Elaine Martin: Fast and in control

Milan drag racing champion raises the profile of female drivers

December 17, 2006

   By ERIN CHAN

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Elaine Martin

    * •Born in: Trenton

      •Age: 36

      •Lives in: Livonia, with longtime boyfriend Marlon Howes

      •Children: David Martin, 17, and Ashley Martin, 12; like a stepmom to Mike Howes, 20, Gabby Howes, 16 and Shannon Howes, 15

      •Job: Manages Regency Car Wash in Garden City and scrubs cars at Regency in Westland

      •Education: Melvindale High School (GED obtained in 1989)

      •Favorite sports team: Detroit Pistons ("Oh, yeah, they rock.")

      •Watches: "Seinfeld" and "Everybody Loves Raymond"

      •A favorite childhood memory: Watching NASCAR races around the country with her dad, William Powell; Martin put her Milan Dragway 2002 Female Driver of the Year trophy in his casket when he died that year of congestive heart failure.

      •Drives (on real roads, without speeding): burgundy 1989 Ford Tempo, brown 1994 Chevrolet Astro Van, burgundy 2004 Chevrolet Silverado, white 2005 Sunseeker Class C motorhome

      •Drives (at Milan Dragway): yellow 2002 Pontiac Firebird with gray and black stripes and burgundy 1993 Chevy Camaro

Drag racing basics

    * What is it? Two cars race alongside each other on a two-lane, quarter-mile straightaway. To give the slower cars a fair shot at winning, a computer automatically adjusts the starting light for a handicap. The car that finishes first wins, but a driver can be disqualified by going too far below his or her estimated time or for starting too soon.

      What kind of cars race? They range from the tricked-out hot rods to pickup trucks to dragsters to motorcycles to junker vans, as long as the car passes a pre-race inspection at the dragway.

      How many people watch races at Milan Dragway? A lot depends on the weather. A comfortable day or evening or an anticipated race like the International Hot Rod Association Motor City Nationals can bring up to 700 cars and 15,000 spectators.

Originally published April 23, 2006

Elaine Martin grips the black steering wheel of her sunshine-colored Pontiac Firebird and keeps her eye on the yellow light.

Usher croons from the stereo. His R&B hits calm her.

Because just as Martin is not a normal driver, this is not a normal yellow light.

When it lights up, Martin does not slow down.

She slams the accelerator.

The 2002 Firebird roars. It zooms down the drag strip, and hits 104.6 m.p.h. in a matter of seconds, traveling so fast it feels as if it is about to take flight.

Martin has planted herself in the driver's seat in every way, and that makes her smile.

"It's so great," she says. "I'm able to control something that looks like it's not controllable."

The 36-year-old mother has raced thousands of times and won hundreds of head-to-head bouts, and as the season revs up at Milan Dragway on Saturday, Martin will be one of the strongest contenders for 2006 street champion - against both sexes.

"She's a tough racer, make no doubt about it," says Mark Johnson, 36, of Lambertville, who announces and races at Milan Dragway, which is Martin's home track. "I know many men who wish they didn't have to race her."

As national figures like Indy Car racer Danica Patrick and drag car driver Erica Enders have started beating the guys, attention on female race car drivers has grown.

This renewed attention follows female drag racing pioneers like Shirley Muldowney, who made history between 1977 and 1982 by becoming the first racer of any gender to win multiple National Hot Rod Association Top Fuel Championships and who was inducted to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame two years ago.

At Milan Dragway, which is four miles east of M-23 in Milan and is the only drag strip in metro Detroit, race director Chris Baxter says he has noticed more female racers.

Ten years ago, when she first started racing at Milan, Martin remembers looking up to two women, but now estimates there are at least a dozen female drag racers, though they are still outnumbered each weekend by at least a couple of hundred men. "Most women out there are really good," Martin said.

But the ultra-competitive Martin is exceptional.

She was Milan's street car champion in 1998 and has nabbed the Dragway's Female Driver of the Year award five times, a title that goes to the woman who has accumulated the most points during the season.

"She's definitely an inspiration," says Danielle Stefanovski, 20, of Belleville, who started racing her 1968 Chevrolet Camaro three years ago and says Martin often gives her pointers. "She's just such a great driver and knows a lot about cars and racing."

On weekdays, when Martin isn't racing, she's still around cars. Hundreds of them.

She manages a Regency Car Wash in Garden City that's owned by her longtime boyfriend, Marlon Howes, who first got her interested in drag racing.

After watching Howes race for seven years, Martin wanted to try it for herself.

"It was a way for her to get out her aggression," jokes Howes, 50, who shares a two-story colonial with Martin and their children in Livonia.

Dressed in her typical outfit of a T-shirt and jeans (she last remembers wearing a dress five years ago, at a wedding), Martin wields a 5-foot scrubbing brush at the car wash as dexterously as if she were flipping on a racing helmet.

She started mixing car wash chemicals and spraying vehicles 17 years ago, when she couldn't stand being a waitress in the smoking section of a Big Boy. Before that, she was a cashier at a drugstore and at Burger King.

"I barely made it out of high school," she says over the rumbling of the car wash on a Tuesday afternoon earlier this month, her voice full of plainspoken honesty. "I had wanted to join the military, but at 17, I got pregnant while I was in high school and that was the end of that idea. I was going to be a mom and start family life."

She has relished the mom part ever since, waking up at 6:30 a.m. to taxi her kids to school and getting home from the car wash in time to cook lasagna for dinner. She often takes the role to the dragway, like two Saturdays ago, when her youngest child, Ashley Martin, 12, called to ask her about sunblock.

"I don't want you tanning on somebody's roof," Martin tells her daughter between warm-ups with her Firebird.

Martin had filed for divorce by the time she found herself cleaning Fords and Chryslers. It was then that she first spotted Howes, who had bought the car wash three years before, pulling up to work in a 1989 burgundy Corvette.

"It was a nice car, but I didn't know how he could have spent so much money on it," Martin says, laughing. "Back then, I was broke."

What followed were dates of pizza and videos, and of course, watching muscle cars at the dragway.

Now, they drive out to Milan two days a week in what Martin deems their "quality time." With all the breaks between racing rounds, it's not rare for them to be at the drag strip for 12 hours each Saturday and Sunday.

It's there that Martin can kick back with the other racers, being her friendly, joking self - at least until she rolls her Firebird onto the quarter-mile drag strip, flips on the R&B and starts gazing at that yellow light.

"She's not intimidated by anyone," says Baxter, the race director. "She's a good winner and a good loser, but she tries damn hard not to lose."