Late Model ROY Leader At Canaan Ready For Busy Second Half
Once the helmet is on and the seat belts are buckled up, nobody notices that the driver of the No. 9x Chevrolet is a teenaged girl. What they do notice is that this rising star on the New England Late Model scene can wheel a race car.
Emily Packard of East Montpelier, Vt., is just 15 years old – but already she’s been waiting for years for her chance to prove she belongs.
After roughly half a season of NASCAR Whelen All-American Series competition at Canaan Fair Speedway in Canaan, N.H., she’s doing her best to do that. She sits fifth in the overall Late Model standings at the track, with four podium finishes including a career-best finish of second last month. Packard is the track’s leading Rookie of the Year candidate and is fifth in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series New Hampshire Rookie of the Year race with seven Top-10 finishes in 10 starts this season.
“This season’s gone great so far,” said Packard, who spent three seasons driving in the Allison Legacy Series before jumping to full-sized stock cars for 2012. “We’ve learned a lot with the Late Model. We’ve had a pretty good season so far. If I would have had to guess, I wouldn’t have thought we would have had a Top-2 or Top-3 finish already.
“I think our team is getting our program together and getting everything figured out. We’ve had some great races, and I’ve learned a lot about the cars handling-wise. We’ve brought the car back in a few piles, but I think that just made me a better driver.
“We might be at a point now to go and get some wins. It’s just a matter of everything falling our way.”
While the No. 9x Northstar Fireworks/Fecteau Homes/VT Shifter Karts/GossCars.com Chevrolet is inching closer toward Victory Lane, Packard did record a historic first win at Thunder Road International Speedbowl on July 5. She won both ends of a Street Stock event at the finicky quarter-mile – both the heat race and the 25-lap feature – to become the first woman since Renee Beede in 2001 to win a race in the division.
She’s using the Street Stock to help get valuable seat time at the hub of the ACT Late Model Tour.
“I think the biggest benefit to racing the Street Stock is that I’m learning to rely more on myself versus relying just on the team,” Packard said. “I’m learning how to drive an ill-handling car versus having to have a car that’s right on the money. With a Street Stock, those things are always ill-handling. You really can’t get them perfect.”
Packard started racing when she was 9 years old, forced to compete in an A-division in the go-kart ranks at Rocky Ridge against mostly 12- and 13-year-old boys. From there, she jumped to the Allison Legacy Series featuring three-quarter scale Sprint Cup Series cars. She spent three years there, too, working with 2010 Thunder Road champion Nick Sweet as a driver coach.
Sweet’s tutelage has been a boost for both Packard’s performance – and her confidence.
“Nick has been awesome,” she said. “He’s helped me since first year I hopped into my Legacy car. He’s always great to work with. He has a great personality, and the best part for me is that he knows what it’s like to drive and what it’s like to be an ill-handling car and what you have to do behind the wheel.”
Packard has learned that there is some additional attention with being a woman in a male-dominated sport. But she also said that her long-term goal is to get people to stop thinking of her as a “girl” and start thinking of her as a “race car driver.”
“It really isn’t a big factor to me. I’m just another driver and with a helmet on, you can’t tell the difference,” she said. “In one of my first races in the Legacy Series, somebody put me in the wall. That was a big reality check for me – there’s always been somebody that doesn’t want me to beat them, but that’s part of racing no matter who you are.
“I want to go as far as I can in this sport. It’s pretty much for me about going wherever there are opportunities I can take. My goal is to become best I can be at this.”