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Ellen Wheels
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Canadian Nostalgia Pro Street competitor sets her sights high
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Brian Wood Photos by Brian Wood |
As the billowing black and pink parachute reached the end of its lines with a resounding snap, Ellen Pavao had a gut feeling that one of the major goals she'd set for herself years earlier had at last been reached. Clambering out of the safety harness and removing her helmet, the sound of a blasting truck horn from nearly a quarter of a mile away confirmed it – she had just run her first “seven” in competition and her happy teammates were on their way to congratulate her.
Leading the charge of well-wishers that day in the fall of 2001 was one of Pavao's drag racing idols, Pro Street champion Annette Summer. Looking back, it was perhaps her accolades that meant the most to Ellen as she put her own career as a drag racer into perspective. While there's no doubt that drag racing offers more opportunities for women to compete than any other form of motorsports, it is still a male dominated sport – something that Ellen and many before her had been reminded of quite often. “I'm a female competing in a man's world and I have the capability and the determination to do as well, if not better, than any one of them,” she said. “I have a genuine passion for going as fast as I can down the quarter mile. It has taken a lot of hard work and time, but I have earned the recognition and respect of my male counterparts and it's a great feeling when I line up beside them and they look worried. I've put my car up on the bumper and shifted gears with only two wheels on the ground and still beat the guy in the other lane. They seem to think I have what it takes. I'm determined and very competitive and that's why I'm still in the game. Ask any woman if she would have been as thrilled as I was when I received a pair of racing slicks for the car as a wedding gift!” With her conquering of the seven-second mark, Ellen convincingly served notice that she was someone to be reckoned with - someone with the talent and confidence necessary to take on the best and win, just as she'd been doing her entire life.
Ever since her earliest days growing up in Toronto and nearby Mississauga , Ontario , Ellen has been a competitive person. From childhood games to school sports in later years, she loved challenges and always played to win. “Track and field, basketball, soccer, volleyball – you name it and I played it,” Ellen said with a laugh. “I was a typical tomboy as a kid, always taking on the toughest sports and doing everything I could to be the best. Later, since I had always loved horses, I got involved in show riding in a big way, which I'd probably still be doing today if it weren't for Joe.” Joe is husband Joe Pavao, the guy responsible for sitting his future wife behind the wheel of his 396-powered '69 Chevelle back in 1987 and turning her loose. For the natural-born athlete, just one step on the throttle was a true revelation – one that would change her life forever. From horse power to horsepower, Ellen knew that she had found the ultimate release for her competitive spirit. “I loved the power of it all - I was addicted almost immediately,” she recalled. Before long, Ellen became well known at local hangouts for the loud, shuddering smoke shows and tire-shredding burnouts she would routinely perform in the parking lots. As far as Joe was concerned, the next logical step was to get Ellen to the drag strip where she could strut her stuff in a truly competitive atmosphere. Besides, he was going broke buying back tires for his Chevelle. Eventually, he built a second 396 Chevelle for his future wife and took her out on deserted country roads to teach her how to drive it. “That was a blast – learning how to do proper burnouts and shift gears out on the back roads,” Ellen said. “Joe marked out a rough quarter-mile and we'd pretend that there was a tree for me to start from. I wasn't the least bit afraid of the car or the speed – I just went for it and pretty soon he figured I was ready to go racing.”
