Willpower

By Abigail Nelson '01Photos by Brea Walker '02

It is a warm winter day in Pomona, California. At theCarquest Auto Parts NHRA Winternationals, thousandsof fans have driven to see their favorite drag racers. It isSunday, the final day of NHRA≠s annual season opener,and fans eagerly wait to see who will take home thetrophies in the first event of the season. In the teampits, there is a flurry of activity as those teams who qualified inthe days before prepare for the first eliminations of the season.

The Kalitta Motorsports pits are set up with trailers, tents andhospitality centers. Hillary Will '02 is in her trailer preparingfor her first final round of her professional career.Will's team works quickly on her Top Fuel dragster. Theymake adjustments on the dragster, knowing that this car willsoon be racing at more than 300 m.p.h. and knowing thatevery adjustment on the car must be perfect. A crowd gathersaround the pit to watch the team work and hopes for a glimpseof the driver or an autograph.

The team prepares to start the 10,000-horsepower engines,and the fans put in their earplugs and cover their ears. Theystand behind the dragster as it thunders to life and exhaustburns their eyes. Fans are amazed and fascinated by the dragstersand at the precision that it takes to prepare one for a race.In the hospitality center set up next to the trailer, Will'sfamily and friends sit. Her father, Steve, and grandfather,"Grandpa," as everyone calls him, are proud. In the past eightyears they guided Will's career and taught her to becomea drag racer. She has received much media attention thisweekend, both as a rookie and a female driver, with her goodqualifying times. Both her father and grandfather know thateach race is a separate race, and anything could happen ineliminations.

Will has left her trailer to go to the starting line for driverintroductions. The pro drivers are called out to the starting lineand are introduced to the fans before the races begin. Beingintroduced to the fans as one of the professional drivers issomething that Will has been dreaming of for a long time.

"I used to watch the driver introductions and hoped thatsomeday it would be me out there with the pro drivers," shesaid. "Now it is."

At 25, Will, now sitting behind the wheel of a Top Fueldragster in a fire suit and helmet, has come a long way fromracing her Dodge Challenger at her local track. She is now aprofessional drag racer.

A fast start

Will began drag racing more than eight years ago. She grewup outside of Eureka, California, five hours north of SanFrancisco. Her first drag race was at her local track, theSamoa Dragstrip. Her father, who gave up racing to havea family and a business, had given Will his old '73 DodgeChallenger, and this was the car she drove to school everyday.

One day he asked her if she wanted to take her car downthe quarter mile to see how fast it would run. Will, who hadalways been a fan of drag racing, was nervous, having onlywatched the sport. With encouragement from her father, Will raced the Challenger and found she liked it˘a lot. She beganracing Super Street and started to win.

"We started winning and then I knew I was really hooked,"recalls Will. As she kept winning races, she was able to moveup and began racing Super Comp and Super Gas.

In 1998 Will traveled east to Wheaton, recommended by alocal doctor. She majored in economics and was a diver onthe swimming and diving team, and wondered how her loveof racing would intersect with her academic career.

"I kept coming home every summer during college just sothat I could race, thinking each summer was my last." Herdream of becoming a pro racer never faded.

After graduating magna cum laude in 2002, Will movedback home and, like most graduates, began looking for a job.She was hired by a local company as a financial analyst. Whileunhappy sitting at desk all day, her job paid her enough to getby and also allowed her to leave for long weekends to race.

"The more I raced, the more I developed a passion for it,"she recalls. "Even when I was physically at work, my mindwas focused on racing."

Going pro

Will saved enough money to attend the Frank Hawley DragRacing School, and in January 2004 got her Top AlcoholDragster license on her first try. Racing a Top Alcohol Dragsteris similar to being in the minor leagues for baseball. The nextstop for a drag racer, like a baseball player, is to go pro.

When Will received her Top Alcohol license, her teamalready had a car she could race in Top Alcohol. Will hada lot of family support from her father, the team owner, andGrandpa, the transporter for the team. Her brothers and sistersoften attended her races, as did many of her aunts, uncles andcousins. [Will also enlisted the help of her former Wheatonroommates and diving teammates, Abby Nelson and BreaWalker, the author and photographer of this story, to do herpublic relations and photography.]

Bucky Austin, a Funny Car racer and family friend, offeredto build the motors for the dragster.

