19-year-old tries to fit in two different worlds

Thursday, May 14, 1998 | 6:47 a.m.

By JOE MACENKA

AP Sports Writer

It began innocently enough when she bought her first car, a 1967 Camaro, with money she had saved from her part-time job at a neighborhood grocery store.

"I was sort of the produce girl," Cristen Powell said with a small, nervous giggle typical of many 19-year-olds.

Powell quickly evolved into the fastest high-school girl in drag racing. These days people refer to her as the fastest young woman in the sport or even the fastest college student.

Powell prefers none of those labels.

"I want to be the fastest person," she said.

Powell took a big step toward that goal last May when, at age 18 and still several weeks short of her high-school graduation, she won the Top Fuel championship at the NHRA's Mopar Parts Nationals in Englishtown, N.J.

Powell returns to the event this weekend to defend her title, but this time around she's balancing racing with her life as a freshman psychology major at Linfield College, about an hour's drive from her family's home in Portland, Ore.

Powell didn't race last weekend, opting instead to write a 30-page psychology paper, and earlier this week she sandwiched two classes each on Tuesday and Thursday around a trip to New York for promotional appearances. After her second class Thursday, she got right back in a plane and zipped back to the East Coast for a weekend of racing.

"This week's pretty unusual," she said. "I know it's not normal, but it's a big deal being the defending champion. It's exciting. And besides, I think when I'm back at school I am pretty normal."

She counts singing, snowboarding and swimming among her hobbies. Drag racing used to fit into that category as well, but even though she plans to compete in just 16 of this year's 22 events, it has become what amounts to a full-time business venture.

Competing for a team owned by Andy Evans, whose reach stretches from NASCAR to the Indy Racing League, Powell recently landed solid financial backing in the form of a primary sponsorship from Reebok.

The team's compound at race sites is regarded as one of the best-equipped on the circuit, and it's a popular one as well. Powell routinely has to work through crowds of several hundred autograph-seekers on her way to and from her dragster.

It's a long way from her days as a 15-year-old who fell in love with a Camaro and decided she wanted to try racing.

"I guess I've been pretty surprised by her natural ability," said her father, Casey Powell, himself a former drag racer.

Once his daughter showed an interest in racing, Powell had the financial ability to help get her started. Powell founded Sequent Computer Systems Inc., a developer of business computing network systems. The company has about 1,300 employees at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore.

Her father sent her to Frank Hawley's Drag Racing School, where she earned a competition license before passing her Oregon driver's license exam.

She entered her first national event in the Alcohol category at the 1995 Sears Craftsman Nationals, where she took the top qualifying spot with a speed of more than 241 mph.

She set six track records in 1996 before making the jump to Top Fuel last year. Then she broke the 300-mph mark 10 times, including a top speed of 307.27.

Last May 18, she stunned the sport's establishment at Englishtown by consecutively defeating Kenny Bernstein, Cory McClenathan and eventual 1997 series champion Gary Scelzi. She won the event with a victory over Bruce Sarver.

Her title did not come without cost, however. To fly to New Jersey and compete for the weekend, Powell had to skip her senior prom.

"She's pretty unassuming about everything that's happened to her, but she's also incredibly confident," her father said. "Still, though, she's very much aware that it's a grown-up world. It's not a place that kids are accommodated, so I think she's been very proud of the fact that she's made the transition from one-girl anomaly to, 'Hey, I put my helmet on like everybody else."'

Her plan is to keep racing dragsters and finish college in five years. After that, nothing is certain.

There already are indications that a switch to another form of racing might be in the works. Powell competed in the celebrity race earlier this year at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

For her 19th birthday, her father gave her a three-day course at the Richard Petty Driving School. She plans to fit the stock-car course into her schedule this summer.

"I'm not sure what's going to happen," she said of her post-college plans. "I feel like I'm on top now, and if I switch to a different kind of racing, I'll just have to start all over again."