SOUTH PORTLAND — A South Portland woman competing for the affections of a racecar driver on ABC’s “The Bachelor,” had a big night in the show’s season premiere Monday night.

Chelsea Roy, a 29-year-old real estate executive, made an impression on the bachelor, Arie Luyendyk Jr., who commented “Wow, she’s interesting” when she got out of the limo to meet him at the show’s mansion in California, according to WCSH.

Roy and Luyendyk got some one-on-one time together, and shared the first kiss of the season, and Luyendyk gave Roy his “first-impression rose,” securing her safety for the next week.

Roy is one of 29 contestants competing for Luyendyk’s heart.

“The Bachelor” shows women having one-on-one romantic time with the bachelor in question and also shows the contestants getting a little testy at times with one another. Some episodes show the bachelor and bachelorettes traveling to romantic locales on dates. At the end of each episode, the bachelor culls the field down, so there are fewer contestants each week.

At the end of the season, the bachelor can choose one woman to propose to or one woman to pursue a relationship with off-camera.

Luyendyk, 36, is a race car driver from Arizona and was on “The Bachelorette” in 2012, when he came awfully close to proposing to Emily Maynard.

In 2012, Ashley Hebert of Madawaska became the first Maine women to find marriage on reality television. Hebert, a dental student, had been a contestant on “The Bachelor,” as Roy is. She did not win love on that show, but her screen presence convinced producers to make her the star of the companion series “The Bachelorette,” where she got her pick of men. She picked J.P. Rosenbaum, and the two were later married. Their marriage was filmed and shown as a prime time special on ABC.

Hebert told E! Online in January that she and Rosenbaum were happily married and have two children.