Hollywood stuntwoman and Park City resident Kathy Jarvis has wanted to race cars since she was little.
She has competed off-road in the Baja 1,000 and participated in the Rally America tour a few years ago.
Then she decided wanted something more powerful, so she set her sights on the dirt-oval track that features Late Model Racers, the fastest and highest horse-powered cars in the track circuit.
Jarvis has been racing these machines for two years and was named Rookie of the Year and placed in the Top 10, during a race in Doublewide, Mich., something a rookie has never done, she said.
“Then we started heading south to Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and we found the further south we went, the faster the racing gets,” she said.
Jarvis also found the prejudice against women racers got more intense.
“Last year, I went to one race to draw my number to find out what heat I was to drive in and the woman at the drawing table said, ‘Hey, honey, who you drawing for?'” Jarvis said. “I said, ‘Myself’ and she said very condescendingly, ‘Oh, honey, this is Late Models.’ I said, ‘Yes, I know. I have my car right over there.'”
After the woman did a couple of double takes, she asked if Jarvis had a license.
“I said, ‘I do. Let me get it for you.’ And she said, ‘No, I’ll just look it up in the computer to make sure,'” Jarvis said. “I thought even today I still have to prove my worth to come out to a grass-roots sport to get on the track, and then I wondered if a woman has ever raced the Hell Tour.”
The Hell Tour Summer Nationals is a series of 29 races on 28 tracks in 31 days, Jarvis said.
“I called Sam Driggers, the head of United Midwestern Promoters, and asked if a woman has ever done the tour and he said no,” she said. “When I asked how he thought I’d do, he laughed and said, ‘Right,’ but I told him that I was thinking about doing it and he said, ‘Well, you can set your own records.'”
Racing the Hell Tour, which starts on June 13 at the Brownstown Speedway in Brownstown, Ind., and is an expensive venture, Jarvis said.
“Racers need a whole crew, especially one that believes in them,” she said. “It’s also hard because we’re on the road for 31 days, and we’ll rack up more than 5,000 miles of travel.”
The cost of the crew alone is at least $6,500, and when Jarvis adds race fuel, tires, car maintenance, engine parts, repairs and hauler rentals, the total peaks at $53,010.
To relieve a bit of the price-tag pressure so she can just focus on racing, Jarvis has tapped into www.indiegogo.com , a website designed to help people raise funds for their specific needs. Jarvis’ account is www.indigogo.com/kathyjarvis.
“We’re trying to raise $50,000 so we can complete the series,” she said. “There is a time limit and we’ll have 39 days to accomplish the goal. So far we have raised $3,315.”
There are incentives for donations, Jarvis explained.
“When someone donates $15, they will get a car sticker, and people who donate $25 will get an autographed driver’s card,” she said.
Donors who give $100 will get a Hell Tour T-shirt and those who donate $500 and $1,000 will get their name or company logo on Jarvis’ car, she said.
A $10,000 donation will land the donor’s name or company logo on the car’s quarter panel or hood.
“Our fundraiser’s catch line is ‘Send a woman to Hell,'” she said with a laugh. “But in all seriousness, the donors are not just supporting me, but supporting women in these types of sports.”
Jarvis, whose stunt work has appeared in films such as “G.I. Joe,” “The Italian Job” and “6 Days 7 Nights,” started racing Late Model cars while working on the film “LOL,” starring Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus.
“The transport coordinator found out I raced and invited me to go to his son-in-law’s track, which was two hours out of Detroit,” Jarvis said. “He told me to bring my helmet and my driving suit.”
When she arrived, the pit crew put Jarvis into a Late Model car.
“I still don’t know why they call it that,” she said. “I got into the car and drove around the track and met Andy Stebbins, owner of Andy Stebbins Motors, who owns a bunch of these cars.”
Stebbins wanted to get more women into racing because he had recently adopted three girls from Russia, and wants to encourage them to follow their dreams, Jarvis said.
“Andy watched me drive and told me that if I would commit to a full season of dirt-oval racing, he would get me a car and an engine to go out a race,” she said. “So, I did.”
While she can handle herself on the track, Jarvis wasn’t prepared for the bullying she would face by her male counterparts, which includes all types of name calling and on-track crashes.
“I have had my car junked three weeks in a row,” she said. “(The male racers) say they would rather junk me than get beat by me. And when they do junk me, they blame me for the crash, when it was really their fault.
“When I began, I never understood how much sacrifice, pain, ridicule and trash talking I would have to endure,” she said. “I also didn’t realize that other racers, who, because of your gender, will attack and will literally want to physically hurt you to protect their ego.”
Luckily for Jarvis, there are people in dirt-oval racing who have websites and host radio shows who support her.
“They enlarge and post the video footage on their sites to prove the crashes weren’t my fault,” she said. “Any other driver wouldn’t have to do that.”
The only reason the other racers know Jarvis is a woman is because of her name on her car.
“We could make it easier for ourselves by pulling my name off the car, but what would we be doing?” she said. “You see those movies where the girl goes out to race in her motorcycle gear and wins, and at the end reveals she’s a girl. That would be an easy game to play because no one would know until the end. But we’re not doing that. We’re starting the race as a female to take the hits to show that females belong out there. So, we made my name bigger on the car.”
At times, Jarvis wants to give up.
“Seriously, it’s expensive and I have to leave home and I’m tired,” she said. ” The reason I’m racing is because I have always wanted to be a driver to go to the national level, but what really keeps me out there is all the email from fans mothers and grandmothers who thank me for getting out there, to show their daughters that they can do anything.”
For more information about Kathy Jarvis and the Hell Tour Nationals, visit www.indiegogo.com/kathyjarvis or www.kathyjarvis.com.