Donna Mae Mims, 82, the first woman to win a Sports Car Club of America national championship and a participant in the original "Cannonball Run" that became the subject of a 1981 movie starring Burt Reynolds, died Oct. 6 from complications after a stroke, said officials at a funeral home in McMurray, Pa. Mims was known as "the Pink Lady" for driving mostly in pink cars and often wearing pink.
Mims said in a 1964 Times article that she started racing after working on a friend's pit crew in Pittsburgh and asking to take a practice lap. "That did it, I was hooked," she said. She won the Sports Car Club of America national championship in 1963.
