Kelli Blake is a firecracker waiting to explode. As soon as that light turns green, she’ll be gone, hurtling down the Rockingham Dragway, just like her momma and daddy used to do.
“I was a baby out here watching them race. And seeing them do it made me want to race. I started begging with them when I was three,” laughs 15-year-old Kelli, an honor student at Richmond Senior High School. ”They let me race for the first time when I was 9 and I’ve loved everything about it ever since.”
For her very first drag race, her father put her behind the wheel of a small-engine go-cart. ”I told him this wasn’t going to work. I needed to go fast. I felt like a snail out there.”
Soon thereafter, he found Kelli a more powerful vehicle but decided to suspend his own racing so that he could concentrate full-time on her safety. ”Junior racing is a big family commitment and takes a lot of dedication from everyone,” notes Ronnie Blake. ”But we’re doing this just to have fun, to enjoy it.”
That’s not to say that Kelli doesn’t enjoy winning, which she does on a regular basis. ”My favorite part of racing is the rush. I love going fast. The next best part is all the friends I’ve made out here, friends I’ll have forever.” But then smiling, she adds, “Well, we’re friends off the track, because out there, I’m trying to beat them.”
She obviously inherits part of this competitive streak from her mother, who used to drag race before female drivers were commonplace. ”When I first started racing, guys didn’t think I should be racing, which made me want to beat them even more,” remembers Debbie Blake. ”But once you showed them you had the skills, they started to respect you.”
Now, according to Kelli, the only difference between male and female drivers is the boys “are always trying to intimidate you at the Christmas tree.”
The Christmas tree is the multi-colored starting light, where drag races are won and lost. Tonight, in the marquee match-up, Kelli’s “Heartbreaker” dragster is paired against the “Whatever” car of another female driver. The back wheels of both cars are spinning furiously, a thick smoke rising off of the pavement into the air. The noise is building, deafening, like an airplane about to take flight. The crowd is standing, her parents are smiling. Then the green light.
(photos by wjzo.com)
