The 16-year-old from Tumwater, Wash., drove bookend shifts to help lift Team Rubbin’s Racin’ to victory in the 3rd annual Worker Appreciation Kart Enduro on Saturday, Jan. 15 at Apex Karting. Featuring 13 teams and benefiting the Race Officials Division Fund of the International Conference of Sports Car Clubs (ICSCC), the six-hour endurance race was presented by the Ground Pounder Drivers Association.
“This is the third year that we’ve run this race, and this year’s event was definitely the most exciting,” said Apex Karting co-owner Walker Armstrong. “Watching Jessie’s incredible performance against seasoned road racers was fun for everyone there.”
Because of an illness, Rubbin’s Racin’ team leader Rod Powell came up a driver short the day before the event. After hearing of her reputation and then seeing Jessica race at Apex on Friday night, Powell contacted Armstrong to get her phone number. Jessica, who holds several track records at Apex, was more than happy to do some racing for a good cause.
After qualifying the 9hp kart first of the 13 teams, Jessica started second because the pole position had been auctioned off. She drove the entire two-hour first segment, completing 198 circuits to give her team a three-lap lead heading into the first intermission. An on-track incident in the second segment wiped out the team’s lead, but Jessica jumped at the chance to get behind the wheel for the third and final segment.
Starting three laps behind the leader, Jessica blazed through the Apex circuit and — helped by a driver and kart change by the leading team — turned the deficit into a four-lap lead by the halfway point of the segment. Fatigued by three hours of intense racing, Jessica turned the kart over to a teammate for the final hour.
With time winding down, the team asked Jessica if she had enough left in the tank to take the checkered flag, and with five minutes to go she climbed back in the kart to close out the victory with her fastest lap of the day.
"Jessica went out and ran against some of the best road course drivers on the West Coast — several of have professional licenses and ran World Challenge Series, Grand Am Series and the Daytona Rolex 24 Hour last year,” said Powell, the ICSCC GT1 division champion in 2008. “This was not an amateur event by any standard. Jess raised, and then cleared, the bar. This young lady has a bright racing future indeed."
After Apex co-owner Armstrong gave Jessica the ceremonial checkered flag for a victory lap, she enjoyed drinking some cold milk along with teammates Scott Morton, Joe Manke, Powell, Rick Bostrom and Randy Blaylock. Jessica was presented with the trophy by the team, and she said “That is one trophy I will covet the rest of my life.”
In addition to kart racing, later this year Jessica will team with Tyler Tanner under the Tanner Dana Racing banner to race late models. A sophomore studying mechanical engineering at Arizona State University, Tanner earned two poles and finished second overall in points at South Sound Speedway in 2010.
Interested in finding out how you can become part of the Tanner Dana Racing team? Contact Troy Dana at (360) 402-5500 or Troy.Dana@D3Rec.com.
On the Web
A Tanner Dana Racing website is planned for the near future, but in the meantime please visit www.JessicaDanaRacing.com or “like” Tanner Dana Racing, Jessica Dana Racing and Tyler Tanner Motorsports on Facebook.
About Tanner Dana Racing
Tanner Dana Racing was formed in late 2010 to support two up-and-coming drivers, Tyler Tanner and Jessica Dana, and to help them achieve their shared goal of racing at the highest levels of motorsports.
Jessica Dana began riding ATVs when she was 4, and racing them at 8. Two months after sitting in a kart for the first time she was recording a top-5 finish at the 2009 U.S. Indoor Kart Championships. Over a two-month period in the spring of 2010, the high school sophomore raced and defeated both four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon and extreme motorsports star Travis Pastrana in charity kart events.
Tyler Tanner began his racing career at 5 in quarter midgets, earning four national championships, numerous track records and more than 100 wins over 10 years. Tyler also raced in mini-sprints and full midgets before moving into late models in 2008. Racing at South Sound Speedway in Tenino, Wash., in 2010 he earned two pole positions and finished No. 2 overall in points in the late model division. Tyler earned early admittance to the Ira A. Fulton Mechanical Engineering Program at Arizona State University, where he is a sophomore.
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