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In the world according to Liz Halliday, days are fueled by horsepower. There's just one problem -- they're too short.
"I could really do with a 36-hour day," says the never-idle 28-year-old professional race car driver and horse rider. "I'm requesting that from the powers that be."
This weekend, Halliday will try to become the first woman in the modern era of the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France to win her class and reach the podium -- and the first overall in 74 years -- while driving against a world-class field of nearly 150 male competitors.
The American Le Mans Series, in which Halliday competes with 22-year-old teammate Clint Field for the small-scale Intersport Racing team, and the equestrian season run parallel, from March to October. That means eight months of the year the California-bred Halliday is continent-hopping from her home in England to one competition to the next.
But her crammed calendar has seemed to power her performance on the track, not slow it down. Halliday and Field placed first in the LMP2 class at the first two ALMS races of the season at Sebring, Fla., and Houston and third at Lexington, Ohio, giving the pair the class points lead and Halliday a lot of respect from competitors.
"They had the better end over us for two times in the first two races," says Sascha Maassen, who along with teammate Lucas Luhr is second in the class standings behind Halliday and Field. "She didn't have any mistakes, so that was quite impressive."
In just 11 total starts, Halliday has won five races, including three in her second season last year.
Even though endurance racing in the USA attracts a small fraction of the attention Americans give races such as the IRL's Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR's Daytona 500, the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France has planetary proportions.
"This is the World Cup. This is the Olympics," says Danny Sullivan, winner of the 1985 Indianapolis 500 and television commentator for CBS. "This is the granddaddy of endurance racing."
For the race, which begins Saturday afternoon in France, Halliday and Field will team with 47-year-old veteran Duncan Dayton in a Lola B05.
Grueling best describes Le Mans, with its 81/2-mile track through residential areas and long straight-aways that allow for speeds of up to 200 mph.
To combat endurance racing's physical strain from the excessive G-forces, Halliday has made cardiovascular exercise and weight training a top priority. In addition to riding four or five horses a day, she kickboxes, downhill skis and has recently taken up rowing.
"The more physically fit I am, the more mentally fit I am," she says.
For Halliday, it was riding before racing. Falling in love with horses as a toddler, she began riding at 8. Her father, who used to hitchhike to Sebring in his 20s, got Halliday in her first car at 16, considered late for most professionals.
"Sometimes I think, 'Where would I be if I'd been go-karting since age 8?' But I don't regret anything," says Halliday, who hopes to be selected to the U.S. equestrian team at the 2012 London Olympics.
Sullivan says he's impressed with Intersport's success as a relatively small operation compared to the big boys of Audi, Corvette and Porsche. Add that with Halliday's relative inexperience and full-time dedication to two sports, her accomplishments are striking.
"She can drive a car well, and she can ride a horse well," Sullivan says. "One's just got a lot more horses than the other."
*At motorsports.usatoday.com, former Le Mans winner A.J. Foyt writes that miscommunication likely cost his IRL team a top-10 finish in Texas.
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