Great Balls Of Fire

Pop! Boom! Whoosh! The sounds of fired-up afterburners signal the race is on. Sleek 27-foot-long, jet-propelled dragsters roar down the quarter mile track, going from 0 to 100 mph in one second and reaching speeds of 280 mph in about five seconds, the average length of time it takes to reach the finish line. Blink and you’ve missed it.

Kathryn “Kat” Redner doesn’t blink. She couldn’t be more focused, more excited. The 19-year-old college student is looking at her future, thanks to Elaine Larsen and her Larsen Motorsports team. 

Putting wheels on jet engines and women in the driver’s seat have been Elaine’s goals ever since she and her high school sweetheart and eventual husband Chris combined his engineering skills and knowledge of aircraft engines with her passion for dragster racing, forming Larsen Motorsports 20 years ago. For the daughter of Midwest Mennonite parents, it was a major entrepreneurial leap of faith. 

Elaine also has a passion for community outreach, STEAM – science, technology, engineering, art and math – advocacy, and providing unique hands-on experiences to students. Last year Larsen Motorsports, an award-winning innovator in jet racing, teamed up with the Florida Institute of Technology to study and build high-performance jet dragsters in a 33,000-square-foot, research-and-development center on Palm Bay Road, minutes away from the institute’s Melbourne campus.