Racer Girl

Words: Darren Jacobs

Times change. Back in the day, a woman behind the wheel of a racecar was a rarity on par with a polar bear in the Sahara. The few brave females who ventured out to the neighborhood quarter-mile often endured icy stares and verbal potshots from their male competitors.

Fast forward to the present day, in the era of female motorsports superstars such as Danica Patrick and Ashley Force Hood. A woman racer such as Mopar®-powered sportsman driver Kara Bowman is a much more common sight. She stands about the size of a pixie, and will put you in her rear-view mirror if you meet her on the strip.

“Everybody gives me a double take because of how short I am and also because of how young I look,” said Kara. “I have to use pillows when I race [to reach the pedals], one below me and one behind me. That always gets second looks.”

Bowman, 28, hailing from Pittsburgh, Pa., still hears a rare condescending comment on occasion when she pulls up to the staging lanes in her 1967 Dodge Coronet 440. She deals with the insults not with words, but with her driving.

“When I first started racing I got a lot of grief,” said Bowman. “I would hear, ‘Oh, you’re racing a girl, you’ve got it, no problem.’ Then I would mop ‘em up.”

Bowman’s passion was nurtured by her family, a true blue Mopar clan. Kara’s father, Tim Bowman, has raced Mopars his entire life, and took Kara to her first race when she was six months old.

“I’ve raced my whole life,” said Tim, 54, who won the ET bracket racer class at the 2003 World Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio. “My kids say it’s all they’ve ever been around. I’m pretty much born and bred Mopar. My father, my grandfather—that’s all we’ve ever owned. I expect my children, when I’m in the ground, they’ll still be racing cars. That’s their passion. And they’ll be in Mopar cars.”

Kara was bitten by the racing bug at an early age, relishing her family’s trips to the strip.

“The best part was getting ready to go to the racetrack,” recalled Kara. “My dad would get his car out and I would get to sit in the passenger seat while he warmed it up. And then we would have to clean everything, so everything would be spotless.

“I was always in the garage with my dad. That’s all I did everyday after school was hang out with him in his shop.”

“She’s very energetic and she works very hard at it,” said Tim of Kara’s involvement in racing. “She has a lot of knowledge because she worked with me in the shop a lot. When she would come to the track when she was young, she would help me work on the car.”

Karen Bowman, Kara’s mother, who Kara refers to as her “pep rally and support system at the track and supplier of mmm good racetrack spaghetti sauce,” also backed her daughter’s quarter-mile dreams. “She thought it was pretty cool that I was into racing,” said Kara.

Kara began competing just a few months after turning 16, in a 1989 Chrysler New Yorker—unbeknownst to her father.

“I couldn’t wait until I could race,” Kara said. “I didn’t tell my dad I was racing, because I wasn’t allowed to race that car. The New Yorker was my daily driver, but I raced it anyway.”

As a teen, Kara started out in the high school class at what was then Keystone Raceway (now called Pittsburgh Raceway). She impressively place second in her class despite beginning the series after the season had begun, and earned Rookie of the Year honors.

Kara’s high school friends were accepting of her pursuit of racing, perhaps a reflection of the changing attitudes of society towards women racers.

“Most of my girlfriends were actually pretty cool about it,” said Kara. “I was usually the driver wherever we went, and they would come to me every time something was wrong with their cars. On countless nights I changed a friend’s oil, or serpentine belt, or someone’s brakes. I think they liked that they had a friend who knew something about cars.”

Tim Bowman bought back a 1973 Dodge Charger with a 318 two-barrel engine he had once owned, and promptly installed Kara behind the wheel. She proceeded to win consecutive high-school championships in the Charger.

After racing the Charger for a number of years, Kara’s hankering for more speed pushed her to look for a quicker ride. She purchased a 1964 Plymouth Fury on eBay, a “twin” of the car her father races. A perfectionist, Kara has made a project of turning the Fury into the perfect Max Wedge clone car.

To satisfy her racing thirst while the Fury was made race ready, Kara and her boyfriend, Kevin Smith (the couple met when both were employed at Monroeville Dodge in Pennsylvania), bought a Dodge Coronet 440. Tim Bowman supplied the motor from his engine shop, Bowman Performance, based in Export, Pa., about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Kara may consider the Coronet a “fill-in” car for her Fury, but it has performed like anything but. She raced the car in the Nostalgia Super Stock class at the Mopar Nationals in Columbus, Ohio, in August 2009, winning the class run-offs. Kara also recorded a best run of an 11.08-second elapsed time at 122.50 mph later in the year at the Chrysler Classic in Norwalk, Ohio.

Racing weekends are a family affair with the Bowmans. Kara’s brother, Nick, 22, captured the Sportsman class win at the Chrysler Classic in his 1970 Duster. Her uncle, Bruce Bowman, scored a Pro class runner-up finish at the event, and boyfriend Kevin also competes. And all drive Mopars.

“We’re a tight knit family,” said Kara. “We spend a minimum of two weekends at the track per month. My uncle, my cousins, everybody owns Chryslers.”

Kara races in the same class as her father, but has yet to meet him on the starting line. Asked if she could take the Bowman clan patriarch, Kara remarked, “I don’t know. He might try and mop me up.” She has battled her brother, coming out on the losing end. “I wanted to beat him so bad I red-lighted.”

According to Kara, increased numbers of twenty-something racers like herself and her brother, including a good of amount of women, are turning out at the drag strip. “More and more I’m seeing the younger crowd, in their early 20s, out racing,” she observed. “I can only hope it continues and the sport keeps growing and getting better.”

Growing up, Kara emulated and was particularly encouraged by two legendary Mopar-powered female racers.

“Shirley Muldowney was a role model,” said Kara. “Not only did she have an impact on drag racing, but she awakened a lot of women to see what they could do in the sport. Then there’s Judy Lilly, who raced all the Mopar cars, and raced stick shift cars to boot. Those are two women who were very inspiring to me.”

Now, it’s Kara’s turn to serve as a role model.

“I get a lot of thumbs-up from women,” she said. “I think more women race because times have changed and it’s a little more accepted. Racing has shaped who I am today and how I look at things. A lot of my attitude comes from racing. Times get tough, times get rough, but you suck it up and you go have fun.

“You have to have that outlook in life. You can win a race, and then lose the next race first round. I don’t know what else I would be doing if I didn’t have racing. I see myself continuing to race in the future. That will never go away.”