writer: Roel F. Concepcion
photographer: Jonathen Wong, Carter Jung
I don't wake up past 11 a.m. on weekdays, and sadly, later than that on weekends. I can't stand morning people and avoid early meetings. Despite this unwarranted hatred for morning, I was excited to meet Julie Stepan at the scheduled time of 8 a.m. at Englishtown Raceway in New Jersey. This not only marked the first time in months I saw the sunrise (which still comes up from the east, as I suspected), but it was also a chance to meet the woman the industry has been raving about since she first started her professional drag racing career.
Waking up this early had side effects, however, by way of weird thoughts squirming through my mind:
"Will she be hot enough to justify waking up this early?"
"Does she really know how to race a car or is she just over-hyped because she has breasts?"
"Would she mind playing a lil' game called 'Just the Tip'?"
I was anxious for these questions to be answered. Even if they weren't, at least I had something to talk about, since I didn't prepare any questions or bring a tape recorder.
The entire track was empty, save a couple of employees and wayward birds searching for a place to perch. Her trailer was parked behind the grandstands, amid a sea of other trailers. When Julie came out, I remembered thinking that complete gearhead, wrench-twisting, race-car drivers should not look as gorgeous as she did that day. The Marty Ladwig-owned, '06 Chevy Cobalt that she regularly drives in the all-motor class pales in comparison to her petite 5'2" frame and slight mid-Texan accent. We began to talk, and I discovered immediately that she was far from being the Anna Kournikova of this sport.
Her unquenchable thirst to win every quarter-mile pass was prevalent, even through her unsettlingly quiet demeanor.
Julie talked a notch above a whisper and smiled demurely as she wiped down the Cobalt. Her conversation of choice was about the race and condition of her car, which she constantly kept an eye on. I only found out details about her life later on, after discovering her MySpace page. Julie just turned 21 and likes to wear pink. She enjoys yoga, shopping, and traveling and declares that she only reads Cosmopolitan and National Dragster.
I saw her again on the track later in the day. A furrowed brow and pursed lips replaced her soft smile. Once she sat on top of her lone Recaro carbon Kevlar seat, she transformed into a firecracker. Her quiet manner was thrust into an atomic rage, triggered by the start of the 2.4L ECOTEC engine. Julie's inherent driving talent gleamed through the side window when she staged on the drag strip. Her burnouts are explosive. When the smoke settled and the tree turned green, the latest drag racing prodigy kicked the gas pedal, rocketing her Cobalt up toward fist-clenching speeds. Although she didn't win her class that weekend, I was offered a glimpse of what the future might hold for her, and it's beyond being the mere object of every race lover's fantasy.
I met up with Julie a couple of weeks later at her home in Valencia, California. Her melons were perfect, ripe for lips to suckle and soft to the finger's touch. I cupped them firmly as though they were basketballs, gently squeezing them like water balloons; delicate and ready to burst. She didn't mind my passionate caress of her melons. She also let me touch her bananas, apples, and other fruit spread across the plate as we talked shop while eating breakfast.
"I love eating fruit in the morning," Julie explains, "Sometimes, I eat cereal because I don't like eating heavy." She gets up to retrieve her laptop, still talking about her snack habits and their role on how well she performs during race day. "On race weekends, I only eat fruit throughout the day," she says, staring at the computer screen.