OPEN ROAD AHEAD

When is a woman driver going to seriously challenge in the Indianapolis 500? Or the Daytona 500?

A better question might be:

Why should they? You don’t see Lindsay Davenport volleying with Pete Sampras, Lisa Leslie trading dunks with Shaquille O’Neal, or Juli Inkster matching birdies with Tiger Woods. So why should women race against men?

One reason is, women drivers rebel against “powder puff” races. No one says “powder puff” tennis, or “powder puff” golf, yet when women race only against other women, there is that stigma attached.

Perhaps that’s because women have shown they can race with men.

“Racing a car is the one sport where women can compete equally with men,” says Lyn St. James, a veteran of six Indianapolis 500s. “Look at what Shirley Muldowney and a number of women have done in straight-line [drag] racing. There is no reason we can’t be as successful in oval or road racing.”

Muldowney won top-fuel drag racing championships in 1977, 1980 and 1982. She remains the only female champion to have won one of the National Hot Rod Assn. nitro-fuel classes. Angelle Seeling finished second in top-fuel motorcycles last year.

Janet Guthrie was the first woman driver at Indianapolis in 1977, yet in 23 years since, only one other woman, St. James, has qualified for the 500.

A few women, such as Sue Christian and Ethel Mobley, drove in major NASCAR races in the late 1940s, but Guthrie was the first in the modern era. She drove in 33 Winston Cup races, but since then, no other woman has been in more than five.

It’s not because the promoters don’t want them.

“Females are the missing link in racing,” says H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, one of stock car racing’s most successful promoters and president of Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C. “If a woman lined up next to Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the front row, say five years from now, the excitement would bring the speedway to a halt.

“The most dramatic surge in ticket sales I have ever seen was the day Janet Guthrie qualified for a race.”

Toward that end, St. James organized a women’s racing league, the Women’s Global GT Series, which ran six races last year with the American LeMans sports car series.

“The series really went well,” St. James says. “Our expectations were high, but we exceeded them, as far as the quality of competition was concerned. We had nearly 150 queries. [This] year is looking good too.

“We still need to penetrate the female market with our product. We need to put the message across that women are capable of winning races, that they drive hard and put on a good show.”

St. James insists, however, that her desire is not to create a woman’s series, but to showcase the best women drivers so that they can get opportunities against men in such popular series as Winston Cup, Busch Grand National and ARCA stock car races, and CART and Indy Racing League open-wheel events.

“The goal, for me, is not to compare racing with women’s tennis or golf,” she says. “We have no need to have a women’s division in racing, but we need a series like this to highlight what women can accomplish behind the wheel, to get their names out as good candidates for careers in racing.”

She advised drivers such as Shawna Robinson, Sarah Fisher and others to not give up their present racing programs to drive in her series. Robinson drives in ARCA and Fisher hopes to compete in the IRL this season.

One of the major roadblocks facing women, says former motorcycle and truck racer Tammy Jo Kirk, is the way most people view women in racing.

“A classic picture of a young guy going racing is him underneath a car, twisting a wrench, while his girlfriend sits by, sipping a Coke and handing him a tool when he asks for it,” she says.

“You would never see a guy sitting by like that, handing tools to his girlfriend, covered with grease and oil, underneath the car. I was in racing for 34 years and it just doesn’t happen that way. There is no place for romance in racing, if you’re a woman.

“Girls will accept playing second fiddle to a bike or a car, but guys don’t accept it.”

The most telling stumbling block for women in racing, however, is the same as it is for men: money.

“I don’t care who you are, you’ve got to have financial backing from somewhere,” says Kirk, who was a champion dirt-track motorcycle racer before switching to four-wheelers. “Sponsors are leery of women because of the possibility of their getting pregnant and not being able to finish their commitment.

“If a woman gets married and has a kid, there is no time for racing, but a guy can get married, have kids, and keep on racing. When you talk to sponsors, they think about things like that.”

Shawna Robinson is an example. She was moving up the racing ladder in 1994 when she was the second-best rookie in NASCAR’s Busch Grand National series. Then she left to raise a family--a boy named Tanner and a girl named Samantha.

Last February, at 34 and after four years away from the track, she returned and finished second in ARCA’s flagship race at Daytona.

“You have no idea how much I missed this,” she says. “Driving race cars is my life. It’s what I want to do, what I’ve always wanted to do.”

Robinson will run a partial ARCA schedule this year in a Ford owned by Michael Kranefuss, who is also co-owner of Penske- Kranefuss Racing, with Jeremy Mayfield its Winston Cup driver.

“I’m excited about going back to Daytona,” she says. “I got more exposure out of finishing second there last year than any 10 races in a Busch Grand National car. I needed that to gain the respect I lost from being out four years.”

