"That should do it." Jen sighed as she finished tightening down the suspension. The heat race had gone well enough - she was in the main event and wouldn't be running in the B-Main, but she had barely made it after some front suspension pieces came a bit loose - turned out there was a stripped bolt.

She took one last glance at her father's car before turning to put her tools away. She wiped away some sweat from her brow - being a lycanthrope had a LOT of benefits, but being covered in fur under the hot summer sun could get uncomfortable really quick. Now she understood why dogs and cats shed in the summer - fortunately lycanthropes don't.

Jen then took a moment to reflect on things. This was her third year racing in the Midwest Supermodified Association, but the first time she had qualified for the Hy-Miler Nationals main event. Of course, her first year she hadn't even tried with her brand-new car being prone to mechanical failure. Her father had always said she would race as soon as she built her own car, and she kind of slapped it together quickly. Her first event she wasn't even allowed in the heats because she'd mismeasured an almost embarrassing number of components -most notably the top wing- and the only major component of the car that was in line with what few rules there are was the engine.

Things had changed a lot since then - she did a lot of running around as chief mechanic for Xero's AMA Sportbike team, and had to leave a lot of the maintenance work up to a hired mechanic. He wasn't great at figuring out setup, but he was more than sufficient at applying the setups Jen needed and was excellent at the standard maintenance.

Too bad he turned out to be quite the bigot after The Event had occurred. People part of an AMA team, they saw back home that Jen and Xero had been "victims" of said event, and her hired mechanic decided the best course of action was to fuck up her race car - it took almost a month with the assistance of her father and Xero to rebuild the damage, but Jen got the last laugh.

Jen dragged him out of the shop by his balls. He'd tried to sue, but in doing so he confessed to the vandalism and only ended up facing criminal charges.

Jen's father took the car into his shop for maintenance from then on, with his mechanics being considerably more trustworthy, but Jen was now doing the bulk of the on-track work herself. The strength and energy she had now that she was a lycanthrope made it a rather easy thing to handle, and she also found she excelled on the track when she had firsthand knowledge of the work done.

Jen had yet to take her first win, but she was finally inching closer. At the rate things had been going, maybe next year she'd run the ISMA King of Wings at Oswego Speedway and take a shot at being the first female winner. The "Queen" of Wings rather than the King. It had a nice ring to it. Some competitors had derisively referred to her as "Princess" when she first started racing. She'd love to get back at them - though they HAD warmed up to her over time.

A voice crackled over the infield loudspeaker, breaking Jen out of her thoughts of times past, "MSA B-Main to the gate."

A push truck rolled up to the car next to hers, and began pushing it out to the line for the last chance qualification race. Jen gave her father in the supermodified's driver seat a quick little thumbs-up, "Good luck, old man!"

---

Many thanks to my friend  Maverikat for getting this image from  MaxBlackrabbit. Max made a slight mistake in the original image, putting the engine on the wrong side of Jen's car, so I have flipped the image here. I made sure to preserve Max's little identifier in the corner, though.

For the curious, here's a look at a previous running of the real-life Hy-Miler Nationals at Sandusky Speedway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCWg7dEKRm4

 jennetwolfskunk belongs to herself