Patricia Taylor struggled with her street stock during the Mike Stevens Memorial program at Petty International Raceway in Petitcodiac, New Brunswick, Canada. Taylor did not understand why her car was such a handful at the paved ¼-mile oval.
“I was a rookie driver [in the street stocks], but I knew my car was loose the entire race,” Taylor, of Salisbury, New Brunswick, said. “I did not know why I was all over the place, so I just kept going. I kept my car on the track — except for once.”
That one off-track excursion occurred on lap 80 of the 100-lap feature. Her car hit an infield mound surrounding a light pole. Luckily, her emerged from the incident with no serious damage.
“It spun me around, so I feathered the throttle, got control, and kept racing,” said Taylor.
Taylor held on to finish 14th out of 26 cars. After the race, Taylor and her boyfriend, Mike Weagle, found a weld had broken on the sway bar adjuster. They felt that made her car ill-handling throughout the race. Additional damage occurred when Taylor hit the infield mound. That incident bent the axle, which they replaced along with the axle seal.
Away from the track, Taylor is a mother of a blended family consisting of five children. Taylor plans to marry Weagle in October, with their cars present at the altar. She typically hosts karaoke parties on Friday nights to earn money, but the Covid-19 pandemic has squashed that revenue stream. Prior to racing street stocks this year, she steered mini stocks. In seven years of racing them, Patricia Taylor earned two wins.
“It is a big change, going from a small front-wheel-drive car to a huge rear-wheel-drive car,” Taylor said. “I used to tramp on the pedal coming out of the turn to straighten my [Honda] CRX [mini stock] out. Now, I feather my [Chevrolet] Chevelle [street stock] through the turns.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
