Earlier this year, she said she was glad to be back on the Camping World Drag Racing Series but was completely satisfied with her decision: “When I meet my Maker, I don’t think He’s going to care how many Wally trophies I earned. He’s going to car more about how good I was to people.”

She’ll get no argument on that. But it was gratifying, just the same, to earn her first victory since the 2019 Countdown to the Championship race at St. Louis – where, like Sunday at the NHRA Sonoma Nationals, she defeated Andrew Hines.

“Absolutely, definitely a very, very exciting day, especially for me with this being on my bucket list,” she said after her 6.798-second pass at 197.36 mph on the White Alligator Racing Suzuki gave her a victory margin of 0.0051 seconds, or approximately 18 inches, ahead of Hines with his 6.800 200.98 on his Vance & Hine entry.

“So it’s been a challenge. We've been in the final one time and lost,” Stoffer said, “and been here for many years. And it's considered a home track for me, so very, very happy.”

She marched past Scott Bottorff, Joey Gladstone, and boss/teammate Jerry Savoie to set up her 10^th overall victory. Hines beat Ryan Oehler, Matt Smith, and Cory Reed to reach the final.

While the fans in the grandstands – who missed their 2020 race to COVID cancellation – loved the thrilling side-by-side final round, Stoffer said she knew Hines was close but usually tries to concentrate on her own progress down the quarter-mile course.

“I try really hard not to know what's going on in the lane next to me unless there's something catastrophic happening,” she said. “But pretty much, I just keep my head down. I stay focused. I look for that finish line, stay tucked, and usually when I hit high gear, I just try and get under the paint as best I can. Sometimes I'll turn my head a little bit to get under the paint more. So I knew that he was right there, and I knew it was going to be a good race. Immediately after, I picked my head up, I look to see my win light. And that was the big smile on the face.”

Much of the credit, she indicated, goes to crew chief Tim Kulungian.

“You know, Timmy worked really hard after the Denver race to find the power in both of our bikes and got to thank him tremendously for that. He gave us the power when I couldn't get the tree down right,” Stoffer said.

“But luckily, the tree came to me a couple of rounds. Tim just said on that last final round, we first went in and he said, ‘Go ahead and just grab as much throttle as you can, twist it hard, and you're good.’ That’s what he said on the final round. Going through the rounds today, I just kept my head down, keeping focused on what I had to do, and felt pretty confident that Tim gave me the bike.”

And in the showdown, she didn’t pay attention to numbers – including the 24-9 edge Hines had on her in previous events and the 3-1 advantage he had over her in their history of final-round pairings.

The NHRA Camping World Series action will shift to Pomona, Calif., this coming weekend for the unseasonably named Winternationals that normally open the season in February. But this year it’s the 10^th race among the 13 so-called regular season events before the Countdown to the Championship fields are set Labor Day weekend at Indianapolis. Stoffer is fifth in the standings after sharing the winners circle with Steve Torrence (Top Fuel), Robert Hight (Funny Car), and Aaron Stanfield (Pro Stock).

Stoffer was part of a showcase of women racers Sunday and actually, all weekend long. Both she and Top Fuel runner-up Leah Pruett had close showdowns. And Brittany Force was low qualifier in Top Fuel, as was Angie Smith in Pro Stock Motorcycle.

Angie Smith claimed her career-first top spot in Pro Stock Motorcycle at 6.736 seconds, 203.06 mph. Her elapsed time was just six-thousandths of a second short of matching Angelle Sampey’s 2016 track record, and her speed fell slightly short of the national mark of 203.49 that Eddie Krawiec set in May at Charlotte.

Alexis De Joria barely missed a chance to lead the Funny Car field, settling for the No. 2 spot for the fifth time in this season’s first nine races. So fans almost witnessed women leading their fields into eliminations in three classes for just the second time in NHRA history. Brittany Force, Erica Enders, and Angelle Sampey became the first three women to earn No. 1 qualifying positions in pro categories at the same event, at Reading, Pa., in 2019.

What genuinely made the victory special for Stoffer was her connection to the Seipel family, who have been dubbed “ The First Family of Drag Racing in Northern California.” Ted and Georgia Seipel were named Grand Marshals of the event, and Stoffer has had a longtime friendship with them and their son Kyle, who passed away June 21 following a three-year battle with cancer. Georgia Seipel was the Sonoma Raceway dragstrip manager until 2018 and her husband Ted was a Super Gas pioneer. Kyle Seipel, fondly known in the racing family as “Big Nasty,” took over the track-management reins from his mother, but he was well-known by that time from his days as a racer, crew chief, and promoter. He and Peter Biondo produced the Spring Fling bracket races.

Stoffer said the Seipel name is synonymous with Sonoma and is part of her own racing history.

“It was hard to come here and not say the name Seipel,” Stoffer said. “It's just been engrained from Day One. Whether you change the name four or five times for this racetrack, the Seipel name stayed consistent. So that's kind of how we started here. And when Georgia and Ted travel around to all the other division 7 tracks, we'd always stop and talk and say hi. Definitely this, to me, can be Sonoma. It can be Sears Point. It can be Infineon. But to me, it's Seipel.

“My first experience with the Seipel family was racing here at Sonoma and it was bracket racing. It was actually the NMRA Association. My husband was in the same class as I was, and we ended up racing each other in the final. This was way back in the late ’80s, early ’90s,” she said. “And Georgia Seipel came down and talked to us because it was the first husband-and-wife final way back in the day. Right there we instantly connected. And then of course, I moved on to Division 7 bracket racing, and this was one of the division seven tracks. So every time we came here, obviously, Ted and Georgia and Kyle and the whole family, we knew them well. We raced with them a lot. Respected every one of them. We used to comment on Kyle when he raced his car: we always saw his head turn when he was bracket racing.”

And Stoffer was turning heads Sunday.