Running in entry-level Trophy Class events at nearby Cayuga Dragway (now Toronto Motorsports Park ), Ellen soon parlayed her lightning quick reaction times and fearless determination into an impressive collection of shiny plaques and trophies. Recognizing the extent of Ellen's talent and potential, Joe enthusiastically took on crew chief duties on race weekends, happy in the fact that the two were able to enjoy the sport in such a successful and satisfying way. As Ellen gained experience, Joe replaced the original 396 with a 427, and before long she was showcasing her winning ways in top bracket action around Ontario . True to her competitive nature, however, Ellen wanted to race her opponents, not the clock, so a move to the ranks of heads-up racing was almost a foregone conclusion. Soon after their marriage in 1990, Joe and Ellen spent 4,500 of their hard-earned dollars and replaced her Chevelle with a back-halved ‘71 Camaro in order to get into the then-new and extremely popular Pro Street scene. For the next couple of years the temperamental beauty (the car, not Ellen) was propelled by home-built nitrous-injected 427 and 468 cubic-inch powerplants before eventually ending up stuffed with a bruising 598-incher built by fellow Pro Street racer Mark Tate's engine man, Mike Matthews. Ironically, it was through their relationship with Tate and Matthews that Ellen and Joe began to travel south every fall to the National Muscle Car Association/Hot Rod Magazine Fastest Street Car Shootout in Memphis , Tennessee . “We weren't very competitive against the fast cars of the day,” Ellen remembered, “but we went mainly for the fun, the exposure and the experience. Plus, we wanted to get on the video they made every year!” Competitive or not, the door to the future had been swung open, and by 1995 Ellen had become a semi-regular on the NMCA tour, running her trusty F-body Chevy at events up and down the Eastern seaboard, having fun, going rounds and meeting people who would have an impact on her racing career in the future. In 1999 she won the Popular Hot Rodding Shootout in Michigan , but it could very well have been her last hurrah. As with many things too good to last, by the end of the 1990's Pro Street was on the verge of self-destruction. Unchecked technological advancements in terms of performance had slowly squeezed the budget-conscious racers out of the game, making it the exclusive playground of well-financed individuals and teams only. As the Pavao's were among the majority of those racing on a limited budget, it appeared that their days of knocking heads in the class they loved were dwindling down to a precious few.
Fortunately for them and their fellow racers, not to mention a legion of fans, a sequence of events took place at the end of the decade that would ultimately throw a lifeline to the floundering original Pro Street contingent – those who started it all nearly ten years earlier but were eventually beaten to the sidelines not by tough competition but by the power of the checkbook. In 1997 a group of NMCA officials and racers, dissatisfied with the direction the original sanction was heading after its buyout by Peterson Publishing, split off to form the National Street Car Association with the intention of getting back to the roots of the category. They scheduled a series of six events for the 1998 season, which proved to be highly successful, and just like that the new kids in town were off and running. A year later, a special event at Norwalk Raceway Park would provide the final impetus for the salvation of the traditional Pro Street category. Presented by Flowmaster, the invitational meet featured top street-legal racers from across North America , including Ellen, who eventually went to the final four. In order to give the older style cars a place to run, a unique Nostalgia Pro Street class was set up for that event only. Luckily, NSCA co-founder Tony DePillo was on the grounds that weekend, and the popularity of the class with racers and fans alike did not go unnoticed .
“There were thirty or more of these (original Pro Street ) cars there in Ohio that weekend, including a lot of the old stuff that hadn't been seen since the mid-1990s,” DePillo said in an interview at the time. ”The fans were enthusiastic about the cars running in original Pro Street trim, and we quickly realized the potential of bringing them back on a full-time basis.” Taking his cue from that event, DePillo added Nostalgia Pro Street to the NSCA's roster in 2000, and it quickly grew to become one of the most popular and enthusiastically contested eliminator classes in the world of street legal competition. Today, both the NMCA/NSCA and PRO racing series' field healthy counts of NPS cars at all of their events.
For Ellen and Joe, it was better than a family reunion as they happily joined the ranks of the new-old class and enjoyed competition and camaraderie the likes of which they hadn't experienced in years. Cars and racers long out of action were suddenly back on the scene, and many new cars were built to allow others to get involved. In the inaugural 2000 season, Ellen had one of her best finishes ever, claiming the number 3 spot after a hard-fought points battle. Determined to take her game to the next level, however, thanks to some cooperative bankers and the great people she works for, Ellen bought a new car prior to the 2001 season, saying good-bye at last to the second-generation Camaro that had served her so well for ten long seasons. Ellen's new ride, a full tube framed '67 Camaro purchased from Nostalgia Pro Street champ Ross Stomp, soon bristled with a state-of-the-art 632 cubic-inch nitrous sucker from the shop of Pro Street powerhouse Pat Musi. Resplendent in black and sporting Ellen's trademark hot pink trim, the new machine made its debut at a NSCA event in Hattiesburg , Mississippi in 2001. The following season proved to be one of frustration and change for the Canadian ace, however, as Ellen struggled to come to grips with the new car's second-hand Lenco/Bruno transmission. Coming to the rescue was London , Ontario transmission wizard John “Hutch” Hutcheson, who eventually replaced the Camaro's troublesome Lenco/Bruno unit with one of his trick Turbo 400 units, which eliminated the car's shifting problems. Unfortunately, the transmission's shortcomings had led to engine problems over time, so there was still more work to be done.
