PHOTOS: ROB PEARSON

Unlike many others, Taylor didn’ t get her start in the Junior Dragster leagues. Instead, when she was about eight years old, she started crew chiefing for her father, Dennis, who built cars and had been involved in the sport as long as she could remember. Her mother, Debbie, had a’ 68 Chevy Camaro that Taylor loved, and, when she turned 14, her parents gifted to her.

Although the family intended to keep the car as a daily driver, when Taylor’ s father asked if she wanted to try HOT ROD Drag Week, she jumped at the chance. She competed for the first time in the 2013 iteration of the grueling 5-day event

as the youngest participant ever, and had just one weekend to learn to drive and tune as the recently-turned-16-yearold“ had never been down a drag strip at that point.” For engine management, Taylor had chosen a Holley system. Problem was, neither she nor her father knew how to tune it. Undeterred, this enterprising young woman started reading, created her first base tune, and was off and running.“ It wasn’ t anywhere close to perfect, but it worked, and I ran my tune all through my first Drag Week.” With her mother as a co-pilot, Taylor made as many passes as possible to gain seat time, and finished out the Daily Driver category with a 12.0936-second average.

After, Taylor went on to receive her Holley EFI certification. The car“ quickly snowballed”, and what started as a 12-second Camaro that Taylor drove to high school each day began its transition into the eight-second“ Badmaro” she competes with now. The original plan was to run a naturally aspirated LS1 engine, but that was scrapped in favor of a set of twin 69mm Borg Warner turbochargers boosting a 6.0L engine backed by a stock 4L80 transmission.

Determined to go faster, she returned to HOT ROD Drag Week in 2014 to run in“ Street Race Small Block – Power Adder” where a string of nine-second passes yielded a 9.5182-second average and ranked her seventh. It wasn’ t

November 2016

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