nieworld.com

Teachers

Students

Families

Projects

Email NIE

The Gender Gap:
Girls Gaining Ground Slowly but Surely

Sunday, February 9, 2003

The Missing Minorities

For modern female drivers like Shawna Robinson, men are less of a problem than money.

By KEN WILLIS | Motorsports Writer

DAYTONA BEACH — Janet Guthrie was standing in the back of the press box, just an hour or so after finishing her first NASCAR race, the 1976 World 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Up front, race winner David Pearson was wrapping up his post-race press conference.

Guthrie's presence had been requested because she was the first serious female NASCAR racer since the sport's earliest days. As Pearson made his way out of the press box, he spotted Guthrie. The low-key but immensely talented man known as the Silver Fox slid up to Guthrie's side and put an arm around her, then cracked to the assembled media, "Now, if you'll excuse me . . . me and Janet have to go shower."

Nearly 27 years later, Guthrie fondly recalls that one light moment from her maiden NASCAR voyage — "I laughed and escaped his clutches," she says now.

Today's female racers — from Shawna Robinson to Sarah Fisher to Tina Gordon — owe a lot to Janet Guthrie. Things may not always run as smoothly these days as they could, and some of that may be due to gender. But the road is definitely smoother than it would've been if Guthrie hadn't run interference more than a quarter-century ago.

And while a woman in a fireproof uniform still isn't a common sight, it's accepted now more than ever — from Daytona and Indy to the small beginner tracks, where the occasional pig-tailed hot-rodder tucks herself into the cockpit.

"We got into this because of my son," says Terri Sullivant, whose 14-year-old son, Chris, races in quarter-midget series around Central Florida. "Then after we got out there, we realized that there's no reason Mandy can't do it if she wants to."

And that's how Mandy Sullivant, two years ago at age 7, began racing the quarter-midgets on scaled-down tracks at New Smyrna Speedway and Apopka's Mid-Florida Speedway. This past year, she was one of three girls who were regulars in a program that has about 30 kids overall.

But even at that level, it still seems to matter to some, if only in subtle ways.

"The girls who seem to do well are more aggressive," says Terri Sullivant, whose family lives in Longwood. "You'll hear people say, 'She's a dirty driver.' If it was a boy, they probably wouldn't say that."

Sherry Owens, whose 14-year-old daughter Alli has been racing for two years, didn't notice much of a double standard at the quarter-midget level. But things were a bit more tense when Alli moved up in class to race with men at Barberville's Volusia Speed Park, where she began racing a four-cylinder dirt-tracker in the Pure Stock class last year.

"She had a couple of bad accidents out there," says Sherry Owens. "I think a couple of guys might've been gunning for her because they didn't think she needed to be out there."

Sherry and husband Michael, who live in South Daytona, have a couple of common worries with all racing parents. One is financing an expensive activity. "Luckily we have some friends who are mechanics," says Sherry.

The other, naturally, is safety. "It scares me, but it thrills her," says Sherry. "After one bad wreck I asked her, 'Can we quit now?' She said, 'No!' "

DODGING THE ARROWS

At that first race in Charlotte, Guthrie recalls, veteran NASCAR driver Ed Negre said that if she were to outrun him on qualifying day, he'd put his car back on the trailer, pack his stuff and go home.

"The rest of the week, he had to suffer through all sorts of offers from other drivers who were offering to help him pack," says Guthrie, who would run 33 Winston Cup races between 1976 and 1980.

That first week, Guthrie heard it all. She would never last 40 laps in that big stock car, and certainly had no chance of finishing a 600-mile marathon. She probably wouldn't even qualify, unless race officials "phonied" her qualifying time. Well, to make sure, she says, other drivers and crew chiefs gathered along the pit wall to watch her qualifying attempt — stopwatches poised.

She made the race, didn't quit early, and over the next four years posted five top-10 finishes in her 33 races. She ran two Daytona 500s (1977 and '80), with solid finishes of 12th and 11th. If that wasn't enough to show she belonged, she also proved her versatility by running Indy-cars — including three straight Indianapolis 500s (1977-79), with a best finish of ninth.

To understand the significance of Guthrie running Indy, keep in mind that up until just six years earlier, women weren't even allowed in the track's pit area.

Regardless of that run of on-track productivity, Guthrie says it all came at a price.

"Somebody once said, 'You can always tell the pioneers, because they're the ones with arrows in their back,' " says Guthrie, who now lives in Colorado. "To me, the only important thing to do was getting in the car and on the track. Everything else was just something I had to put up with."

Because she put up with it, the handful of women involved today — as well as those yet to come — are better off.

"Maybe I'm dead wrong, but it's not so much a sports phenomenon as it is a social phenomenon," says Kyle Petty, whose NASCAR career dates back to Guthrie's efforts. "Women are accepted in so many more areas in 2003 than they were in 1973. It was strictly numbers. When you had a Richard Petty come along — or a Cale Yarborough or a Buddy Baker — they had grown up racing stock cars, and they had never, ever, been on a racetrack with a woman. None. Zero.

