Glass Has Smashing Off-Road Debut : Crash Into the Wall Takes Her Out of Saturday Gran Prix

No black driver has ever driven a car in the Indianapolis 500, and only one woman, Janet Guthrie, has ever done it.

Cheryl Glass would like to change both of those statistics.

Glass, 24, has her sights set on the 1987 Indianapolis 500. Toward that goal, although it may appear to be an unusual detour, she was here Thursday to test-drive a Toyota pickup for Saturday night’s Off Road Gran Prix in the Coliseum.

It was the first time she had driven an off-road racer. In fact, it was the first time she had ever seen an off-road race course.

Firsts have long been her hallmark, though, and Thursday was no exception.

Glass crashed, and neither she nor the truck will be doing any racing Saturday night.

Glass and her riding mechanic, Jim Biroff, were cruising down the front straightaway at the Coliseum at a good rate of speed when she suddenly came upon a high bump and her inexperience told.

Instead of hitting the gas and flying the truck off the rise, she hit the brakes and the truck nosed over, hit head-down and jammed itself up against the wall. The impact pushed the steering column back toward her.

She was conscious and talked with promoter Mickey Thompson and the safety crew, but it took the Hurst “Jaws of Life” to cut her out of the cab. The whole roof had to be cut away.

She was taken to Daniel Freeman Hospital, where X-rays were taken of her bruised chest. When they proved negative, she was released.

The Seattle woman wasn’t so lucky in her previous crash, one that occurred in a sprint car.

On a warm Arizona evening in October of 1980, she was driving in the C main event of the Western World Championships at Manzanita Raceway in Phoenix. She was on top of the world. She had been rookie of year at Skagit Speedway in Washington, and she and Al Unser Jr. of Albuquerque, N.M., were the hottest teen-ager drivers in the country, and both of them had made the show.

Manzanita is a difficult and frightening track for sprint cars, a half-mile of clay that slopes upward to a fence that can send top-heavy sprinters spinning and tumbling and crashing at any moment. Glass was attempting to pass a couple of cars on the outside--the high side--of the track at about 120 m.p.h. when she “ran out of cushion,” as drivers say when their cars lose traction and begin to slide away from them.

“The back end got loose, slid around, smacked the wall and climbed a 20-foot fence,” Glass recalled. “The car started rolling along the fence. Thirteen times it went over and then it dropped back on the race track and tumbled end- over-end three or four times. The reason I know the numbers is because I’ve seen the tapes so many times in slow motion.”

Amazingly, no broken bones resulted from the terrifying ordeal, but the shaking her body took is still with her nearly five years later.

“All the blood vessels were damaged in my eyes, and I couldn’t see for several hours,” she said. “It damaged all the soft tissue, muscles and ligaments in my body. Unfortunately, they aren’t very good at fixing things like that. It really messed up my face, head, neck, back, shoulders and knees. I’ve had four knee operations trying to repair the ligaments.”

Many race people figured that was the last they would see of Cheryl Glass. Why would a bright young woman, not yet 19, already in her second year of college as an electrical engineer, with a modeling career and a ceramic doll-making business on the side, want to race again after that?

“Once I realized I was still alive after all the bouncing around, I never doubted I would race again,” was Cheryl’s answer.

“The worst part was in the hospital. Every time I’d watch the news on TV, they’d run replays of my accident. I spent about three months convalescing at home, but as soon as I was walking, I felt I might as well get back in the car.”

Less than four months after the accident, she was in Florida racing with the World of Outlaws, the toughest, roughest bunch of open-wheel race car drivers in the country.

“I stayed with sprint cars for about three years, but they are so dangerous,” she said. “I finally quit because I felt I should try something else. I drove champ dirt cars in Indiana and then tried the Can-Am in Dallas. I would have run the whole Can-Am series this year but it kind of collapsed and I’ve been busy with other things.”

To keep her sharp, Cheryl’s father, Marvin, a vice president of Pacific Northwest Bell, bought an old Penske PC-6 Indy car for her--not to race, but to test herself at Seattle International Raceway. So far, that’s as close as she has ever been to an Indy car race.

“I expect to be at Indianapolis in two years,” she said with remarkable self-assurance for one so lacking in experience. “I am confident of my ability. I think I have shown what I can do in a race car and I hope to have an Indy car team next year to condition myself for the 500. I don’t want to jump into it before I’m ready, but if I run most of the CART series in ‘86, I should be there in ’87.”

Her last race was July 8, 1984, when she finished seventh in the 2-liter class of the Dallas Can-Am.

So how did she land a ride in a truck in an off-road race in the Coliseum?

“I have been doing promotional work for Coors, acting as a corporate spokesperson at women’s meetings, conventions, places like that,” she said.

“I talk about my experiences in auto racing, and my experiences with the business end of racing. Coors sponsors the Toyota trucks, so when they found that Toyota had a third truck available for this race, they asked me if I would like to drive it.”

Her teammates were to be Ivan (Ironman) Stewart of La Mesa, and Rod Millen, a New Zealand native who now lives in Santa Ana. She was entered in the Grand National Truck class.

“I haven’t seen an off-road race, but that doesn’t bother me because I had never seen a sprint car race before I drove in one,” she said Wednesday afternoon. “I saw a tape of one and I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks interesting having to jump all those hills. I’m looking forward to it.”

Then, early Thursday afternoon along came accident No. 2.

“Sure loved it while it lasted,” she said.