What happens when little girls are allowed to play with racecars in addition to their Cabbage Patch dolls? You get bright young women who know more about racing than the average fan - male or female. And then one day one of them suggests the family start its own racing team and you find yourself go kart racing.

For the Conlin sisters of Hilliard, Ohio, motorsports has always been a part of life. While still living in Lowell, Indiana, it was not uncommon for Dana, Tracy and Julie to attend Indiana Northwest Region, SCCA events and road rallys strapped in their child car seats. When the family moved to the Columbus area, visits to Mid Ohio Sports Car Course became regular with the CART Champ Car weekend quickly established as tradition. Away from the track, racing dominated the family TV screen every weekend. It was there, subconsciously, that they began to learn the basics of racing. And it was the on-board camera shots that first allowed them to imagine themselves behind the wheel. When their dad, Jim, came up with the idea of a family Champ Car fantasy league in which each family member chose two CART drivers with points kept to declare a family champion, the girls quickly became die-hard open wheel fans.

So it may have been normal progression that the girls would suggest that they go racing as a family. Jim, who had been racing snowmobiles and sports cars since his teens, didn't have to be asked twice. Initially, the Conlin family looked back to SCCA and the Improved Touring classes as a cost effective option. However, Jim wanted the girls to be more involved than SCCA regional racing would allow them to be at ages 16, 13 & 13. When a friend suggested karting as a way for dad to race and the girls to drive the kart in practice, the Conlins felt they found the answer and Conlin SpeedSports was born.

"When I imagined the girls crewing for a national or regional race, I saw them getting board fairly quickly", says Jim Conlin, "but karting not only allowed them access to the hot pits but during open practice they could get behind the wheel themselves and see what it was like."

By the end of their first summer of racing, it was apparent that apples weren't falling very far from the tree. While Julie never missed a race or practice, she wasn't as fascinated as her sisters with the driving - most practice time was shared between Tracy and Dana. In fact, Dana's rapid progression gave her the confidence to enter their club's (Mid State Ohio Kart Club) Fall Powder Puff event in which she spun to last on the opening lap on a damp track, recovered, then passed five other gals to finish second. The die was cast.

The next two years saw Dana racing full time with Jim acting as team manager and Tracy, with a curiosity about the mechanical workings of the kart, filling the role of chief mechanic. Julie managed timing and videotaping. Dana learned her race craft well in those two seasons, ranking as high as 3rd in the MSOKC Briggs Stock Medium championship and receiving the Most Improved Driver award along the way.

As competitive as the Briggs class was, by the end of 2002, Dana was ready to move up. "There were times - when I didn't have someone right in front of me - that I would notice things like furry caterpillars crawling down the edge of the track and wonder if they were going to be alright," Dana remembers with a smile. "I figured that was telling me I was ready for more speed". Conlin SpeedSports wasted no time acquiring a new chassis/engine combination for Dana and that move allowed Tracy to relinquish her crew chief duties and take a crack at the vacated 4-cycle kart.

Things got serious in 2003 with the team adding a Biesse Kart/HPV package for Dana and maintaining the Margay/Briggs for Tracy. Their efforts paid off with Dana winning the Mid State Ohio Kart Club HPV championship and placing third in the Great Lakes Sprint Series (WKA Divisional Series) and with Tracy just missing a top five finish in the very competitive MSOKC Briggs Stock Medium championship, a great performance for a first year driver.

As a team fielding two women drivers in a predominantly male sport, there has been a lot of challenges to overcome. "I think the biggest challenge for me was getting the guys to take me seriously," says Dana as she starts her 4th year of racing. "Early on the guys in my class rarely spoke to me. But as I got better, I earned their respect and soon I was just one of the group. I knew they had accepted me the day a couple guys included me in some pre-race strategy that would get our group out ahead of the rest of the grid." In the HPV class, the fastest non-shifter class the club offered, Dana continued to impress by beating some very experienced and successful kart racers.

For Tracy, proving that she belonged was eased a little by her big sister and because the team had established itself but she also had additional pressure. "People knew I belonged there because of Dana's racing," Tracy relates, "but at the same time I think I felt more pressure because people expected me to do well. I felt I had to prove myself sooner."

Proving herself sooner meant Tracy had to mix it up with seasoned veterans of one of MSOKC's most competitive and "rough and tumble" classes. But the notion that some people thought she couldn't do it is what motivated her. "Whenever someone thinks I can't do something, I get very determined to show them I can. That goes for competing against other girls in (high school) track or cross-country events or going wheel to wheel with the guys at Circleville (Raceway Park)."

Determination to prove that the female mind and body can motorrace just as well as the male may be the team's greatest asset. In fact, so dominant is that trait that it has become Conlin SpeedSports' motto: "Less Testosterone, More Determination". "That determination is what drives our entire team," Jim says, "It's what gets us up and on the road at ridiculous hours, what drives us to beat ourselves silly at the track for 10 hours racing or testing, what drives us to do whatever it takes to put our drivers on the track with no excuses".

While the reference to a lack of male hormones is made tongue-in-cheek, Jim reports a definite difference in the way his girls race than the way he and his male competitors race. "I'm still developing this theory but they definitely have a different relationship with the machine than I've seen in guys I've raced with over the last 30 years. The girls seem to work with the kart more… like it is a more cooperative effort rather than sort of grabbing the kart by the scruff of the neck and making it do what they want it to… showing it who's boss." This approach also seems to result in fewer incidents - either with other drivers or in going off the track. Not that the ladies are any less aggressive - just less likely to force their way into an over-optimistic maneuver. "I like the way they race - it keeps the repair bills down", Jim adds.

Wondering if the gentler, kinder approach was limited to his two drivers, Jim ran the theory past several other fathers with daughters racing and found that many, after giving the idea a little thought, agreed with Conlin's observations.

For 2004 Dana will defend her HPV championship and Tracy, with a new kart, will move into Super Can, a 2-cycle class a little slower than HPV but also highly competitive. Super Can was selected only after months of discussion within the team: Dad wanted both ladies to race HPV (Tracy proved in fall testing she could handle the HPV) so that fewer spare parts would need to be stocked, more set-up data could be shared and racedays would require prep for only one set of races instead of two. Dana, Tracy and even Julie advised against it, fearing an on-track incident between the two drivers would disrupt the harmony and cooperation the family enjoys at the track. Ultimately, it was a point that Dana made that won dad over. "I just told him that Tracy and I still have stuff to prove and to be in the same class would just put us in each others' way. In competing against each other, we'd only be trying to hinder each others' goals".

Jim agreed with that and the team has taken delivery of another Biesse Kart and a Yamaha Super Can motor allowing them to contest the MSOKC Super Can and the HPV championships. And they've set winning both as the team's goal for 2004. Some may feel that is a bold ambition for any team to make let alone one with a second-year driver as one of its pilots but Jim sums it up this way: "We've found that mediocre goals produce mediocre results."

More information about Conlin SpeedSports can be found at the team's website, www.ConlinSS.com.