Femme Fatale
FEMME FATALE
RACE WATCH
Angelle Seeling, drag queen supreme
PAUL SEREDYNSKI
NHRA PRO STOCK DRAGBIKES ACCELERATE FROM 0 to 100 mph in less than 2 seconds. The Superbikes of drag racing, these productionbased, normally aspirated machines produce a staggering 290 horsepower. Manage a clean sprint through the gears, and a well-ridden example will hit 180-mph plus en route to a low, 7-second quarter-mile pass.
Few people of any stature can claim to have made a real impact on the sport, much less someone who measures only 5-foot, 1-inch tall and weighs a mere 110 pounds. In deed, Angelle Seeling has not only altered the way people look at drag racers (stare, even), but her presence has liter ally changed the sport.
The 28-year-old registered nurse and former beauty pageant contestant burst onto the Pro Stock scene midway through the 1996 season. It wasn't her first time on a bike, however: The New Orleans native started racing motocross when she was 6, and entered her first drag race at age 19. "I went back the next weekend, and the next," she says. "Within a couple of months, I wasn't riding on the street anymore."
Seeling attended Frank Hawley's Drag Racing School in Gainesville, Florida, in `95. George Bryce, who runs the Star Racing team that backs Seeling, is an instructor at the school. "I called my wife that night and said. `Jackie, this little girl is amazing," he recalls. "She's having trouble con trolling (the bike) when it's going fast and the front wheel's up, but I think we can fix that."
Seeling sold her Super-Comp bike to fund future instruction. She re turned to the school four more times, and worked with Bryce every spare moment. "I realized she could handle a motorcycle when we went scooting around on Suzuki GSX-Rs one day," Bryce says. "She ran off and hid-through the curves, straightaways, stopping, hanging off, wheelying, smoking the tire. I said, `This isn't normal.'"
Five months after Seeling started, Bryce put her on three-time NHRA Pro Stock Champion and ex-Star Rac ing teammate John Myers' spare bike. "I ran a 7.39, one hundredth of a sec ond off the world record," she says. "I couldn't believe it. I fell on the ground. I had brand-new leathers on, and George said, `Get off the ground, you're gonna mess up your leathers!' So we started training-and I mean we did some training."
Bryce has a reputation to uphold, he explains. "I couldn't just go out there with some cute, little girl who would rev it up, pop the clutch, and go smack into the other guy's lane and run over him."
Six months later, Seeling qualified fourth-quickest at her first NHRA Na tional. Three events later, she won her first final, setting a new world record in the process. Competitors com plained that Seeling had an unfair ad vantage ("Next thing you know, George will have a spider monkey rid ing a motorcycle," is one of the more memorable comments Bryce recalls).
"Because I'm the smallest rider, I have the heaviest motorcycle," says Seeling. "You get to put the weight where you want it, and that is an ad vantage."
Indeed, it is. Just ask six-time NHRA Pro Stock champ Dave Schultz. "If you have the luxury to hang a lot of weight low, far out in front of the bike, it makes the bike react as if it were longer," he says. "It's like lifting a sledge hammer from the end of the handle; everything happens slower. So her bike feels and acts like it's 4 inches longer."
Drag-racing icon Byron Hines concurs. "The ability to move 10 percent of your total vehicle weight around as ballast is a tremendous advantage," he says. "We can never get there because Matt (Hines, reigning NHRA ProStock champion and Byron's son) weighs 175 pounds. When we launch the bike, we have to hit it easier. We have to creep off the line and bring (the power) in slowly. Ninety-five percent of the time, our 60-foot times are probably slower."
"Her center of gravity is lower, so she accelerates a little faster," Bryce confirms. "Down the track, that trans lates into an aerodynamic advantage because she punches a smaller hole in the wind. Greg Cope, who is the en gine builder and tuner for Dave Schultz, told me he was on the return road at Denver, and he heard a bike screaming toward him. He turned around, and saw a Star bike coming down the track with nobody on it. That's Angelle. She just disappears on the motorcycle."
