She’s No 98-Pound Weakling : Angelle Seeling Might Be Small, but She’s Becoming Biggest Thing in Pro Stock Motorcycle Drag Racing

Angelle Seeling is so tiny that if you aren’t watching closely, you’d swear that her Suzuki motorcycle is riderless as it streaks down the drag strip at speeds of better than 180 mph.

Weighing barely 98 pounds, the 5-foot 1-inch professional drag racer from Americus, Ga., will have 65 pounds of lead ballast riding with her to bring the 270-horsepower bike up to the minimum weight for today’s Winston Select Finals at the Pomona Raceway.

“In some ways, it helps to be small. But in others it’s a definite handicap,” she said, flashing the smile that helped her win beauty pageants in her native Louisiana as a teenager.

Small as she is, she has become the biggest thing in motorcycle drag racing. She threatens to do to pro stock bikes what Tiger Woods is doing to golf.

In only her fourth race on the National Hot Rod Assn. circuit, she became the first woman rider to qualify first in a national event, set a national elapsed-time record, and defeated five-time champion David Schultz in the final round at the Keystone Nationals at Reading, Pa.

“I was so excited I couldn’t get my helmet off,” she said, laughing.

Seeling, 26, a qualified intensive-care nurse, negotiated the quarter-mile in 7.373 seconds from a standing start and reached 179.24 mph to stun Schultz, at 48 the winningest rider in drag annals.

“I thought I’d be totally freaked out, having to race Dave, but my coach [George Bryce] told me to totally ignore the rider in the other lane. He told me it doesn’t matter who he is, or what he’s doing, to never look over at him, to run my own race.

“It’s funny. On that record run, it actually felt slow. It’s when the bike is violent, or bouncing around, that it feels fast. When I’m in the sevens, the run is so smooth, the shifts so smooth that it seems effortless.”

She qualified fifth at 7.465 seconds at 182.33 mph, which was a meet speed record at the time she set it on Friday. However, Matt Hines, another Suzuki rider from Whittier, bettered it Saturday when he qualified first with an NHRA record of 7.344 and a track-record 182.88 mph.

“The good thing about being light is that there’s less wind resistance, plus we get to put the [ballast] where we want it, as low as possible. . . . Having the weight so low, it gives us an advantage in traction off the line.

“The downside is that it’s more difficult to control the bike, especially when there’s a crosswind. We use body weight to keep the bike in line. When I lean to straighten it out, sometimes the bike just laughs at me and keeps going toward the wall. So I have to use so much more of my body weight to fight it back. If you can’t bring the bike back in line, you’re in serious trouble.”

Had Kevin Seeling, her husband now but her fiance at the time, not been called up by the Marines for a tour of duty in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, she might not be racing at all.

Before Kevin left, he turned his street bike over to Angelle and asked her to ride it now and then to keep it in good running order.

“I’d been riding motorcycles of one sort of another since I was 6, so it was nothing new to me,” she recalled. “But pretty soon I got tired of just riding around so I added a few things to it and took it to a track in Baton Rouge. When Kevin got back and saw what I’d done, he wasn’t too happy, but it was too late. I was hooked.”

After moving up the drag racing ladder in and around Louisiana, winning as she went, there was nothing left but the top rung, the NHRA’s pro stock class.

“I knew I needed professional help, so I enrolled in Frank Hawley’s drag racing school in Gainesville, Fla. That’s how I met George Bryce. He was the instructor and when I ran a 7.80 in my second time on the bike, I think it caught George’s attention.

“At first, he’d discouraged me from trying to become a racer, saying it’s a man’s sport. But after he saw me ride, he changed his mind and asked me to join his team and become John Myers’ teammate.”

Myers is the NHRA champion and holds a 22-point lead over Schultz going into today’s eliminations.

Part of the reason Myers is 22 points ahead stems from a controversial decision by Seeling in the last race, at Topeka, Kan. After qualifying first, she forfeited the final round to give Myers a victory and the 20 points he needed in the championship race.

“When we’re racing, it might look like the rider’s the whole show, but racing a motorcycle is a team sport and I didn’t have the slightest thoughts about not giving up the final round to get the points for John,” Seeling said.

“After all, I joined the team in the middle of the season and the time George spent working with me was time away from John. If I’d ridden against John, I would have beaten him because my bike had been quicker all week. But it would have been like biting the hand that feeds me.

“I owe everything to George and John. John is a very unselfish person and he had coached me and given me help when I needed it. He was the No. 1 rider when along comes this little girl who started getting all the attention. The way I looked at it, we’re a team and John was one who needed the points.

“I got a lot of flak from the fans, but I decided withdrawing would be better than going to the starting line and red-lighting, or backing off to fake a loss. That would have insulted the fans’ intelligence, so I just withdrew and let John run a solo.”

Next year, she says with that engaging smile, it will be different.

“John is like a brother to me, but I always competed as hard as I could with my brother when I was growing up, and that’s the way it’ll be next year. I won’t give him an inch and I know he won’t give me one either.”

To win his fourth NHRA title, Myers needs to win a semifinal round today, no matter what Schultz does.

“My wish is to meet John in the final round,” Seeling said. “I win the race and he wins the championship. That’s the ideal script.”

Schultz, winner of 14 national events, calls Seeling “very well schooled, very disciplined and most important, very dedicated.”

Winning beauty contests was the farthest thought from Angelle’s mind when she was racing motocross against boys. Once she got into it, though, her competitive nature took over.

“My folks began to worry, when I was in my teens, that I wasn’t growing up ladylike. They thought I was too much of a tomboy, so my mother decided to show me how to be a girl and enter beauty contests. I hated it at first, having to wear a dress and put on makeup.

“I won the first time I entered. Then the next time I didn’t win and it started eating on me that I’d lost so I told my mother I’d keep at it.”

Her big prize was getting selected as Miss St. Charles Parish Sugar Queen in 1989. Later that year, the 57 parish--county--queens participated in the Queen of Queens Festival and Angelle was first runner-up.

“It was sort of Louisiana’s version of the Miss America pageant,” she said.

“You’d be surprised how much a beauty pageant is like racing a motorcycle. Both demand intense concentration, attention to every little detail. It’s so easy to make a mistake in both, and if you do, it’s all over.

“After every festival, it was like after every race. I felt I had to go to a higher level. I had to be the best, to be the fastest. I feel the same way today.”