"Now you have these kids starting in go-karts, and they race against girls when they're 8 or 9 years old. Now, you take kids that are young, they've raced with girls all along. It's not an issue for them."

Guthrie readily points out that things got better once her fellow drivers learned they could trust her on the track. But even at the very beginning, she wasn't totally alone. She recalls receiving helpful advice from Donnie Allison on the NASCAR side, A.J. Foyt and Johnny Rutherford in Indy-car. But few others.

"At the time, when somebody was nice to me, I'd always try to credit them the next time I talked to a reporter," says Guthrie. "Then I found that if I did that, the driver who was nice to me would really catch hell from the other drivers.

"One of the first guys who gave me tips about Charlotte was Donnie Allison, and I'll always be grateful for that. But 25 years later, how much can it matter? No one's gonna give him hell now, I suppose."

RISING STAR NOW STRUGGLES

When Guthrie appeared on the NASCAR scene, she was a bit of a mystery, given how her previous driving had been mostly in the low-visibility world of sportscar racing. Shawna Robinson, on the other hand, has been on the NASCAR radar for 15 years.

Her first spotlight moment came at Daytona's Speed Weeks in 1988, when she and another woman driver, Karen Schulz, battled up front in the NASCAR Dash Series race. While it looked like one of them would make serious history by winning, Schulz and Robinson ended up running second and third, behind winner Larry Caudill.

Four years ago, Robinson contended for victory at Speed Weeks again, but in a full-bodied stock car. She ran second behind Bobby Gerhart in the 200-mile ARCA event. The next year, 2000, she ran the entire ARCA season and finished sixth in points — she wasn't just the first woman to crack the top-10 in a national oval-track series, she was the first to simply complete an entire oval-track season.

But many only know Robinson for what they saw last year in her first full-time Winston Cup effort. Running for the first-year BAM Racing organization, her best finish in seven starts was a 24th at the Daytona 500. After that, she was never better than 34th. She was replaced by mid-season, but the team continued to struggle with other drivers.

"I give BAM credit for giving me the opportunity last year," says Robinson, who wasn't critical, yet realizes the up-wind battle faced by a startup franchise with a rookie driver.

NASCAR officials say their internal numbers show a female fan base of 40 percent. Those numbers reflect a varying degree of interest in the sport — being part of the "fan base" doesn't necessarily mean you can recite the finishing order of the last 10 Daytona 500s.

But if those numbers are even remotely accurate, it's conceivable that women could become the majority followers of NASCAR if they had one "of their own" behind the wheel of a front-running car.

"It would certainly be a huge plus for our sport," says Dora Taylor, NASCAR's senior manager of diversity affairs. "Not necessarily because we want to grow our fan base, but because we want to attract the best and brightest to our sport."

But it's not just a matter of getting to the top level, but running well and staying there.

"One year you're running the Daytona 500, the next year you can't even get in the ARCA race," says Robinson, noting the fickle world of auto racing. "Just trying to get money to run ARCA races seems like trying to get $5 million from someone."

EASY MONEY? HARDLY

Ah yes, the money trail. That's the road that always leads you to racing success. How fast you want to go, they say, depends on how much you want to spend. In racing, it's called "cubic dollars."

That money trail is often a maze of dead ends and hairpins to an unproven driver, and not much easier to navigate for those with moderate accomplishments. Though it seems strange that a unique product — such as a capable woman in big-league racing — could have trouble attracting sponsorship, it happens.

Sarah Fisher has been very successful in the Indy Racing League the past two years, and many assume it's just a short matter of time before she finds Victory Lane. But like so many other IRL drivers and teams, her young career often has been hamstrung by an inability to find needed funding.

"How outrageous," says Guthrie.

Same thing with Robinson, who isn't even looking for the huge Winston Cup financing. But it's nothing new.

"Twenty-five years ago, I used to hear it all the time — 'Finding a sponsor for you will be as easy as falling off a log' — but it just didn't happen," says Guthrie, who, during a time when big-money sponsors were few and far between, received limited help from Kelly Girl. "That's why I had to quit.

"I spent every day and every night for five years trying to find a sponsor. There's nothing I loved better than driving NASCAR. I loved those big cars. I loved them more than I can tell you. I regret very much I wasn't able to stay and do what I was capable of doing. I knew if I was able to continue, I would win Winston Cup races."

But what will happen first, a capable woman racer who finds a willing sponsor and takes it to a team? Or a team owner, with sponsor in hand, who takes that sponsor to a woman racer? Robinson, beaten down by the hunt for funding, votes on the latter.

"Look at drivers like Jimmie Johnson, Ryan Newman, Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch. Did any one of those drivers have to bring a sponsor to get a ride? No," says Robinson. "They've proven they can drive and they get the opportunity from an owner. But you see drivers get rides sometimes simply because they brought a sponsor along with them.

"I think the only way you're gonna see a woman get a good chance in NASCAR is for an owner to step up and put her in good equipment. I think that's gonna be the answer."

Copyright © 2009 NIE WORLD (www.nieworld.com). All content copyrighted and may not be republished without permission. The News-Journal has no control over and is not responsible for content on other Web sites. Privacy Policy.