"So we headed to the Top Alcohol Dragster class with ateam that didn't know anything about racing in that class,"Will recalls. "All we knew was that we had the desire. We didn't even have the right tools and parts, but Bucky taught uswhat stuff we needed, what clutch combinations to run, whattype of crew we needed and so on."

With Austin's guidance and the support from her family andfriends, Will and her team raced in a few divisional races in2004, and in April 2005, won her first national event in LasVegas. She caught the eye of the media and other racers asa Top Alcohol driver, running her career best of 270 m.p.h.in 5.33 seconds and becoming the sixth female in history toqualify number one in Top Alcohol Dragster.

In April 2005 Will decided to take her biggest risk ever."I finally decided that I wanted to go all or nothing and makeracing my career. I took a big risk and left my job to devote100 percent of my time to turning my hobby into my career."

With her goal to secure sponsorship for her team, bringing inenough money to eventually go pro, Will put all her efforts intoGirl Power Racing.

Her efforts and hard work were noticed by many, and inAugust 2005, Will was approached by Ken Black Racing andKalitta Motorsports, who were teaming up for Top Fuel racing.Connie Kalitta, owner of Kalitta Motorsports, is a drag racing legend, making it to 22 NHRA event final rounds with 10wins as a driver. In 1977, he served as crew chief for ShirleyMuldowney when she became the first, and as yet, the onlyfemale Top Fuel champion in NHRA history. Muldowney is incharge of sponsor relations for one of Kalitta≠s dragsters drivenby David Grubnic, and she also serves as a mentor for Will.

Will was hired and moved to Michigan, where KalittaMotorsports is based. In the off-season, the team had adragster custom built for her. Her new dragster is still theGirl Power Dragster, and Will hopes that she will be able toinspire women and girls to believe in themselves.

"I hope other girls are inspired to take risks like tryingout for basketball, raising their hand in school, or applyingto business school," she says. "They have to believe inthemselves."

There was a learning curve for Will, learning to drive a TopFuel Dragster, one of three classes in drag racing. Each racepits two drivers against each other on a quarter-mile track. ATop Fuel dragster will reach 300 miles per hour in the time ittakes to read this sentence. Generally a driver will try to getto the end of the quarter-mile track in about 4.5 seconds, at a speed of more than 320 m.p.h. In order to exceed 300 m.p.h.in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate at an average of morethan 4Gs; however, by reaching 200 m.p.h. well before halftrack,the launch acceleration is closer to 8Gs. At the end ofeach run, a parachute on the back of the dragster is deployed,forcing the car to go from about 5 positive Gs to 5 negative Gs.If all the equipment is paid off, the crew works for free, and ifnothing on the car breaks, each run costs $1,000 per second.

"Drag racing is a very unforgiving sport," says Will. "Winsand losses are literally separated by thousandths of a second.The smallest driver mistake can have negative results. I must bevery focused and very precise in every movement. Sometimesthat≠s not easy when I≠m traveling over 325 m.p.h."

Each race takes place over a long weekend, with qualifyingruns on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. In these runs, it is notthe winner of each race that matters, it is their time. Drivershave several chances to qualify for the final round. The finalround works elimination-style, with the winner from each raceadvancing to the next round.

In the off-season, Will quickly adapted to life in Michigan.As a Top Fuel driver, driving is only one part of her verydemanding job. She goes to the shop every day to help withher car and to get to know her team. She is responsible for thetravel planning of the entire Kalitta Motorsports team of over50 people. She also works in the office, often talking to themedia on the phone, doing some public relations, and workinghard to find a major sponsor for her team. She received herTop Fuel license and learned how to drive her new dragster.She tested in Las Vegas before the season began, with some ofthe best times of all the teams testing that weekend.

Back in Pomona

At her pro debut in Pomona, Will heads into the final roundin a good position. She consistently ran well in qualifying,with her best time of 4.515 seconds at 324.76 m.p.h. qualifyingher number four going into the finals. In her last qualifyingrun on Saturday afternoon, Will≠s parachutes deploy too late,and she rolls into the sand at the end of the track. It is a scarymoment, and the first time this has happened to Will. Whilethe incident will be replayed several times on ESPN2, Willwalked away uninjured.

Will finished at the Pomona Winternationals with a lossdue to a broken blower belt, but she is looking forward to thenext race.

"I just can't wait to do this all over again. I know my crewis awesome. I have a great team˘a lot of support˘andcouldn≠t do anything without them."