Three-time NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle champion Angelle Sampey, drag racing’s most successful woman with 46 victories, earned the 16th and final starting position Friday for Saturday’s eliminations in her Top Alcohol Dragster debut at the Texas FallNationals.
She’ll meet No. 1 qualifier Mike Coughlin in the first round, but she said she isn’t disappointed that she didn’t qualify higher.
“My main goal was to become comfortable and learn as much as I can, and I already am 100% comfortable, and I’m learning still,” Sampey said. “In the car, I took it one step at a time. I mean literally from them starting the car to releasing the brake and then pushing me through one step at a time.”
“A lot of times, I start worrying about what I got to do three steps from now. The whole beauty is there’s no expectation. That’s the best part. I’m enjoying it. I can’t wait to do it again.”
That’s quite a change from her original opinion.
Sampey drives for Antron Brown’s AB Motorsports Accelerate program. And when he suggested she try racing on four wheels, she initially resisted: “I told him, ‘I have no desire whatsoever to drive a car. I love motorcycles.’ And he said, what is there left for you to do in the bike class? He said, ‘Why don’t you consider driving a car?’ And I was like, ‘I just don’t want to.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you want to?’ And I said, ‘Because I’m afraid of it.’ He said, ‘What are you afraid of?’ I’m like, ‘Crashing, dying, I don’t know. I’m afraid of it.’ He’s like, ‘Well, let me put it to you this way: When’s the last time you’ve seen somebody fall off of an A/Fuel dragster?’
“So I was like, ‘OK. I’ll try it, whatever. He kept pushing and pushing and pushing until finally I said, ‘OK, I’ll try it.’ And then the first test session, I was petrified, literally knees shaking in the car. I mean, I was petrified,” Sampey said. “It took the first two runs to finally start calming the shakes. And the third run, we were sitting there waiting to go, and he’s bending over, talking to me in the car, saying, ‘You feeling OK? You ready? You excited?’ And I literally wanted to punch him in his face and say, ‘You need to get away from me right now, because I can’t even believe I’m doing this.’ But it just took that first day. We did four runs that day, and after the fourth run, I was like, ‘Oh my God – I love this.”
She said she isn’t sure whether she can defeat Coughlin, who is driving the Samsel family-owned dragster that, ironically enough, she will be racing at Las Vegas in two weeks. “I’m kind of sad that I know what my chances are tomorrow and I may only get one run, but it’s OK,” she said. “I get to do it again.
“I went from literally saying, ‘Oh my God. I got to do this again’ to ‘Oh my God, I can’t wait to do this again,” Sampey said.
She said she “got in that car for testing and then for qualifying especially, I have never been so excited to get on the racetrack ever in my whole career. I have been a nervous wreck for 26 years and it’s not until the bike starts that I can start to calm down and get myself out of that. But usually I wake up in the morning and I am nervous and my stomach’s turning and I’m like, because all I can think about is how bad I want to win and don’t screw this up.
“And today,” Sampey said, “I woke up two hours earlier than I wanted to, and I was so excited to get to the racetrack and couldn’t wait to get in the car. And when I got in the car today, there were no nerves. It was all happy, all fun. I am so happy to be here. I haven’t felt that in a long time.”
Contributing Editor
Susan Wade has lived in the Seattle area for 40 years, but motorsports is in the Indianapolis native’s DNA. She has emerged as one of the leading drag-racing writers with nearly 30 seasons at the racetrack, focusing on the human-interest angle. She was the first non-NASCAR recipient of the prestigious Russ Catlin Award and has covered the sport for the Chicago Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger, and Seattle Times. She has contributed to Autoweek as a freelance writer since 2016.
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