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Tumbling her stock car down grassy embankments is not unusual for Brittany Liggett of St. Margaret's Church in Rotterdam Junction, but she always dusts herself off and finishes the race.

Faced with discrimination from several male drivers on the track at Fonda Speedway - often in the form of bumping into her car - Ms. Liggett makes it look easy for a woman to compete in a man's sport.

She's held her own over the years as her love for the automotive field grew into a calling.

At 19, Ms. Liggett already holds a two-year automotive degree from Hudson Valley Community College in Troy and works full-time for her family's auto repair and towing business in Scotia.

She relishes her fast-paced life, whether she's rescuing drivers from ditches in the middle of the night for work or racing every Saturday from April to September for play.

Possessed of a confident, relaxed manner, Ms. Liggett draws on her Catholic faith. She prays before every race for safety and to calm the butterflies in her stomach.

"I just take it everywhere I go," she said of her faith. When she loses a car part in the shop, for example, she prays to St. Anthony - a habit she learned from her grandmother.

Ms. Liggett's interest in autos stems back to elementary school, when she watched her father work on cars in the driveway as a hobby. He also towed cars on his flatbed truck on a freelance basis, years before opening his own business.

When Ms. Liggett was six years old, she came back from Mass one Sunday to find a black and red, motorized cart with throttle control on the family's lawn. It was a reward for good grades.

Go, cart
At seven, she started racing go-carts. Spiteful boys would bump her car and cause it to spin out, she remembered.

"It was kind of hard at first," she said. "There were many times I wanted to give up, but my mom said, 'You're better than that.'"

One such collision caused her to lose control and left her car damaged. But she returned and won first prize, a purple bicycle.

Ms. Liggett contended with injuries off the track, too. When she fell at recess during school and sprained her right ankle, she was still pressing the gas pedal in a race a few days later.

"She was not going to give up," said Maureen Liggett, her mother. "That's Brittany."

The young racer snagged more than 100 go-cart wins, including a championship. She adorned one cart with the Tasmanian devil, another with flames.

Ms. Liggett grew a tough skin in high school in Scotia, when she was sometimes teased for being a girl working at a Chevy dealership through the Capital Region Career & Technical School in Albany.

Previously, she had taken a small engines course, learning to break apart and rebuild machines like lawnmowers.

Today, she's in her third year racing stock cars, a more expensive hobby than go-carting. Her car's chassis cost $2,000, the body close to $1,000. Four tires - which last just five races - typically run the family $600.

Pink decals accent the car - not to flaunt the racer's femininity, but to honor her mother, a breast cancer survivor.

Sponsorship helps offset the costs of driving. Races also offer rewards of up to $300; Ms. Liggett has only received prizes of $50 at most, but that hasn't slowed her down.

One weekend in early August, she placed 21st out of 31 cars. Many drivers have more experience than her; some are in their 50s. She's proud of herself for simply making it to Fonda Speedway.

"Everybody says if you can race Fonda, you can race anywhere," Ms. Liggett told The Evangelist.

Her car, categorized in the 602 class, accelerates up to 80 miles per hour with a two-speed transmission and reverse option. (Off the track, she drives a silver 2003 Ford F-250.)

Home practice
Ms. Liggett is one of four family members working in their Scotia-based firm, which has survived its first four years in the fickle towing and repair business.

Her job is "fun. It's always something different," she said. "We're lucky we sit down for dinner; you take the good with the bad."

Her parents tell tales of drunken drivers crashing or irresponsible teenagers stealing their parents' cars, but some of the cases are honest accidents. Ms. Liggett's favorite calls involve helping drivers who slip on ice in the winter.

Her brother Jeremy, 21, usually tags along to help her hook the winch cable onto vehicles and load them onto a flatbed truck. He graduated from the same automotive program as his sister.

The hardest part of the business, Ms. Liggett says, is interacting with customers. Some skip out on their bills; some vent their frustration with the police on the company's employees.

At the Fonda Speedway, Mrs. Liggett worries for her daughter weekly, but keeps a stone face. She often sits separately from her family, where she won't hear the crowd commenting on the presence of a female driver on the track.

At the encouragement of her mother, Ms. Liggett has learned to keep her cool when men purposefully drive their cars into hers, but she's not immune to retaliation if it causes an accident.

"I'm a whole different person on the track," she explained.[[In-content Ad]]

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