helmet the same way.


"There's not a difference between a girl and a guy on the race track. I think, once I proved that, then they started to take me seriously."


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