This fall she will return home to Hudsonville for her senior year of high school. She has become a minor celebrity on the circuit, signing T-shirts and giving interviews to local TV stations. She plans to spend this summer crisscrossing the country's midsection, racing at tractor pulls from Saluda, South Carolina, to Bowling Green, Ohio. "The kids at my school think I don't even know how to turn a socket wrench," Snyder said as she helped her father install a head-size gear in his tractor transmission. To keep it from catching fire during races, she ties it in a double ponytail on top of her head and tucks it snugly into her helmet. Her blond hair hangs halfway down her back. She prefers bright purple or flamingo pink fingernail polish. In the pits during tractor pulls, Nicole Snyder baby-sits for the children of other drivers. "It's uncontrollable power," Dave Snyder said. This can come in handy, because tractors sometimes jump the track and start racing toward the grandstand. The driver's goal is to gather enough momentum for a "full pull," 300 feet to the end of the track.Įach sled also has a driver, who sits in a cab in back with a switch for killing the tractor's engines. As the tractor drags it down the track, a weight on the sled slides forward, causing a set of plow blades to sink deeper into the dirt, increasing resistance. The sled that a tractor pulls weighs 62,000 pounds, or 28,000 kilograms, and resembles a hook-and-ladder fire truck. But when the family finished eating dinner before the Super Nationals last year in Tomah, Dave Snyder looked her in the eye and smiled. Until last summer, Nicole Snyder had never raced anything larger than a go-cart, and had never expressed any desire to. Each vehicle is so powerful that if it were not tethered to a weight sled the pull association provides, it would flip violently, most likely killing the driver. There is no way to practice tractor pulling other than at a sanctioned competition. The flames shoot from exhaust pipes half a foot behind the driver's head. But on the Legend, the driver sits directly atop the engines, which are from a military surplus Sea Stallion helicopter. On most jet-powered tractors, the driver sits in a cage behind the engines, nestled between the rear tires, which are 5 feet tall, 3 feet wide and cost $6,000 a pair. In 2000, he bought the Legend, and he raced it for five years. In 1997, he built his first jet tractor, which was easier to maintain because it had fewer moving parts. "When you see those engines twisting and flopping like a fish out of water, it scares the living daylights out of you," Snyder said. He added some horsepower, then added a little more, and 12 years later started racing in the national tractor pull association's top class. But she doesn't get rattled."ĭave Snyder said he started racing antique tractors in 1988, at county fairs near his home in Hudsonville, Michigan. "I haven't seen a girl yet that has Nicole's natural ability, or her competitiveness," said John Knox, owner of Sassy Racing Engines of Weare, New Hampshire, one of the larger engine builders in tractor pulling. "Nicole is just another competitor."Īt the Super Nationals this year, Snyder raced four times against her father, Dave Snyder, who drives the Space Invader, a tractor with three jet engines. "When you're comfortable in the driver's seat, age doesn't have anything to do with it," said Scott King, 48, of Clinton, Illinois, who drives another jet tractor, the Dirt Challenger. But the novelty of seeing her piloting a tractor wore off for competitors last year, her rookie season, when she took third place at two pulls in the United States and one in Canada. She is also the only driver without a driver's license. Most race pickup trucks, which produce a maximum of 650 horsepower. Snyder is the youngest of only eight women among the 1,100 drivers who compete in the United States and Canada at events organized by the National Tractor Pullers Association, said Larry Richwine, the group's technical director. "I haven't had any big wrecks yet, so that's good." "It's pretty fun, I guess," she said after the run.
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