There's something about a TV talk show queen asking a probing question that turns even the toughest person into pudding.

That's what happened to Natalie Sather, who races for Sellers Racing in the Whelen All-American Series, when Tyra Banks asked about a particular scar shooting down Sather's shin.

“

Getting all 'dolled up' is something I don't do very often, let alone on national television.

”

-- NATALIE SATHER

Seven years ago, when Natalie was 17 and running sprint cars at her home track, Red River Valley Speedway in Fargo, N.D., she was T-boned in a violent wreck. Her leg was busted ugly in three places. Her foot was actually pointing backwards, the kind of trick you'd see from Harpo Marx to get a laugh. In reality, it made grown men sick.

Sather had been racing since she was 9, starting in go-karts, and after seven surgeries on the leg, doctors were saying she'd likely never wheel a race car again. She had a foot-long metal pin inserted into her leg from knee to ankle to hold together her fibula. Four months after the scary wreck, she was competing.

Usually, Sather will show off the battered leg with a sly smile and quick story about the golf-ball sized in infection she fought, and how she defied doctors' orders by constructing a special leg brace allowing her to return to competition -- before medical permission was granted.

Yet when she was alone on stage of The Tyra Banks Show at its Manhattan studio for a pre-taped show airing Thursday, with pictures of her leg eliciting audience gasps and cameras bearing in and Tyra wondering how such a scar affects you as a woman, an old wound was opened, and the accident took on a new context.

Her breakdown was quick and complete, and Natalie recovered like a steely veteran driver going wicked loose off a turn and transferring that bobble into greater speed. "It's a beauty flaw," she said, wiping her eyes. "I'm embracing it. It's who I am."

In the audience, Jeff Knight, Natalie's 2009 car owner with Total Velocity Motorsports, was clearly moved. He knew about Natalie's accident but never considered how it could impact a young lady away from the race track.

"At the shop, she's a regular driver," said Knight, who is also a pastor in a ministry outside Seattle. "I've only seen her in a fire suit. Watching her on the show, talking to Tyra about the accident and her scar, I've learned about a new side of Natalie."

Banks, whose show is seen by millions of young people -- contributing to her Forbes ranking as the fifth most-influential woman in America -- had invited Sather on the program to undergo a beauty "makeover." The former supermodel-turned-entrepreneur and Emmy Award-winning host was looking for a young, successful woman working in a profession that puts grease under her nails. (Continued)