Drag racer a driven survivor

To truly experience a drag race means much more than just to see it. [quote_box_right]Kim Bryant has had battles with both cancer and domestic abuse, surviving both.  Now, she wants to use her racing prowess to raise awareness. [email protected][/quote_box_right]

It is an all-out attack on the senses; the sweet smell of burnt rubber and high-octane fuel, the taste of overpriced corndogs, the anticipatory tingling of your nerve endings as the cars warm up at the starting line, and the sound, oh the sound of 900 horses in full gallop roaring down the quarter-mile track.

For Rancho El Dorado resident Kim Bryant, 50, drag racing has been a part of life for as long as she can remember.

One of Bryant’s earliest memories is of her father speeding down Central Avenue in Phoenix with her and her mother in the car. Though in retrospect this may be considered child endangerment, Bryant loved every minute of it and remembers screaming, “Go faster, Daddy, go faster!”

She instantly became enamored with the racing lifestyle.

Her first car was a modest six-cylinder ’68 Camaro, a 16th birthday present from her dad. Soon she traded up for a ’70 Camaro and its powerful V8 and started racing at the now-shuttered Beeline Drag Way west of Phoenix.

Being a woman involved in any motorsport was difficult in those days, and in some ways still is today. For Bryant, however, her idol, Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney, the first prominent female top-fuel drag racer, was all the motivation she needed to press on and ignore the sport’s prevalent gender bias.

“I was definitely discriminated against,” Bryant said. “I had to disguise myself as a guy.”

Having the name Kim made that easier. When announcers would call her name, they would often refer to her as

“him” or “he,” something she actually considers to be a blessing. To minimize attention, Bryant would tuck her hair under her hat or helmet and dress down and get dirty under the hood turning wrenches.

“I kind of like it because sometimes I intimidate some men,” Bryant said. “I’m quick on the light.”

She also recognizes it is about more than just gender. She believes it takes a certain type of person to want to race.

“This isn’t for everybody,” Bryant said. “This is for somebody who likes to jump out of airplanes, or fly them.”

She has been competing most of her life, both on and off the track.

Bryant has had battles with both cancer and domestic abuse, surviving both.  Now, she wants to use her racing prowess not just to promote equal participation in the sport, but to raise awareness for both cancer research and domestic abuse prevention.

Soon, Bryant hopes to start using her car to advertise and advocate for organizations like Relay for Life, and more locally, Against Abuse.

Though she’s run her racing business for 32 years, she often gets second-guessed when registering her car, a ’65 Chevelle, for a race or a licensing event, and is sometimes told to do a practice run. In the pits, some men have gone so far as to ask “What, are you going through a mid-life crisis or something?”

Bryant, formerly an insurance underwriter for 20 years, has owned Kim Bryant Racing since 1985. She leans on her son, Chris Kinney, to be her one-man pit crew. Kinney is well aware of the attitudes she sometimes faces.

“They didn’t think she would be able to go fast enough and hang with the big dogs,” Kinney said, “just because she was a woman.”

[quote_left]”If I can show some poor woman how not to get stuck on the side of the road, that’s cool.”[/quote_left]Kinney described how recently his mother went up for her Division 7 license at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park, and despite presenting all the necessary information the officials turned to him and asked the same questions because, as he put it, “they assumed she didn’t truly know what she was talking about.”

Kinney stands by her side ensuring the car runs true and his mother gets to live her dream.

“It’s been her lifelong dream,” Kinney said. “Nothing makes me happier than seeing her getting to do what she loves to do.”

With the help of her son, Bryant is undeterred by the bias on the track. But there is a bias that exists off the track, too.

She explained how a simple trip to a mechanic can result in an overcharge simply because she is a woman, or how, when buying a new car, sales associates treat her differently by selling her on the aesthetics and “foo-foo” characteristics of the car.

That is why, among her causes, she wants to pass along her automotive knowledge.

“I like to help, I want to help,” Bryant said. “If I can help one person, that’s cool. If I can show some poor woman how not to get stuck on the side of the road, that’s cool.”

[email protected]

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This story appears in the February issue of InMaricopa.