A Woman’s Place Is in the Points Standings : Auto racing: Female drivers have dominated new Pony Stock division at Ventura Raceway.

The checkered flag has fallen on Pony Stock heat race No. 2 at Ventura Raceway. The quarter-mile clay oval is especially damp and the drivers are back in the pits reaching for garden hoses.

“I’ve got mud in my eye,” says Tracy Jewett, pulling her crash helmet off to reveal a mane of wavy, brown hair. “I’ve got mud in my hair.”

And, of course, there is mud on her car.

Jewett, a 23-year-old accounting clerk who lives in Oxnard, steps back for a look at her powder blue Mustang: “Oh, this is beautiful.”

It’s interesting, to say the least.

Just a wrench’s throw from Jewett stand mud-caked competitors Mira Cook, Jan Hubert, Tina Verdun, Erin Davis, Helen Boucher and Laurie Dickson.

No one in this crowd looks very, well, ladylike.

“I was never very ladylike to begin with,” Cook says.

Ladies--oh, yes, and gentlemen, too--start your engines. In its inaugural season, the points standings of the Pony Stock division, Ventura’s newest entry-level racing class, is dominated by women drivers.

Cook, who has won one main event and holds the division points lead, is challenging to become the first female track champion in the raceway’s 15-year history.

Hubert and Jewett are among the top five in points and five of the top eight in the standings are women. Of 19 Pony Stock drivers, eight are women.

Hubert’s husband, Gary, is the points leader in the track’s Mini Stock division. But Jan rivals her husband’s success with four checkered flags, most among women.

She also takes no guff from drivers of the opposite sex.

“There are quite a few crybabies out here, which I will say are all men,” Jan Hubert said.

What are a bunch of nice girls like . . . Let’s put it another way: How did this division come about?

For years, sisters, wives and girlfriends of drivers watched from the stands wondering aloud about the appeal of this racing business. During the off-season, several women approached Ventura Promoter Jim Naylor about jump-starting a new, kinder, gentler division. Track officials immediately loved the idea.

Pony Stocks, the majority of which are Ford Pintos, are virtually the same car that rolled off the assembly line, with the exception of the necessary safety modifications required of race cars. With minor exceptions, suspension and engine modifications are prohibited.

“It’s the fastest growing class we have,” said Cliff Morgan, Ventura’s general manager. “We started this thing with four cars.”

Said Naylor: “This wasn’t designed for women, this wasn’t designed for men. But the weird thing is how it’s caught on and how it’s being dominated by women. We thought, maybe, we’d get a couple of wives, maybe somebody’s girlfriend. But we’ve got moms, grandmas, daughters, sisters. This is one of the neatest things we’ve ever done.”

The cast of characters are as colorful as their cars.

Siblings Dickson and Lynda Marsango bill themselves as “Sister Act.” Boucher is a 51-year-old grandmother and retired hairdresser. Cook, 31, who drives a bus for a day-care center in Camarillo, races with the words “Miss Mira” printed on her car and her coveralls--her handle on the job and on the track.

“I really want to win this bad,” Cook says. “My kids are all excited.”

She’s talking about her bus passengers, but her 12-year-old daughter is equally enthused--so much that she regularly takes a wrench to her mother’s car.

Hubert, 33, a homemaker and mother of four, and is the division’s self-appointed tough-talking spokesperson.

“I don’t want to bang against anybody’s door too much,” Hubert sais, “and make these guys cry.”