In the past, Ellen and Joe had never torn down their engine on their own, but rather had shipped them back to Musi's New Jersey shop for freshening up. Wanting to take a more hands-on approach to the program and work closer to home, however, Ellen and Joe enlisted the aid of engine builders Serge and Ned at Rolling Thunderz in nearby Woodbridge , Ontario . Eventually, with the help of Sonny Leonard Racing, Joe and Ellen, under the banner of Pavao Racing, took over the responsibility of building and maintaining their own powerplants. These days, the Orangeville, Ontario-based NPS Camaro is motivated by a 632-cubic-inch Chevy engine fit with Sonny's 14.5-degree heads housing 2.30/1.99 intake/exhaust valves. A 1,350-cfm Dominator series carb sits atop a Ray Franks Pro-Filer intake, while “juice” is supplied to the piece by a Nitrous Express double rail fogger system. In legal Nostalgia Pro Street trim, the 3,325-pound hot rod has run a best elapsed time of 7.78 at 180-mph, with a top 60-foot time of 1.17-seconds.
2003 has again seen the team suffering through the ups-and-downs so often associated with professional drag racing. Early on, the car was spitting out flywheel bolts, and it was discovered that the crank was bent. With just one engine at their disposal, Ellen missed a couple of races while first waiting for the new parts and then testing the re-built engine. All the hard work paid off, however, as Pavao Racing's appearance at a recent Ontario Street Car Association event at Toronto Motorsports Park proved. With the weight of the car reduced to 3,000 pounds in order to compete in the event's Outlaw Pro Street class, Ellen carded a career-best 7.59-second lap, confirming that she and Joe were indeed on the right track with their overall program.
Buoyed by the result in Toronto , the pair were optimistic about their chances of success as they headed to the NMCA event in Stanton , Michigan in early September. Unfortunately, during qualifying, another problem cropped up. The car was getting too much fuel at the hit of the throttle, which caused the engine to bog down. In an attempt to eliminate the situation, a smaller carb was bolted on, but it was apparently too much of a move the other way, with a lean condition causing the burning of two pistons, and the early end to the Pavao's weekend. In spite of the trials and tribulations Ellen has had to deal with over the course of the last two seasons, however, there's absolutely no quit in her. On the long term side of the coin, knowing what we now do about her, it's not surprising that the ambitious Canadian woman has her sights set on something a little rowdier than the entertaining but necessarily limited Nostalgia Pro Street class. “Right now, my plans are to run in NPS for a while longer and see how things go,” Ellen elaborated. “They way I see it, right now we're having a lot of fun, and the class is still pretty affordable, but I just don't know what direction it's going to take down the road. A lot of people are closing in on the class limit of 7.50-seconds, and once they get there, how long will it take before the original concept of restricting the cars comes under fire? It's pretty hard to make racers slow down when all their instincts tell them to go faster. It could end up being like Pro Stock is today – all based on reaction times once the cars get running so closely together. I realize that's the reason the restrictions were set up in the first place, to keep costs down and maintain a level playing field, but personally, I think I may want to expand my horizons a bit in the future.
“What I'd really like to do is move up to Outlaw Street eventually,” Ellen continued. “It's the quickest and fastest class in all of street-legal, and I'd love to mix it up with the six-second crowd. I got into drag racing because of my love for the speed and power, and I don't want to limit myself at this point in my career. There's a lot of uncharted territory out there, and I won't be satisfied until I explore as much of it as I can. Thanks to Paul and Karla Schmalz, my friends and employers at PCL Constructors, I'm able to compete at the level I do right now. Hopefully, with them and my other partners we'll be able to climb the ladder to the top together. Of course, it goes without saying that without my husband Joe, none of this would have been possible, so I thank him the most for this opportunity. I also have to say thanks to Camp Stanley , the people at Sonny's Racing Engines and Rolling Thunderz, John Hutcheson and Jon and Regina Phillips from Nitrous Express. They have all worked hard for us and been tremendously supportive over the last couple of years. I know it's a cliché, but it would be impossible to do this without them.” Is Ellen Pavao paying her competitive dues in the sport of drag racing? Absolutely. Does she have what it takes to become the next female superstar in street legal competition? Don't you dare bet against it!
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