Anita Alongside

THE LAMATTINA Top Fuel dragster is adorned with special ‘My Little Anita #ponypowerforever’ livery in tribute to eight-year-old Anita Board, who tragically lost her life while driving a Junior Dragster at the Perth Motorplex in November last year.

Anita’s parents Ian and Sonja and her elder sister Zara were at Willowbank for the New Year’s Thunder event in January, where the new wrap was unveiled, and Kelly once again had pony power on board when she won in Sydney a fortnight later.

“Emotionally it hit a lot of us pretty hard,” says Kelly, herself a former Juniors racer. “I was emotional during the trophy presentation in Sydney; I wanted to recognise the family in my speech and it choked me up.”

Kelly says her main objective with running the tribute was to help give Anita’s family a positive experience back at the race track.

“The family was over for the Queensland event and there were a couple of strange things that occurred that made us think Anita was there with us,” Kelly explains. “Somebody spilled a tray of sausage rolls all through the cockpit of the Top Fuel car! Such a random thing to happen, but then Anita’s parents told us that she used to sit in her Junior Dragster while her dad was working on it and eat sausage rolls! So we really felt like Anita was there looking over us.”

Kelly, along with the entire drag racing community, is at a loss to understand how such a tragedy occurred with the current stringent safety measures in place.

“The safety was in place; sometimes things just happen and it’s unexplainable,” she says. “We all understand there are dangers in our sport, but this was a one-in-a-million thing. It was a freak accident, and freak accidents happen in all ranges of sport.

“Hopefully people realise that drag racing is not a bad thing; it is a great sport for kids to participate in. What happened was a tragedy, but the sport is not a bad thing.”