Determined Hillary Will Focused On Success In NHRA

By Sheena E. Baker
Production Editor

Standing at five feet, four inches tall with the petite frame of a gymnast, no one would guess that Hillary Will possesses more drive and determination than her male competitors. It’s that determination that carried her through gymnastics as a child and diving in college, toward graduating magna cum laude with an economics degree and ultimately to becoming the fastest woman in the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series.
At 28, Will is on the cusp of completing her third and undoubtedly her best season in NHRA Top Fuel competition. In her 55th start at Heartland Park Topeka (Kan.) in June, she defeated No. 1 qualifier Larry Dixon to become the 11th woman to capture a professional victory and only the seventh to do so in Top Fuel. She qualified for the six-race Countdown to 1 for the first time and has reached the final round three times this season, including at the Virginia NHRA Nationals Oct. 12 where she climbed to a career-best second in points with two events to go.
For Will, a native of Fortuna, Calif., her interest in drag racing started as a child when she attended Samoa Drag Strip with her father, Steve. It was there that Will first cut her teeth, taking her 1973 Dodge Challenger down the track as a teen.
“I took it out to the track, put the pedal to the floor and I was lucky if it got me home after that,” she laughs. “A day at the race track was fun, and even just driving that, to have my win light come on, I just got hooked on the sport.”

Hillary Will (Frank Smith Photo)

HILLARY WILL FILE Age: 28 Hometown: Fortuna, Calif. Residence: Ypsilanti, Mich. Car: KB Racing Top Fuel dragster Team owner: Ken Black Crew chief: Jim Oberhofer Best elapsed time: 4.502 seconds Best speed: 334.65 miles per hour, making her the fastest woman in NHRA NHRA stats: Scored first NHRA Top Fuel win in June at Heartland Park Topeka (Kan.); currently sits second in Top Fuel standings; qualified for the Countdown to 1 for the first time in her career; has four final-round appearances, including three this season; made her Top Fuel debut at Pomona in 2006; won her first national event in Top Alcohol Dragster at Las Vegas in 2005. Other notables: Graduated magna cum laude with a degree in economics from Wheaton (Mass.) College in 2002; was a gymnast as a child and a springboard diver in college; participated in a 10-day goodwill tour of Afghanistan earlier this year and will travel to Iraq in December for a second goodwill tour; appeared on NBC’s “Identity” in 2006.

