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“GO MOM” At Sebring, Mary Katharine’s first World Challenge race, her five daughters drew a poster – it said “Go Mom,” and each of them added something to it. The girls held it up every lap. Sebring represented dreams fulfilled after a life with more than her fair share of challenges. Married to her high school sweetheart at 19, Katharine and her husband moved to Arkansas to grow cotton. While racing may have seemed a distant dream, driving, and occasionally repairing, their tractor gave her a sensitivity to and understanding of mechanical things that eventually translated into an ability to drive a racecar with “mechanical sympathy.” Katharine always wanted to be a racecar driver. She played with matchbox cars instead of Barbies when she was little. Still, she describes herself as a “girly-girl, but without the high maintenance.” Any thought of being a race driver was put aside with marriage, cotton farming, and a subsequent move to Florida to have and raise five daughters – Nancy, 13; Maggie, 12; Lane, 10; Mia, 6; and Helen, 5. As a child, Katharine loved to cook and bake. By age eleven, she was catering parties for friends of her parents, with her mother driving her to the store and to the parties. With a growing family, she wanted to find a job with flexible hours, so she attended the Florida Culinary Institute and became an executive pastry chef at the Country Club of Florida, a very supportive employer. After seventeen years, the marriage disintegrated, and Katharine decided it was time to do something very different to take her mind off her new challenges. Still interested in racing, she found the Justin Bell GT Motorsports Experience only 20 minutes from her house. It was therapy. “Racing took me away from all my worries, fears, and sadness. The adrenaline consumed me, and I couldn’t wallow in self pity when I was driving.” She got her license in January 2003, and her first races were in an RX-7, including a twelve-hour at Homestead. But it wasn’t a reliable racer, and a friend recommended Spec Miata because of its competitiveness. She rented a Miata and ran about ten races a year. Last year, when she got her own car, she raced 20 weekends – one of the advantages of living in south Florida. She scored a number of top five finishes in this very competitive class and began looking for a step up. It looked like her step up would come in a Subaru running with Irish Mike’s (Flynn) Racing, but that car wasn’t ready. Katharine then approached Chris Tindol of Tindol Motorsports in Charlotte, NC, and he had a car for her. She flew to Charlotte, where she was fitted in a Mazda Protégé. The Protégé, while not as quick as the Mazda 6, was affordable. Driving the Protégé, though, would be a challenge for a 5’4” 125 pound woman, since it lacked the power steering, power brakes, and sequential shifter of the 6. Katharine’s response was to sign up for kickboxing classes four days a week and to start weight training. A runner, Katharine is in good shape, but building upper body strength has been critical to “manhandling” the Protégé, a car one of the team members called “vintage World Challenge.” Katharine was about to become the only woman racing in World Challenge, and she was nervous about how she would be received. She needn’t have worried. Tindol Motorsports teammates and competitors have welcomed her. She described her feelings at her first race at Sebring this year: “(Before) the start of the race, parked on the front straight beside my flag ‘girl’ (her brother, EP Alfa Romeo racer Mike Cudahy), listening to the driver introductions, I felt I must be dreaming. For years I had watched this scene from the front of my television screen. Could this really be happening to me? Am I really the driver strapped into this World Challenge Protégé? No Way!” Actually, way! She qualified 29th and finished 16th, missing the “Hard Charger Award” by one lap. She did that again at St. Pete, qualifying 30th and finishing 17th. She struggled with handling problems at Mid-Ohio and finished 23rd after qualifying 30th again. Katharine sits second in rookie points and 15th in the championship; a good start for anyone racing in this very competitive series. Katharine is looking for sponsorship so she can move up to one of Tindol Motorsports Mazda 6s next season but is happy to be racing a Protégé this year. “I am really happy to be in a Mazda, because of their support for all levels or racing – from amateur to pro.” Her enthusiasm is obvious, and she shares it with fans. She is always available to fans for autographs and to answer questions. At St. Pete, after qualifying, “ a little boy came over to our trailer, glued to his father’s leg. His father said, ‘Look, this is the lady that races this car. Can you say hi to her?’ Not a word. His father told me that the boy’s name was Kyle. I said, ‘Kyle, would you like to sit in the racecar?’ He let go of his father, and I helped him into the car. He held the wheel, pretending to steer. After a minute or so, he father said, ‘Come on, Kyle, it’s time to go.’ As I watched him go, he turned around, smiled at me, and gave me a little wave. That’s as much of what this is all about as the racing itself.” Katharine is “passionate to the extreme in everything I do.” That shows in her commitment to juggle kids, career, and racing. She also says, “I’m about the luckiest person on the planet.” But she has made her own luck; watch for her at the races and look for the poster. “Go Mom!” - J. Michael Hemsley
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