Byron Hines, who is known for out-tuning the competition, says if he were shopping for riders, he'd think small, too. "If I had to choose, I would look for the smallest person," he says. "It's too much of a perfor mance enhancement to overlook. It's like jockeys-you don't see any 220pounders out there."
Bryce argues that Seeling's size and lack of strength can also be a disad vantage. "Myers can let the bike go a couple of feet off-line and bring it back," he explains. "By the time that happens with Angelle, she's already into the wall. So she has trained her self to react more quickly."
Schultz, who won his first Pro Stock championship back in 1986,
says he's just glad to see the sport fi nally growing. "Anything that brings attention to the sport is a great thing," he says of Seeling's new found notoriety. "I'm glad Angelle came along because it probably cost Myers the championship in `96. That's why I was able to win it. Myers is probably the best rider out there. He's better than I am. The
team forgot that. But George was never able to market John."
Racing is a business, with marketing critical for corporate sponsors seeking exposure in return for support. Almost two years after her stunning debut, Seeling, who finished seventh in `96 and fifth in `97, has earned coveted sponsorship from Winston, becoming part of its "No Bull" campaign. As a result, she has the potential to become the world's best-known drag racer. She's formidable as a personality and a competitor, and she has the team to carry her. "She really brings out the best in me," Matt Hines says. "You've really got to work hard to stay ahead of a team like that. If she was riding someone else's bike, she probably wouldn't be going nearly as fast."
The elder Hines also speaks highly of Seeling. "She's very talented, real aggressive, vir tually fearless," he says. "No body wants to get beat by a girl, so they always give her grief and never any credit. The guys try harder against her and make mistakes. So far, we've been fortunate to maintain the performance ad vantage, which you need be cause it's psychological."
Seeling has yet to defeat Hines head-to-head, some thing Pro Stock fans are eager to see. "I think the thing that really motivates Matt and myself," Byron ex plains, "is that she's an up and-coming star; she's got real crowd appeal. Everybody loves to see a girl win, and the crowd gets behind it. And that really irks us. She definitely draws atten tion to the class, and that's positive. But Matt is getting the `Jeff Gordon Complex,' where he's booed when he comes to the track. He wins too much. She plays on that a little bit."
Seeling is not the first woman in drag racing. But she does bring per haps the most appealing combination yet of beauty, bravado and talent, and her fan base is swelling. "You can never forget that she's a woman," states multi-time drag racing champ and former record-holder Terry Vance. "That's really the issue. And anyone who criticizes that is nuts. That's what's wonderful about her. She's petite, young and beautiful, and yet she can go 7.20s on a Pro Stock bike. Am I glad I don't have to race her? Yeah, I am. I would hate to get beat. She has all of the right stuff. She's a PR dream."
Shown here in 1996, her first year of Pro Stock competition, the slender Seeling has forced many racers to re-think their chassis setups. "She taught us things we didn't know," says Schultz. "Or that we had too much tunnelvision to recognize."
And then, there are the fans, who love her. "She's awfully good with the fans," explains Winston VP Greg Lit tell. "I don't know if it's because she's a female or because she's attractive, but they seem to really like her. I have to be careful here, but she's `bigger' than other people."
Seeling is savvy about image too, something she brought from her pageant days. "A big reason I got the Winston sponsorship is because I'm a girl and it's marketable," she admits. "But I'm not doing it alone. I know how to ride the motorcycle, but I couldn't do it without Star Racing. The only thing that can top this is winning the championship."
Winning championships is a distinct possibility, though perhaps not this year. Due to his consistent perfor mances, Hines currently has a healthy points lead over second-place Seeling. "She's a little too volatile to win a championship when there are rock solid people out there like Hines, Myers and myself," Schultz says. "We're mentally tougher."
Bryce offers a counter view of his protege. "I understand what it takes to win a race on one of these motorcycles. Angelic's fierce. She's an ass-kicker."
Seeling puts it a bit more modestly: "I'm addicted to motorcycles. That's what I love about racing. It's motor cycles. I can't race with motocrosser Jeremy McGrath or roadracer Aaron Yates.. .1 can't keep up with those guys. That's why I love drag racing. It's something I can compete equally in, and I'm having a blast with it."
Not bad, for a girL
