17 Year Old Kelsey Lay Heads to Super Comp

This past Wednesday I was doing my other job as the local track photographer at Sunshine Dragstrip when Joe Mendola introduced me to Fred Lay and his daughter Kelsey, who is a recent Super Comp graduate of Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School in Gainesville, Florida.

Fred owns Construction Services Inc. in Tampa, Florida and he recently purchased this Super Comp Dragster out of Georgia for his daughter to purse a racing career after just four months driving a Jr. Dragster with a short term goal of qualifying to race at the 2011 Gatornationals. In fact, she made the finals in her event in the Jr.  The previous owner had only made one pass in the car before deciding to get out of racing and they were shaking down a basically new car and driver at the same time. Joe and Chris Mendola were on hand to help out and make sure the engine was tuned properly and Fred is one of Mendola Racing’s best supporters.

Fred has a background in road racing with shifter carts in Skip Barber for two seasons 10-15 years ago, as well as several other types of cars. When Kelsey showed some interest in racing he steered her towards drag racing instead of running Karts. Kelsey will be a senior next school year at Bloomingdale HS in Brandon and is interested in pursuing family psychology and communications once in college. She is currently in her second year of high school marching band as a Drum Major and also plays the flute and piccolo during concert season. She accels in sports as well as the JV and Varsity flag football quarterback. Her Mother Connie took up the hobby of filming the band at practice and all the events and puts together an end of the year video for the other parents and the school.

Connie and Fred Lay have been married twenty eight years and were high school sweethearts at Tampa’s King High School, after moving here from her native Syracuse, New York at ten years old, while Fred is native of Tampa. It’s good to see successful young people in the sport especially now with the Jr. Dragster program, more and more drivers are coming up through the ranks, with several years of racing experience before they can legally drive on the public roads. While that isn’t the case here, her father describes Kelsey as having a “vertical learning curve”, already showing versatility and success in various school activities and I’m sure she will to well in whatever she endeavors in the future.

The engine is a 555 cubic inch big chief from Eagle Racing Engines that makes just south of 1000 horsepower.

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