SPRAKERS, N.Y. — Jessica Zemken talks into her cell phone and spells her last name slowly, then gives her credit card number and expiration date without batting an eye.
“I’m getting good at using this credit card,” Zemken said. “That’s not a good sign.”
Three years after what was her banner season, the 23-year-old aspiring sprint car driver is struggling like never before. Not even finishing ahead of two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart in a dirt race has helped Zemken realize her dream of racing full-time.
“Nobody in the sprint car world is going to put me in a car because I’m a girl,” Zemken said. “The only way I’m going to get anything or go anywhere is by being competitive and winning races and being consistent.”
That’s a tall order when money is tight.
“I don’t race as much as I want to. I don’t have the funding,” Zemken said as she sat in a lawn chair at her parents’ Montgomery County home in upstate New York, the family’s three bloodhounds prowling the yard where she learned to drive. “There have been times going to the races this year where I was like, ‘Well, if we don’t make the race and we don’t finish in the top 10, we don’t have money to get home. Or I’ve gone to a track and changed tires and not been able to pay my bill until I got my payoff at the end of the night. That’s unstable and so hard to deal with sometimes.”
Zemken has good enough equipment — despite racing only 13 times so far this year, she has one win, seven top-fives and has not finished outside the top 10 in the 11 races she’s finished — she just doesn’t have enough of it. If she can’t afford new tires, she won’t race.
“With my deal now, at least I know my equipment isn’t going to fall apart because I’m doing the maintenance on it,” Zemken said. “I know that every time I roll into a racetrack that I’m going to be in contention to win.”
That borders on the amazing, considering that her crack pit crew usually consists of herself and her mom, Shauna, an optometrist by day and gear changer on race nights, and maybe her grandmother, cousin Robert Ferguson, and a friend or two.
“She impresses me because she doesn’t have the finances, she doesn’t have a major sponsor,” Stewart said. “She puts every dime that she makes into her race car. She’s her own mechanic. It’s her and her mom that go to the World of Outlaws races and race against Kasey Kahne Racing and Tony Stewart Racing and Steve Kinser Racing — all these major teams that have run with the World of Outlaws for a long time — and she goes out there and runs in the top 10. That’s impressive.”
Especially in this reeling economy for somebody of the opposite sex who readily admits she’s been too shy about selling herself.
“It’s a very tough sport,” said Dean Hoag, a former champion driver who operates Black Rock Speedway, the Finger Lakes track near Watkins Glen where Zemken beat Stewart in 2008. “Nobody gives them (women) any breaks and I think, if anything, the men try a little harder because they just don’t want the stigma of being beat by a woman. But she’s quite a woman. She has the most ability I’ve ever seen in a female as far as driving a race car.”
Credit dad Ray Zemken for that. When Jessica was 6, he fixed a go-kart for a friend, brought it up to his garage, and it caught her eye.
“I got it running and she got on and started going around the house,” Ray Zemken said. “We’d throw water down and she’d slide sideways.”
Ray Zemken proceeded to buy a few old go-karts, fixed them, built a track in the yard, and Jessica was off and running around the house, often at night with the headlights of the family vehicles lighting the way.
Unfortunately, Jessica’s career choice has caused a conflict of sorts.
Ray Zemken fixes transmissions during the week so he can race on weekends, something he’s done his entire life, mostly at nearby Fonda Speedway and without any sponsors. And he isn’t ready to give it up yet, even at age 50.
That’s why he’s seldom been in the pits helping his daughter, even though he’s the one who got her hooked on the sport.
“My dad is just a really hard person,” said Zemken, who won five track championships and over 100 feature races in go-kart competition before she was 14. “He’s had to work really hard for what he has and always wanted to show me that I needed to work for everything. I’ve been brought up that if I can’t do it myself, no one else is going to do it for me, so I have to learn to do it. Nothing was going to be given to me.”
Not much has since she lost her biggest sponsor, NativePoker.com. In 2006 Zemken put together her own 360 winged sprint car team, operating it on her own out of the family race shop, and ran over 60 races with NativePoker.com paying many of the bills. She said that sponsorship ended when the company founder became ill. It’s been a struggle since.
Zemken continues to fight the fight, and despite her success, just showing up at a track with her blonde hair flowing over her shoulders sometimes presents a challenge.
At a World of Outlaws race at Canandaigua, N.Y., in May, Zemken arrived late, had to swap motors in her No. 1Z, and the track official tending the gate asked her to move and called security.
“It was just three of us girls,” Zemken said. “All these guys had these huge rigs and tractor-trailers sponsored by Budweiser and DirecTV and Bass Pro Shops, and here we are with this little 28-foot dually (dual-wheel pickup) and enclosed trailer with no sponsors and the guy at the gate is like, ‘This is a joke. You’ve got to park out back.’ I couldn’t park with the guys I was racing against. It was like I wasn’t good enough.”
Zemken responded to the slight by winning a heat race and started on the front row in the A-Main alongside Kinser, Danny Lasoski, and Donny Schatz, three of the biggest names in the sprint car world.
“Just the assumption that people get at first, looking at things from the outside, I can say that I can’t blame them, but at the same time it’s really frustrating,” Zemken said. “I guess it’s a good thing, in a way. The more people that say I can’t do it, the more negativity I get, the harder I work to get to where I want to be.”
Zemken has driven for other people, and she spent two of the past three winters in Phoenix and Southern California working odd jobs — she labored for an underground utilities contracting company pulling wire — and racing in an effort to get her name out there.
“Hopefully, sooner or later somebody’s going to notice,” she said.
Stewart has. This year, instead of racing her at Black Rock, he worked her pit and she finished third. They’ve become texting buddies, and that can only help in the long run.
“I guess maybe I never realized how hard it was, and it definitely has gotten, instead of easier, harder,” Zemken said. “But it’s a dream I’ve had since I was a little girl. I know that I can do it and I don’t want to give up. It’s just a matter of being, like they always say, in the right place at the right time and I haven’t gotten there yet.”
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