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| www.kellywilliamsracing.com
www.kellywilliams.ca
or www.kellysgarage.ca
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Profile
Birth Date:: August 19.1971
Birth Place": Vald'or, Quebec
fResidence: Caldeon,Ontario
On April 29, 1994, Kelly Williams put her name
in the record books as she became the first female
driver to capture a win in the 14-year history of
CASCAR racing. In her rookie season in Canada's top
stock car series, Williams was victorious in a
qualifying heat race at Delaware Speedway Park.
Williams' career has been full of milestones and
it didn't take the Caledon, Ontario resident long
to start making a name for herself. In both 1989
and 1990, she won Most Improved Driver honors in
the Challenger division at Flamboro Speedway. She
also earned recognition with her first career race
victory, which came at the Canadian National
Exhibition.
Williams switched from Flamboro to the faster
Mosport International Speedway in 1992. She also
made her debut in the Challenge Cup Series, a
province-wide Challenger points championship.
The 1993 season saw Williams make her
breakthrough as one of Ontario's top drivers. She
was a winner no fewer than eight times, and
finished fourth in the Goodyear Challenge Cup
Series and seventh in the Mosport track
championship. She was also voted Most Popular
Driver in the Challenge Cup Series.
In 1994, Williams took another step up the
racing ladder by competing in the CASCAR Late Model
Series, the most prestigious arena for stock car
racing in Canada.
The switch to the more competitive CASCAR series
was not an easy one for Williams, who secured
lucrative sponsorship from General Motors and
Snap-On Tools. But she displayed her typical
determination as she slowly came to grips with her
new challenge. She won a heat race at Delaware
Speedway park on April 29, leading from start to
finish.
Williams built on her CASCAR experience in 1995.
She scored a top feature finish of eighth at Cayuga
Speedway. She also made great strides in her
qualifying performances, and by the end of the year
was a regular top 15 performer in the difficult
single car time sessions.
In 1995 she also broadened her racing experience
by taking part in two driving schools. One helped
her improve her road racing skills while the other,
based at the famed Charlotte Motor Speedway in
North Carolina, introduced her to the challenges of
high speed stock car racing.
Williams developed into a much more consistent
driver in 1996 and enjoyed the best year of her
short CASCAR career. She scored six top 12 finishes
over the course of the CASCAR season with a top
result of seventh at Cayuga.
The 1997 season opened up superbly for Williams.
She acquired sponsorship from natural resources
company Canmine and Inside Track motorsport News.
She started the year with an eighth-place finish at
Delaware but bad luck intervened after that and she
was able to manage only one other top 10 finish.
Nevertheless, she placed 15th in the Cascar
National standings.
Last year Williams continued her rise into the
upper echelon of Cascar competition. She started
the year with a career high fourth place finish at
Delaware Speedway Park and in the final race of the
season at New Brunswick International Speedway she
set the race's fastest lap. In between those
performances Williams could often be found near the
front of the pack, and led a CASCAR feature race
for the first time in her career at Cayuga
Speedway.
In August General Motors of Canada, which had
supported Williams from the start of her CASCAR
career, announced it was withdrawing from motor
racing. She quickly bounced back from this setback,
however, and completed a deal to race for Canadian
Auction Group - Canada's largest auto auction - in
1999. She raced a Ford Taurus in CAG's red and
black colours rather than the white Pontiac Grand
Prix race fans have become familiar with.
While Williams has made a steady rise up the
stock car racing ladder she has excelled in other
areas of the motorsports field as well. She has
spent seven years with the CART Pace Car Team,
where her natural driving skill and congenial
manner have been allowed to flourish. In her role
with the squad, she travels around the world with
FedEx CART Championship Series, offering VIP tours
of the various CART circuits in one of the pace car
team's dynamic sports cars or acting as the
official pace car driver for one of the series
events.
Her position with the team takes her halfway
around the world to Australia and Japan, and in
1998 and 1999 she was the official pace car driver
at Toronto's Molson Indy.
Williams has also kept herself extremely busy
away from the racetrack. She fills her off-season
with supply teaching, public speaking appearances,
school visits and trade or consumer show
participation. She is also a spokesperson for Big
Brothers and Big Sisters of Canada.
In more ways than one, Kelly Wiliiams is an
athlete on the move.
Snippets
News
Kick some Butt? Maybe??????
Recently, there has been a lot of talk that NASCAR
may buy CASCAR and call it NASCAR Canada. If and
when this happens, racing in Canada is going to get
a major boost and I’m ready to go back and
kick some butt! I think the timing is right to try
and get back into the CASCAR Series and there will
be more opportunities with NASCAR possibly getting
involved. Check back often as there might be an
announcement soon! www.cascar.ca
Canada’s Worst Driver: Airing Now!
In March of 2005, I was asked to be an “expert
panelist” on a T.V. show called Canada’s
Worst Driver. The role of a panelist was to
determine who was Canada’s Worst Driver. A
pretty scary job! The people on the show were from
across Canada and they had to be nominated by
someone they knew. If they were picked for the
show, the “driver” and the
“nominator” had to come to Picton Ontario
for the filming. They gave up their keys when they
arrived and didn’t get them back until they
were deemed to have improved enough to leave the
show. Remember the goal was to find the worst
driver.
There were four panelists; Jim Kenzie from the
Toronto Star, Scot Marshall from Young Drivers of
Canada and Uzma Rehman a psychology professor from
Queen’s University.
The show is currently airing on Discovery
Channel Monday nights at 10:00. You can also check
our their website to find out more www.discoverychannel.ca/worstdriver/
Retirement?
It may be time for retirement: It looks like my
racing days are over unless a miracle happens. I
was supposed to hear back from a potential sponsor
and didn't hear back, so I am going to assume that
they don't want to move forward. It's hard to
believe I am going to be a retired race car driver
at the age of 32!
Results
One Lap of America: How I met the Firestone
Brothers
At the Long Beach Champcar race I was asked if I
would be interested in competing in a race called
the One Lap of America in an SVT Focus. Of course I
jumped at the opportunity because I thought it
would be the ultimate road trip.The entry was going
to be with Bridgestone/Firestone and Champcar and
we were to be the teammates to Adam and Andrew
Firestone (The Bachelor) .My co-driver was going to
be someone I didn't know and didn't actually meet
until I landed in South Bend Indiana for the start
of the event. His name was Mike Swope and he was
the engineer for the Praxis suspension system which
the Firestone brothers were running on their
car.
The idea of this race is to drive almost 5700
miles across the United States and stop at a
different race track every day to compete. By the
way, we did all of this in 8 days! 3-4 hours sleep
was the "norm". We started in South Bend, and then
onto Topeka, Kansas; Pikes Peak, Colorado; Sonoma,
California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Pueblo, Colorado;
Tulsa, Oklahoma; Elkhart Lake, Indiana and finally
back to South Bend Indiana. We unfortunately didn't
make Pueblo as we had a mechanical breakdown in Las
Vegas and had to spend the night.
Although we thought we lucked out sort of and
were going to get a good night sleep in Las Vegas,
we ended up having to drive 17 hours to Tulsa
Oaklahoma to rejoin the group. So two 17 hour
drives in 3 days was very grueling!
We ended up finished 7th in our class and back
in the low 70's of 79 entrants, but it really was
the ultimate road trip and something I would
certainly do again. The SVT Focus if not the
fastest on the race track was the greatest on the
highway. The seats were very comfortable
considering we spent 75 hours sitting in them and
we always passed half of the cars on the way to
each event. Without a speeding ticket I might
add!
Driving in the One Lap of America was an
experience I will never forget and something I
wanted to share with everyone.
Schedule
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