To be successful in NHRA’s Camping World Drag Racing Series two premier nitro classes, it’s vital to have a clutch expert. Since Top Fuel and Funny Car don’t have transmissions, those six clutch discs are what drive an 11,000-horsepower car for 1,000 feet from water box to finish line. And if the clutch isn’t right, nothing works properly.
Watching mechanics service a nitro car between rounds has been likened to ballet. It’s a finely choreographed dance, for sure, and one that’s dependent on each of the seven crew members doing their jobs to get a car ready to win the next round. And the next. And the next.
With only four opportunities to earn a Wally winner’s trophy on any given race weekend’s four rounds of eliminations, all that choreography has to be exceptional. And if the clutch expert doesn’t have all discs in the correct order with the facing materials ground to the proper order, there’s a good chance the next pass will be the end of an expensive weekend.
While being the clutch specialist isn’t the most glamorous job in the NHRA pits, it could easily be the most specialized and necessary. This essential job calls for someone who understands order, can focus on minute details and has the infinite desire to be successful in everything they do.
That description fits Kaylynn Simmons to a “T”. The clutch specialist for Clay Millican’s Stringer Performance Top Fuel dragster, this 28-year-old fashionista is everything you don’t expect from a clutch specialist. First, she’s a woman. Second, she loves getting dressed up. Third, well, she’s one of a very, very few women to purvey a love and a passion for automobilia and motorsports into a career.
Kaylynn comes from a local racing family in Jordan, New York, on the outskirts of Syracuse. Her dad raced karts on dirt and his daughter joined him racing, thanks to the family’s ownership of an Ace Hardware in this small town. By the time she was 19, Kaylynn had amassed five track championships. An excellent student, she went to a vocational school during her two final years of schooling before going for a Business Administration degree at her local community college.
Still, her love of all things vehicular got the better of her and she elected to attend University of Northwestern Ohio (UNOH), a school recognized for its motorsports activities. While at UNOH, Kaylynn participated in the collegiate motorsports task, earning a SEMA scholarship and attending that trade show as a student intern with several companies. She attained her High Performance Racing, Automotive Technology degree in March of 2016 while also earning her Commercial Driver’s license (CDL).
About a week before Kaylynn graduated she’d turned casual conversations with then-crew chief for Terry McMillan Rob Wendland into a job. Wendland had decided to give her a chance as a clutch assistant and truck driver. She left school on a Tuesday and started work with McMillen’s team a day later, leaving for the March NHRA Camping World race on The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway before the ink was dry on her diploma.
“I honestly had zero drag racing experience and had never seen a Top Fuel car,” Simmons recalled. “As a clutch assistant, I was in charge of tires. I also helped the lead clutch specialist install the clutch in the car.” After about seven races as an assistant, she suddenly became the lead clutch specialist when the crew member she was working with left to take on a new position.
“Rob didn’t have anybody else, so he said, ‘You’re gonna do it.’ I thought he was crazy and, for the first six months, I still think he was a little crazy. Under his wing, he taught me a ton. I really owe my career and everything I know to him. He really gave me a chance. And it was awesome. So by the end of that year, I think I was a full-blown clutch specialist,” she explained.
The McMillen team achieved their first Wally winner’s trophy in the second 2017 Las Vegas race and went on to win the prestigious U.S. Nationals less than a year later, on Labor Day weekend of 2018. The team continued to race through the World Wide Technology Raceway event outside St. Louis in 2020, when McMillen’s primary sponsor announced their departure, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The search for 2021 sponsorship was barren and, in February of last year, “We decided as a team that it was best for us to move on and secure positions for the upcoming season. I received a call from Doug Stringer. He was looking for a clutch specialist for the first race in Gainesville.
“After an in-depth conversation with [crew chief] Mike Kloeber and [driver] Clay Millican, a full-time offer was on the table,” Simmons explained. She has been with Stringer Performance since the start of the 2021 campaign, through their eighth-place result in the Countdown to the Championship and continues in 2022 as their clutch specialist. She’s also the track specialist and back-up girl who positions Millican after his burnout for each pass down the track.
