March 7, 2000 — Round and round we went, leaning back in the seats of our go-karts, speeding along mere inches above the track of Georgia red clay.
We were playing a game of follow the leader.
I was not the leader. No way.
I followed every move of the kart in front of me — or at least I tried to. I knew its driver knew what she was doing.
Tight on the turns. Wide on the straightaways. Round and round we went.
This was not a race, but the thrill was real. So was the strain. Arms must work to steady the rumbling wheel around rough turns. Eyes must stay focused while the world whizzes by.
One lapse and your current lap could be your last. You’ll flip or spin-out and end up in the infield or the fence. Hopefully you won’t be badly hurt. Hopefully.
Round and round I went, the whole while concentrating on the rear of a go-kart driven by Gainesville’s Sabrina Wofford. This is a view karters at Peach State Karting Komplex in Jefferson are becoming accustomed to.
Sabrina — with her mane of bleach-blonde hair, her bright blue eyes and fingernails to match — is beginning to make a name for herself on the local go-karting scene.
Sabrina — the Hall County school bus driver with a pet Chihuahua named Dinkie — leaves most other drivers, male drivers, in her red-clay dust.
“Now Dan,” said Sabrina, 30, as she removed her helmet, revealing her mass of hair, “that was just ridin’. You get in a race, you hold it wide open the whole time.”
We had been traveling at only 65 mph around the 3/8-mile track — a virtual snail’s pace, I learned. Sabrina, when she’s holding it “wide open,” usually keeps her kart above 90 mph.
“Those corners come up on ya quick, don’t they?” said Richie, Sabrina’s husband/coach/mechanic/pit crew/best friend, as I removed my neckbrace.
Neckbraces and helmets are important, vitally important. There are no rollbars in go-karting. No seatbelts, either. All that separates the driver from the track are four tires and a plastic seat that rests just a couple of inches off the ground.
“It is dangerous,” said Sabrina, who began go-karting seriously last summer. “But I could get hurt going home tonight. I’m going to live my life and do what I want to do and I’m not going to worry about getting hurt.”
Is this fearlessness or foolishness? Probably a little bit of both. But a little bit of both is necessary out on the track, especially when you’re a woman trying to succeed in a dangerous, male-dominated sport.
Sabrina, evidently, has the right combination.
“The guys were a little iffy at first,” Sabrina said of her initial reception. “They’d push me off the track. I had to put up with that for six to eight months.”
Sabrina told me how one driver welcomed her to the sport.
“He put me in the fence and tried to hurt me,” she said. “I hit frontwards and backwards and luckily it didn’t tear my kart up.”
It didn’t stop Sabrina, either. She turned her kart back around and returned to the race with revenge on her mind. She spotted the culprit.
“And the next lap he was down there in the fence where I was at,” she said. “Because I had done put him there.”
Sabrina smiled slyly and added, “He has not bothered me since.”
Neither has anyone else. Sabrina earned respect quickly.
Last summer at Peach State she rarely finished out of the top five in her class, and she has high hopes heading into this summer’s points series, which kicks off next month.
“She can run with ’em,” said Denver Phillips, who owns both the go-kart track at Peach State and Checkered Flag Kartway in Danielsville. “Just a little tomboy is all she is.
“Really once they get the suits on they don’t pay any attention to who’s out there. Everybody is tryin’ to get to the front and they don’t mind runnin’ over a woman to get there.”
Just ask Ricky Haynes, a 38-year-old racer from Gainesville.
“She’s just another guy when we’re out there racin’, ya know?” he said. “We’ve had some good races.”
“Yeah, we’ve scrubbed, haven’t we?” Sabrina laughed from within her parts trailer.
“If you ain’t scrubbin’, you ain’t racin’,” Haynes responded.
Sabrina runs in the stock-light class, which means driver and kart together must weigh 305 pounds. Thirty karts usually crowd the track for Sabrina’s races, which typically run 15 laps.
“Ain’t no room for no mistakes,” said Richie, 31, a former driver at Lanier National Speedway in Chestnut Mountain, who still races go-karts from time to time. “There’s a wreck about every lap.”
I was witness to a dramatic wreck last Saturday after my practice session. Both kart and driver did a full forward flip high in the air. The kart landed back on its tires. The driver almost landed right back in his seat. Surprisingly, he seemed to be OK.
“I ain’t never seen that happen,” Sabrina said, her blue eyes open wide.
Sabrina grew up around auto racing. Her father, the late Ralph Herrington, was a fixture at Lanier in the late-1970s and early-1980s. Her mother, Shirley Herrington, still runs the family business — Herrington Bros. Tire Co. — at 118 Atlanta Hwy.
And now Sabrina drives a school bus, races go-karts and operates a parts trailer every weekend with her husband. She couldn’t be happier.
“Everything I do deals with driving,” she said. “I just like it. That’s all I do is drive.”