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As the sunlight began to fade behind the grandstands Friday at the Silver Dollar Speedway, the bright pink and yellow pure stock car of Chico State student Heather Bartlett roared to life.
Her manicured nails hidden behind protective gloves, her friendly smile shielded by her racing helmet, Bartlett pressed her pink shoe-laced boot to the accelerator and revved her Chevrolet small-block racing engine as she prepared to take the track.
"I'm an adrenaline junkie," Bartlett said. "That is definitely what fuels it."
In a sport dominated by men, Bartlett, in her first season at Silver Dollar Speedway, is becoming the queen among her male competitors on the quarter-mile dirt track. She leads the points standings in pure stock and brought home her first victory in the circuit April 20.
"She's got the horsepower, plus she knows how to drive," fellow pure stock competitor Mike Slightom said before Friday's race.
Looking to win back-to-back races, Bartlett started eighth in a 12-car field in Friday's pure stock feature event. The 20-year-old psychology major powered her way through the competition, using strong restarts after caution laps and a visible smoothness on the track to take the checkered flag.
After taking a quick victory lap with the pink paint job of her
No. 99 car glistening under the speedway's lights, Bartlett exited her car in the pit area, looking more than content with her performance.
"That's two in-a-row," she said, a smile beaming across her face. "They weren't lying when they said the first win was the hardest one."
In four races, Bartlett has had two victories, one second-place and one third-place finish. Her lead in the standings is now a comfortable 15 points more than her biggest on-track rival, Jeff Olschowka, last year's champion and Bartlett's ex-boyfriend.
"We're really good friends," Bartlett said. "I don't really look at him like an ex-boyfriend."
The good part is that the pair can "race each other clean," Bartlett said.
Having raced with Bartlett in mini stocks when the pair were younger, Olschowka acknowledged his friendship with Bartlett and complimented her driving skill.
"She's smooth and steady on the track, not a rough driver at all," he said.
Olschowka also used to copy the colors of Bartlett's racecars, until this year, she said.
In a sea of dust kicked up by tires and cars adorning earth tone colors, Bartlett's car is impossible to miss. The words "pretty in pink" line the hood, and stars on the roof offset the yellow flames, which accompany the glittery gloss-pink finish of the car.
"I'm proud I'm a girl doing a man's sport, and pink was fitting," Bartlett said.
If the colors weren't enough to set her car apart from the competition, Bartlett brings a certain companion along for every lap in her car.
"There's a NASCAR Edition Barbie on the right side on the down post," Bartlett said. "A lot of little girls love it."
While Bartlett is a rookie at Silver Dollar Speedway, racing is nothing new to her, she said. Bartlett grew up in racing, watching her father Jerry Bartlett, a four-time street stock champion at Marysville Raceway Park.
"I lived at the racetrack," she said. "There wasn't ever a question that I wouldn't do it."
Starting with go-carts at 13, Bartlett quickly graduated to mini stock cars, where she became Orland Raceway's youngest and only female champion in the series, she said. After taking the mini stock championship twice in her career at Orland, Bartlett made the transition to pure stocks, where she has dominated.
The transition from a mini stock car, which uses a four-cylinder engine, to an eight-cylinder pure stock car is usually not easy, but it was for her, Jerry Bartlett said.
"It was like she'd been in it forever," he said.
Taking a coaching role, Jerry and Lisa Bartlett, who reside in Yuba City, help their daughter take home victories. Bartlett's mom videotapes each lap while she is on the track, and her dad, positioning himself by turn three, will give hand signals to her while she is racing.
While Jerry Bartlett is a coach to his daughter on Fridays, he becomes her rival on Saturdays, as both father and daughter race in the street stock class at Marysville Raceway Park.
Bartlett's street stock car is a different car with more horsepower than the one she uses at Silver Dollar Speedway, but the paint job is nearly identical, Jerry Bartlett said.
"Sit them side by side, and we have a hard time telling them apart," he added.
Heather has not taken a win from her father yet this season, but it is something she is looking forward to, she said.
"My goal is to beat him in one race fair and clean," she said. "Not because he let me have it but because I was better that night."
A junior, Bartlett plans to graduate next year. She hopes to eventually get her foot in the door and make racing her career, she said. Bartlett wants to be a positive influence and tell people, especially young girls, that anything is possible.
"Two weeks ago we were getting ready to leave, and a little girl knocked on the door and wanted me to sign her flag," Bartlett said. "There's nothing better than that."
Ryan Klocke can be reached at rklocke@theorion.com
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