“I’m in charge of everything, from the motor plate back,” she said, explaining her duties as a clutch specialist. “Starting at the motor plate, I’m in charge of the flywheel. I install the facing materials, grind the facing materials, ensure that everything is within half a thou in flatness.” She then moves to the clutch discs and has an assistant who helps grind all the discs. “Between the two of us, we build the pack based on hardness level, date code. We track a lot of how the discs react, because they all have personalities,” Simmons explained.
“As far as the covers, the centrifugal clutch, maintenance of all the levers, I add all the weight to the clutch – based on what Mike wants in the car.” Kloeber will base his decisions on track conditions before asking Simmons to change weight “down to the weight of your fingernail, so I have to know how much weight is on all 19 levers at all times. And then I install it in the car. I’m also in charge of the reversers and the rear end, and the [rear] wing. So anything from the motor plate back, it’s all me,” Kaylynn Simmons said.
Although she initially wanted to be part of the NASCAR community, her years in NHRA have made Simmons a believer in the sport. She wants to stay in the nitro scene and expand her knowledge base, so that one day she might become a crew chief. For now, the primary goal is “to make the crew chief happy. That’s my job.”
Simmons tends to stay out of the way until it’s time to work. “I listen to a lot of audio cues,” Simmons said. “I can tell when the guys are putting the car together. It sounds crazy, but I can hear certain torque wrenches going and I know what they’re doing, so I know where I need to be. I just kind of listen and observe around me kind of silently, then I make sure I’m where I need to be when I need to be there.”
When the car is being warmed up, usually about an hour before the run, Simmons stands at the rear, checking for any leaks from the down lines on the cylinder heads, making sure no oil is coming out of the rear main seal, watching the tires. “Clay and Terry are a little different. With Terry I made sure he got the car in forward and reverse, and I also checked neutral for him from behind. Clay has a mirror, he checks that himself. I watch him and make sure he’s getting forward and reverse and I’m listening to the rpm tone in the motor,” she said.
“When Clay feeds the clutch, I can hear the tone change in the motor and can tell if I have my stall setting correctly, which helps him stage when he gets up on the track. I’ve got a bunch of different things going on, but mainly I’m looking for leaks and trying to help the team see something they can’t necessarily see from my stance behind the car,” Simmons explained. When it’s time to stage, her job changes to being a track specialist, checking track temperature and rubber condition on the surface. She’ll report to Kloeber as to whether the track is greasy or tacky. And then she’ll help place the car in position to run. It’s a lot of work but she loves it: “I don’t want to say I love stress, but having a high pace and a very detail-oriented situation is where I thrive.”
Kaylynn Simmons’ five-year plan has her continuing in the role of clutch specialist, learning ever more about the car she’s servicing and, eventually, turning her knowledge to being a car chief. “Everyone says once you get in the clutch department, you don’t ever leave, but I’m really hoping to expand and go into the cylinder head department, the blowers, and learn the whole car. Learn ignition, learn the wiring and everything.” Right now she doesn’t have the experience in other departments, but her natural inquisitiveness has her wanting to know how the entire car operates.
“Maybe 10 or 15 years down the road we could talk about being crew chief. I think right now, I don’t even want to look that far.”
When Kaylynn first came on the scene with Terry McMillen’s Top Fuel team, she hid her femininity, something she had done since childhood. Growing up, she thought she really needed to be a tomboy to be part of racing, she thought she had to be ‘one of the guys’. That’s changed, thanks to women racers like Erica Enders who pronounced, “The race car doesn’t know whether you’re male or female. It doesn’t.”
As she ramps up the confidence, you’ll find Kaylynn Simmons wearing “a full face of makeup” and indulging her femininity. She lives outside Indianapolis with her fiancé Blake, who has been working on Leah Pruett’s Top Fuel dragster. In the off-season she fosters dogs, hoping to help them find their forever homes, enjoys DIY home remodeling and owns two Triumph motorcycles. She and a group of friends are building a bracket dragster to race.
But her femininity is turning out to be a big part of her life. “I really love the fashion industry, I love dressing up, I do love being a girl. I”m always trying to switch it up and I realize I can come to the track and be who I am and not have to solely be one of the guys.”
WOW, what a remarkable woman. Her work ethic is second to none. She has achieved so much in a short period of time. I sure hope I’m around to see her fulfill her dream of becoming a crew chief. And to put icing on the cake, she rescues dogs(my favorite people). Thank You Kaylynn and good luck.
Great job!