Nitro Dogs Racing

From down and out to up and at ‘em, Will has climbed to second in points

At the end of the 2007 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, Hillary Will was wondering if she had a made a big mistake. The 28-year-old native of Fortuna, Calif., had graduated from

Wheaton College (

Norton, Mass.) with a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics, taken a somewhat-lucrative job as a financial analyst, but when she realized she just wasn’t happy, bid farewell to the financial sector to pursue the one true passion of her life: drag racing.

With the support of her family, Will had devoted all of her time and energy to straight-line racing, honing her skills in the seat of a Top Alcohol Dragster for a couple of years. She thought her driving dreams had come true in 2006 when she started her first event in the Top Fuel class at the Winternationals, but she and her KB Racing, LLC team, owned by Ken and Kenny Black and managed by Kalitta Motorsports, struggled to get in the groove as a unit and pretty much stayed there for the next 45 events. By the end of 2007, Will, who placed the blame solely on herself, was emotionally in dire straits.

“I felt like I had hit rock bottom,” Will recounted. “I was convinced I didn’t have what it takes to be a Top Fuel driver. I thought I would be doing my team a disservice by continuing to drive so I started making plans for a different career path. I even picked out a new place to live and started packing my things.

“One evening last December, I went to the shop in Ypsilanti (

Mich.) after everybody had gone home. I wanted to sit in my dragster one last time. I sat there for a very long time and couldn’t bring myself to get out of the car. I realized I still had the fire and the passion to drive, and that I didn’t want to quit. I did not want to give up. God had put me in the car for a reason. He would not have given me the opportunity to drive with the best team in drag racing and then not given me the skills I needed to do the job. My problem was that I didn’t trust or believe in myself. I knew I could drive better than I had been. I just had to do it.”

Will pulled herself together and decided to fight as hard as she could for what she now knew was what she wanted more than anything. She and the KB Racing, LLC team gathered in the Kalitta Motorsports conference room one day last winter and put it all out on the table, so to speak. The meeting was brutally honest and tense at times but in the end the gathering of devotees was cathartic and provided the proverbial “flick of the switch” the team needed to reset.

Crew chief Jim Oberhofer explains, “We as a team realized that we all had made mistakes that hurt the performance of our car, me included. There were mistakes that I should’ve caught on to quicker that would have made a difference in our performance. The good news is that we all learned from these mistakes and took the necessary steps to correct them – both physically and emotionally.”

After a trying first two seasons, Hillary Will (below left) and crew chief Jim Oberhofer (below right) reached the winner’s circle earlier this year in Topeka (above) and are currently second in Top Fuel points.

The meeting of the minds certainly has garnered the desired results. Until this season, Will and the KB team had never been higher than 9th in POWERade points and had a two-year total of 23 round wins. With two events remaining on this year’s schedule, Will sits in second place in points and she and her team have more than doubled their round-win tally to 49, collecting three final rounds in this year’s campaign and a breakout NHRA win in

Topeka in June.

Oberhofer acknowledges there have been some fairly radical mechanical changes made to the KB rail in the past several months, but he is also quick to point out how much his team’s attitude has played a role in their successful season.

“We had a good, fast race car when the season started and managed to win a few rounds and even the event in

Topeka, but we felt like we needed to pick up the pace a little more if we were going to compete for the championship.

“After Englishtown, everything changed for our entire organization. It was hard for me to focus on our car after the loss of Scott Kalitta. Scott was like my big brother and all of a sudden he was gone. We stumbled through Norwalk, Denver, and

Seattle with no round wins and a below average-performing car. Before

Sonoma, I decided it was time to, well, pull my head out of you know where and get this thing back on track. We made it to the final there with some good driving by Hillary and a little luck. After that I started making changes to a setup that was better suited for 1000 foot.

“Since then, our whole team has been doing a great job. Hillary really has stepped up her driving and she’s doing a great job. The crew has been just about flawless and working very hard. My assistant crew chief, Troy Fasching, has been bringing more and more to the table every day and making sure the car is perfect. There’s been a complete change of attitude in our pits both before and after Englishtown and the proof is in the performance.”

Will also attributes a very special trip to the other side of the world to her change of attitude and perspective, “Earlier this year, I went on a goodwill tour in

Afghanistan to visit our troops. I had no idea how much the trip would change the way I think.  Most of my life, I have had a tendency to get worried and anxious about things. After being in a war zone, I realized that I don’t really have a lot to worry about in my everyday life. I can sleep at night without fear of being shot down or bombed.

“It made me realize that I was approaching every race like it was a war. I was putting so much unneeded pressure on myself. I would get so uptight and tense that I made myself miserable, and my driving suffered because of it. I used to get in the car and just be a bundle of nerves.  My goal would be to not mess up again. Now I get in the car with a much calmer mind, knowing I have the God-given ability to do this; I know we can win, and we expect to win. I still make mistakes and get frustrated, but at least now I have a better attitude and a mindset that allows me to put things in focus and to work on improving without being too critical.

“I think about our service men and women over there everyday and pray for their safety. It seems that the collective support of our troops has gone down lately because there is so much talk about the economy and the election. We still have a lot of families making tremendous sacrifices for our country, and we need to remember them and honor them every chance we get.”

Will is returning to the Middle East in December for another goodwill tour, this time in

Iraq.

Will and the KB Racing, LLC team will continue to race under the banner of Palm Beach International Raceway for the remaining two events of 2008 as they did at the previous event in

Richmond. However, the team is still trying to secure a primary sponsor for 2009. Without corporate support, the team will likely be sidelined for the bulk of the upcoming season, but neither Will nor Oberhofer are conceding yet.

“It would be a real shame to not be able to keep our team together next year,” Will said. “We want to carry our momentum into the 2009 season. I have every reason to believe that we can win the championship next year. 

“Ten years from now I hope we can say we signed a primary sponsor at the end of the 2008 season we’re talking about extending our partnership for another decade.”

Oberhofer added, “I feel we have a great shot at finishing 2nd in the points this year and that we can even win another race or two. Finishing 2nd would be a huge accomplishment for our KB team. My biggest hope is that we can lock down funding for 2009 because I, too, believe we will contend for the Full Throttle championship.”