Chad Lundquist/Nevada Appeal Race car driver Janet Wainscott answers questions for kids from the Carson City Community Center day camp Monday. Wainscott, and her sponsor Roger Brown, rear, from Roger Brown Automotive, brought her 1979 Z28 Camaro to the community center for the day as part of a show and tell type event for the kids. Wainscott, took her first checkered flag last week in the hobby stock class at Reno/Fernley Raceway.
The kids in Carson City Parks and Recreation's Kickback Camp were more attentive than usual at the weekly Monday "Event Day" earlier this week.
The reason was a bright blue and pink 1979 Camaro Z28 race car parked in front of the grandstand and its driver, Janet Wainscott. Wainscott's daughter Ashley has been involved in the camp program for several years, and that connection led to Wainscott's appearance on Event Day.
Kickback Camp is open to children from kindergarten through ninth grade, with the different age groups each assigned their own division. Normally 300-350 children attend camp, but the number was down slightly on Monday due to the Fourth of July holiday.
Wainscott, a ten-year Carson City resident, grew up in the garage, watching her dad prepare and race cars in Alaska. Always wanting to race herself, she acquired the Camaro as a trade for babysitting services outside her regular employment, converted it to a Street Stock racecar, and began racing at Champion Speedway in Carson City in 2004.
When the Street Stock class was abandoned there in 2005, she decided to set the car up for dirt track racing at Reno-Fernley Raceway. She raced as Janet Lyford for her first two years, but an off-season marriage to Richard Wainscott caused a repainting of the name over the driver's door of the Camaro for 2006.
Dirt track racing is a contact sport and the No. 97 car, pristine in April, showed its battle scars proudly on Monday. After a presentation explaining the safety equipment built into the car and the driver's personal safety gear, Wainscott fielded seemingly endless questions from the audience.
Roger Brown of Roger Brown Automotive, Wainscott's crew chief and sponsor, was also on hand to assist with the more technical questions. Wainscott's Camaro runs in the Hobby Stock class at Reno-Fernley, meaning that other than safety modifications little can be changed on the car.
The No. 97 Camaro runs a 350 cubic inch Chevrolet V8 and a two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission. The car turns laps on the 3/8 mile dirt oval at Reno-Fernley in about 23 seconds, which translates to 90 mph speeds at the end of the straightaways. Wainscott is currently in the top 10 in the 2006 points standings out of 35 cars in the Hobby Stock division. This is a significant improvement over last year's performance. She won her first event, a heat race, on June 24.
After the presentation on Monday, all the Kickback Camp kids had the opportunity to walk by the car for an up-close look, and pick up signed stickers from Mallory Ignition, Wainscott's other sponsor. If anyone wants to see the No. 97 97 Camaro in action, Wainscott will be racing at Reno-Fernley Raceway this coming Saturday night, July 8.
•Contact Roger Diez at racytalker@aol.com