`I Know I Can Win' -- Tracy Roberts, 23, A Racer Who Became A National Champ At 17, Sets Her Sights On Breaking Traditions In A Male- Dominated Sport.

People still smile when they remember when Tracy Roberts won the trophy dash that night in Wenatchee in 1988.

After beating the other three top qualifiers, she brought her bright-yellow offset roadster to a stop in front of thousands of spectators and stepped out in her yellow, flame-retardant jumpsuit. She took off her helmet and tossed back her long brown hair.

"As soon as Tracy took off her helmet, the crowd went nuts," recalled Larry Dowdy, secretary of Washington Open Wheel, the racing club for sprint cars.

It wasn't until then that the crowd realized Tracy was Tracy, not Hal or Bob or Bubba. Roberts is the lone woman among some 50 people in the racing club and one of the few women racers in the state. And when Roberts wins, as she frequently does, things get turned around.

For instance, on the trophy dash night, the nubile "trophy girl" who presents winners with a kiss and a trophy was already making her way down to the track. "The promoter panicked," Dowdy said. "He grabbed this young guy out of the stands and had him present Tracy's trophy. They had to change tradition of about 100 years real fast."

Roberts, 23, hopes to keep changing tradition. She has ambitions. Find a sponsor to pay the enormous costs of racing - "It takes money to go fast, basically," she says - and take it from hobby to career. Maybe in Formula One racing like at the Indianapolis 500, the ne plus ultra of racing; maybe in stock cars. It's a long shot, she knows. "That's what everybody wants to do," she says. "Get a ride. A big ride. And make it big."

But the Bothell High School graduate now making her living in Bellevue as a "body sculpting" coach and house cleaner isn't just dreaming. She has been racing since she was 5 years old. Her father, Stan, got her started in quarter-midgets - quarter-scale race cars powered by modified lawn-mower engines that go up to 50 miles an hour - just as he'd started her older brother, now well-known on the stock-car circuit. Going to the track every weekend during the summer became a family affair.

"At the beginning, it was something to do with my family," she says. "As my driving skill started to show itself, it became a challenge. And I became interested in the competition and the excitement."

Roberts flashes her large blue eyes, which are expertly lined and highlighted. She isn't exactly a tomboy. She's a licensed cosmetologist who cuts other people's hair and does very attractive things with her own.

Then there's the body-sculpting coaching - helping people achieve a shapely, muscular body with weights. It's worked for her: Roberts looks good in her jumpsuit.

But sometimes looking good and doing the things that need to be done for excellent racing are difficult to do simultaneously. Roberts doesn't pretend to know all the parts on her car and in fact doesn't do a great deal of maintenance. That's for the crew.

"Working on a race car isn't all that fun," Roberts says. "The older I get, the less I like to get my hands dirty."

So when she has to change the oil or work under the hood, she wears gloves. "Oil stains your hands," she says. "It just doesn't look good."

But since when is the driver supposed to be the mechanic, anyway? Roberts won scores of trophies in her quarter-midget days, regularly beating out all the other little boys and girls. And unlike the other little girls who make up a third or so of quarter-midget drivers, Roberts never lost interest or was discouraged from pursuing the sport as an adult.

"We went to a lot of nationals - I just kept winning," she said. "I probably had between 10 and 15 track records."

At 17, Roberts took the 1985 Western Grand National title, beating about 24 of the other best drivers in the Western United States.

Her father is her biggest supporter. Stan Roberts loves racing, although he never did it himself. Watching his daughter - or his son who now races stock cars - is almost as good. "It draws you in," he says. "It can be an enemy in disguise, it can disappoint you. But hearing the noise, seeing the crowd. . . . I get a lot of enjoyment out of it."

So in 1988, he bought his daughter a 12-inch-offset roadster - $8,500, including trailer - and committed to spending at least $5,000 a year and almost every day working on the car. Prize money doesn't cover the costs, even for racers who win all the time.

The 12-inch-offset refers to the motor, which is placed a foot off-center to the left of the car. Since modified sprint cars race around an oval track and only turn left, that's an advantage for cornering.

Offset roadsters, also called modified sprint cars, also called open-wheel racers because the wheels and suspension are all exposed, could never be mistaken for a street car. They're low to the ground and tiny, with room for just one person strapped into a roll cage. They have wide, wide tires, run methanol through their 400-horsepower V-8 engines, weigh about 1,800 pounds and go about 110 miles per hour.

Then there's the inverted wing on top to push the car downward and keep it on the ground. And they accelerate like an Indy car.

"You go from 40 to 100 in four seconds," says Dowdy, the racing-club secretary.

The faster the car, of course, the better one's chances of winning, and Roberts' car is considered one of the best. But it's her driving style as well that sets her apart. Roberts is "smooth," they say. That's aggressive but clean, smart, not foolhardy, with an ability to drive her car to whatever its limit happens to be on a particular night.

Roberts isn't afraid to drive on the outside of the track, inches away from the concrete wall, which, because of centrifugal force, the car would be prone to smack into. "It takes a long time for most people to be able to do that," Dowdy says, "and she did it from the first time she came."

Roberts has never rolled her car, an amazing fact for someone racing so long. That's partially luck, she says. And partly skill. But her record for never being injured in a race came to an end last Sunday when she broke her wrist in a race in Eastern Washington.

Roberts says she was leading the race when her right front wheel struck the rear wheel on another racer. The force of collision turned the steering wheel so sharply in her hands that her wrist broke. "You hang on to the wheel pretty tight," she says.

But Roberts expects to be racing again the weekend of June 8. She will be wearing a cast. Despite this injury, her pit crew has nothing but praise for her abilities.

"She has good reactions. She has experience," says Neal Pearce, a mechanic on Roberts' pit crew. "Her aggressive natures are used at the right time - she doesn't waste them like some men do pounding their chests. She doesn't give any quarter, and she expects none to be given."

Her personality, with its optimism and resilience, has helped, too, her father says, because bad things happen in racing all the time: parts break, accidents occur or the car just isn't running right that night.

"She's never gotten down," he says. "She's disappointed if the car gets wrecked or beat or broke, but she's always eager to get back in and go as fast as she can."

Roberts' skill has gained her acceptance in what's a predominantly blue-collar, particularly macho world of rubber and oil and gaskets and comparing who's got the best steel rods.

On a recent night at Spanaway Speedway near Tacoma, a man wearing the requisite baseball cap came over to her in the pits, looked at his shoes and said, "I like your driving. It's real nice." That happens a lot, she says.

Other drivers aren't so shy, and they respect her abilities. "My first year in this club, I took Rookie of the Year," she says. "They've been good sports about it. . . . I have a lot of men tell me I have guts. And women come down from the stands and say, `I always wanted to do that.' "

At a recent race at Spanaway, Tracy placed fifth out of eight. But those were the eight fastest drivers of 24. And she had problems. Her tires were cold. There was condensation on the manifold. The suspension was too loose. Just one of those nights. Nothing to worry about.

"I've got a taste of what it's like to win, to be the top dog," Roberts says. "See, I know I can win."