But it wasn’t straight into the lifestyle of a full-time racer for Will. First came the pursuit of an economics degree at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., because Will “thought I was going to have to make a lot of money to support my hobby.”
Though it was her fascination with economics that carried her toward her degree, it was Will’s competitive nature — and her work ethic of doing everything “100 percent” — that helped her achieve the magna cum laude distinction in a male-dominated major.
“I would be in study groups where I’d be the only woman and it really motivated me because I wanted to get higher test scores than any of the guys,” Will says. “Thankfully, I got good grades just because I wanted to beat the boys.”
After graduation, Will took a job as a financial analyst and raced her family’s Super Comp dragster on the weekends. It was then that she met Bucky Austin, a multi-time Funny Car champion and perennial national Funny Car competitor. When Will’s family-run operation turned to Top Alcohol dragsters, Austin became a guiding hand, both mentoring the aspiring racer and building the team’s engines, helping the group have one of the fastest cars in the country.
“After every run, he would come back and analyze everything,” Will says of Austin’s advice. “Every time, the car would’ve run better had I done something. It helped me be better. It was tough and at the time, it was really hard, but looking back, I’m thankful for everything he taught me.”
“I think the biggest thing I taught her was to stick with it, technique, not to let people get you rattled and that they’re more scared than you are,” Austin recalls. “She’s very comfortable and very intelligent. She takes grasp of things that you tell her and she continues to work at it to do her homework to get her work done.”
One place Will was not comfortable was in her day job. While her body was in her cubicle, her mind was at the track. After a little more than two years, Will made a drastic change.
“I just left that job. I sold everything in my house, and I gave up all my benefits, and I was determined to make it as a racer, take a chance, risk it all. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, I’ll eventually recover,” Will laughs. “So, I basically lived on credit card debit for a couple months.”
Luckily for the cash-strapped Will, unemployment didn’t last long. Within a few months, she received what she describes as “the phone call everyone dreams of” from Las Vegas businessman Ken Black, who was adding a NHRA Top Fuel team managed by Kalitta Motorsports to his already successful Pro Stock tandem of Greg Anderson and Jason Line.
Jim Oberhofer, longtime Kalitta Motorsports employee and crew chief on Will’s dragster, says although everyone appreciated her straightforward, honest personality, part of Black’s initial decision to hire Will was based on her gender.
“We thought it would be easier to market her, to be honest, and to get a different type of sponsor to bring into the NHRA,” Oberhofer says. “But once we got her here, she’s just like one of the guys. We don’t even really think of her as a female; we just think of her as our driver. She just goes out and does the best she can. We don’t look at it like we’ve got to treat this car differently because she’s a girl.”
The transition from Top Alcohol Dragster to NHRA’s professional ranks was a steep one for Will, who made her Top Fuel debut at Pomona, Calif., in February 2006.
“It was hard at first, and she put a lot of it on herself. She’s a perfectionist at everything she does,” Oberhofer says. “She tried every time to be perfect, and she wasn’t having any fun driving the car. We kept telling her, ‘Hillary, you’ve got to have fun driving these cars. You make mistakes because you try so hard.’”
Part of the problem was the criticism she received from other competitors.
“It affected me. I hate to admit it,” Will says. “The criticism from other drivers affected my confidence, which then affected my driving, but I learned not to listen, not to let that stuff get to me. I will — everyone will their whole lives — have naysayers and people who say you can’t do it and people who criticize. It’s just something you have to learn to deal with and look inside yourself. I know that this is what I really want to do, so it really doesn’t matter what they say.”
That type of attitude has helped Will better her on-track performance this season, improving on sixth- and 13th-place finishes in class standings in 2006 and 2007. Both she and Jim “O” point to her 10-day goodwill tour of Afghanistan in February as a turning point and one Will says changed her life.
“I saw people who were fighting for their lives. I met people who were dodging bullets. They’re fighting for their lives, and they were able to stay calm and cool and relaxed and just did their jobs,” she says. “And it was like, ‘Well, why can’t I do that? I’m not in a war. I can go to a race and have fun and relax and enjoy it, and that’s when I do better.’”
Seven races later, Will fought her way into the winner’s circle at Heartland Park Topeka. But just as Will and her KB Racing teammates were enjoying the long-sought fruits of their labor, their world came crashing down with the death of teammate Scott Kalitta in a Funny Car crash in Englishtown, N.J., in June.
“He was like my big brother,” Will says of the two-time Top Fuel titlist. “I liked sitting in his Top Fuel car. He wrote me notes on how to do the burnout, how to do the warm-up procedure, and I still have those. He kind of guided me along throughout my career.
“Now I want to win for him and show what a great driver I can be because of what he taught me.”
Despite the loss of her mentor, Will has soldiered on, securing her place in this season’s Countdown to 1 and fighting to second in the standings. Just like in college, Will is still trying to surpass the men as the only woman in the Top Fuel class.
“So many things are based on the way a female looks if you look at success,” she says. “With us, we’ve got our helmet and our firesuit on. It doesn’t matter how we look, it doesn’t matter what our gender is. When the race starts, we’re no different. We go up there and we command that race car and it doesn’t matter what we look like.
“Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I can’t drive a race car, drive it well and win. I hope that younger girls can see that, too, and maybe that’ll inspire them to race or maybe it’ll inspire them do typically male-dominated things… and know that they can succeed, too.”
Will has come a long way from racing her Dodge Challenger at Samoa Drag Strip. Her future, though, however promising, is uncertain. Without funding for next season, the KB Racing team may scale back its operations to only compete in a handful of events. But looking ahead, Will is optimistic.
“I want to win races. I want to win championships. I know my team’s capable of that. I want to secure a sponsor this year, and I want to keep them for 20 years,” she says with conviction. “Twenty-five years from now, I want to be sitting in a room with these sponsors and have them say, ‘We’re so glad we signed on with you 25 years ago. We’ve gotten so much exposure. We have trophies surrounding us and championship rings on our fingers.’”