Ladies, Start Your Engines : Women Drivers Seeley, Drake Have Won Races and Respect as They Pass Test at Saugus Speedway

In the rough-and-tumble world of Hobby Stock and Jalopy auto racing at Saugus Speedway--where men are men and the not-so-immaculate car bodies reflect that--let’s make a brief pit stop to recognize some of this season’s main-event winners.

Let’s see, the list includes Chuck Berry, Neil Conrad, Oscar Sevilla, Julianne Seeley, Mindy Drake, Russ Wolff and . . . wait a minute.

Julianne? Mindy?

There must be some mistake. Mindy and Julianne are women’s names. And in the male-dominated world of auto racing, the only time a woman makes it to the track is to serve as a trophy girl, right?

Conventional wisdom says that these women should spend more time worrying about satin pumps than water pumps.

Conventional wisdom is wrong. Julianne Seeley of Canyon Country and Mindy Drake of Palmdale are here to announce that the ‘90s are in full swing, and you can take your sex stereotypes and stick them in your exhaust pipe, thank you.

Seeley, who drives a Hobby Stock car, and Drake, who drives a Jalopy, are by no means the first women to compete at Saugus Speedway. But this year they became only the second and third women drivers in the speedway’s 52-year history to post main-event wins. Lisa Owens won two Jalopy main events at Saugus in 1987.

Seeley and Drake have set themselves apart from past women drivers at Saugus with a hard-driving consistency. Drake is in seventh place in the Jalopy points standings despite the fact she doesn’t compete in the figure-eight races.

“If she (raced figure-eights), she would be right up there with myself in points,” said fellow Jalopy driver Harrison (Bart) Bartholomew, currently in second place.

To her credit, Drake has two main-event wins, three trophy-dash wins and three heat-race wins. Every finish but one has been in the top five.

As for Seeley, she fell out of the top 10 in points last week but is knocking on the door in 11th place. This season, Seeley has won three trophy dashes, set two fast times, won a heat race, won a main event, has five top-five finishes and 11 top-10 finishes.

“The first time (Seeley) beat me I was a little upset,” said Hobby Stock driver Russ Wolff, who is engaged to Drake. “It took a little getting used to. Now? She’s just like everybody else.”

But Seeley, 28, and Drake, 24, aren’t “just like everyone else” to other drivers and that has sometimes made matters a little difficult on the race track. Both admit that there is remains a legion of racers who refuse to accept a woman taking the checkered flag.

“I think it sort of kills their egos,” Drake said. “It’s hard enough to get beat, but when you get beat by a woman, it’s a little bit harder.”

Seeley said that once she won her first main event, things changed with some of her fellow drivers. While many remained encouraging and friendly, some made nasty comments as they walked by her car in the pits. Others implied that she was not winning legally.

“As soon as I started going fast this year, we heard, ‘Oh, she’s cheating,’ ” Seeley said. “They think the only way a female can beat a guy is to cheat. And I’m sure that by the end of the season, if I’m still in the top 10, (my engine will be) torn down.”

The resentment doesn’t stop at words, either. Seeley said that in a recent event one racer took exception to her driving and made obscene gestures at her for the duration of the race. When she returned to the pits, she wasn’t even out of her car before that same racer had poked his head inside her car and threatened that if she vexed him again, she would “regret that day.”

“So I responded like any good male would,” Seeley said. “I said something very profane to him.”

Drake can empathize.

“It’s funny, when I first started racing, they all came by and said, ‘Hi’ ,” Drake said. “And then, as time goes by and I beat them, they start dropping off a little bit.”

But don’t start thinking that all racers at Saugus Speedway are cavemen who grab their women by the hair and drag them to the races. There are dozens of male racers who support Seeley and Drake with words and actions.

Take, for example, Wolff. He and car builder Ed McQueen spend many hours each night setting up Drake’s car for that weekend’s racing. While Drake has a solid mechanical background--her father made her tear down and rebuild an engine for the experience when she was 16--she said that about the only way she’ll get dirty now is to change a spark plug.

Seeley, meanwhile, freely admits that until recently her mechanical knowledge was so negligible that last year, in her rookie season, she competed in 14 races on the same four tires. Little wonder that she finished on the lead lap only once. But over the winter, along with her brother John and crew chief Jeff Drummond, she began to learn. Seeley, in fact, came so far that before opening night her sponsor encouraged her to finish reassembling the motor after it had been torn down.

“That night, my crew was like, ‘Hey, who put this on?’ and ‘Hey, this bolt isn’t very tight,’ ” Seeley remembers with a laugh. “I said, ‘Sorry, guys, I’m not as strong as you are.’

“The worst part about racing for me is that I hate getting dirty.”

Drake didn’t mind getting dirty at an early age. She seemed almost destined for a racing career when she started to race desert bikes with her dad when she was 4 1/2. By the time Drake became a student at Chatsworth High, she recalled with a chuckle, guys were asking her to take a look at their car.

But she never got around to actually racing. Instead, she and Wolff had a child, Corey, now 5, and she spent time at the track watching Wolff race. Spending so much time around the track allowed the racing bug to slip back into her system. From there, it was just a matter of time.

Drake said Wolff and her father gave her the confidence to try, and Wolff gave her his old Hobby Stock car to race as a Jalopy this season. The rest is barrier-breaking history.

“I went in wanting to win the championship, actually,” Drake said. “Now I’m having so much fun it’s almost scary.”

Seeley steered a different path. While her parents’ first date was at Saugus Speedway and she and her brother spent nearly every Saturday night of their childhood in the grandstands at Turn 4, Seeley lost touch with the racing world as a teen-ager.

Seeley, who graduated from Poly High in 1980, moved to Canyon Country in 1985 to pursue a job as a loan officer for a mortgage banker. One night when her mother was visiting, it was suggested they head out to the speedway.

“I had forgotten how much fun it was,” Seeley said. “That was the start of it all over again.”

Seeley was a regular again for the next five years. Then, on New Year’s Day 1990, she made a resolution to race cars.

Last year was as trying as this year has been exhilarating. But Seeley finally arrived on the Fourth of July when she won over a season-high crowd of more than 6,500 with her first main-event win. The resolution had come to bear some agreeable fruit.

“I don’t mind it too bad anymore when she beats me,” Wolff said. “She has really improved on her driving and she’s got her car running good.”

Drake also has her admirers.

“I didn’t expect her to have the guts on the track,” Bartholomew said. “I was a little (chauvinistic) in some ways, I guess. But she is a great driver. I’m amazed at how well she intimidates some of the guys out there. And I know she’s a better driver than I am.”

That is a statement that neither Drake nor Seeley would have expected to hear. They have come a long way to earn the respect of their peers, but they remain each other’s biggest fans, always wishing each other well in the pits and rooting the other on.

After all, it’s a rather exclusive club.

“I’m proud of me and Mindy,” Seeley said. “We’re women in a male-dominated sport, and we’ve proved that we can do this just as well as they can.”