During her absence, Robinson became an interior decorator in Lake Norman, Fla., where she capitalized on her background. Among her clients are drivers Ernie Irvan and Michael Waltrip, and crew chiefs Larry McReynolds and Todd Parrott.

“Decorating is something for me to fall back on,” she says. “I definitely don’t want that as a career if I can have one driving race cars.”

Racing is dotted with second- and even third-generation drivers, sons following fathers in most instances because they were exposed to racing as youngsters.

“When you see dads giving their daughters a chance at local tracks, as well as their sons, you’ll see women having a better chance of succeeding,” says Patty Moise, who has driven in several Winston Cup races and is married to Busch driver Elton Sawyer.

In 1986, she ran a lap at 217.498 mph at Talladega Superspeedway in a Buick, a record for women.

“My dad raced as a hobby,” she says. “My brothers weren’t interested in racing, but I was, but my mother wouldn’t let me get into it until I finished college.

“She had me doing all the little girl things, though, like dancing, sewing. I shocked my teachers when I gave my ambition as wanting to be a Blue Angel pilot. In the meantime, though, all the boys who I would race against later were getting important seat time. You can’t overemphasize how important it is to start young. That’s something few girls have a chance to do.”

“Women have been very supportive of me at the racetrack, yelling encouragement, holding up signs in the infield, things like that.

“A mother once told me that she told her daughter, ‘I’d rather have you be a race driver than a race queen.’ I thought that was cool.”

Knowing how difficult it was for her not to race until she finished college, Moise believes the way to move women into the top 10 of NASCAR or CART is to have a number of them start young, as young as 6 or 7, in karts.

“More women are needed at the bottom, if we are going to reach a peak in the pyramid,” she says. “The more there are at the lower levels, the more there are who will have a chance to reach the top.”

Even when they do start young, however, girls are quicker to drop out of racing when they reach high school age.

“Up to 16, you can find girls very competitive with boys in karting,” says Doug Stokes, executive director of the International Karting Assn. from 1979 to 1984. “Even with girls who are winners, you’ll find most of them quitting between 16 and 20.”

Another vexing problem for women is that sponsors or promoters want to gimmick them up.

Muldowney, for instance, had to resort to calling herself “Cha Cha”--a name she despised--to gain attention for her racing program in her early years. Once she had won the NHRA top-fuel championship, she couldn’t wait to tell reporters, “No more Cha Cha. I’m just Shirley.”

Still, she continued to drive a pink dragster, another powder puff-like gimmick.

Tammy Jo Kirk had a similar situation when she was sponsored by the Lovable Bra Co. Because it was what the marketing director wanted, she drove a pink truck in NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck series.

“It was like a bull’s-eye for guys,” she says. “A girl will always need a little extra because if a guy loses to her, he’ll get a lot of ribbing from the other guys. I noticed that when I was about to pass a guy, he’d usually speed up and try extra hard.

“Sometimes I’d watch them, and it was something they didn’t do when a guy passed them. It was the girl-guy thing. Guys can’t stand to hear other guys say, ‘That girl beat you.’ ”

Robinson believes that the next woman challenging for a Winston Cup ride will be from open-wheel racing, such as sprint, midget or Silver Crown cars.

“Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart have turned things around, as far as preparing for Winston Cup is concerned,” she says. “If I had to pick one girl out to make it, it would be Sarah Fisher. Before Gordon and Stewart, the way was through lesser-class stock cars. That was the way it was done Down South, before NASCAR went nationwide.”

Fisher, 19, is a second-generation racer who started in karts and gained her reputation winning in winged sprint cars. Her father, Dave, was a sprint car driver in Ohio. He has been the guiding light in her career.

“I didn’t grow up with dolls and all that other girl stuff,” she says. “My love has always been racing.”

Fisher is expected to get an Indy Racing League ride this season with Derrick Walker’s team.

Eddie Cheever, 1998 Indianapolis 500 winner, witnessed Fisher testing at Texas Motor Speedway and was impressed.

“That girl is good,” he says. “A few guys around here could take lessons from her.”

Women drivers weren’t the only females unseen in major league motor racing not too many years ago.

It wasn’t until 1971 that a woman was allowed in the garage area at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Dusty Brandel, then of the Glendale News-Press and now president of the American Auto Racing Writers & Broadcasters Assn., was the first woman newspaper reporter allowed into racing’s inner sanctum.

A year later, at Ontario Motor Speedway, she was the first woman to receive a pass to NASCAR garages.

Before then, even owners of teams were not allowed in the garages, if they were women. Bessie Lee Paoli, owner of the second-place car in the 1953 Indy 500, had to watch from the grandstand. It was considered unlucky, as were peanuts, or the color green, for women to be in the garages.

“The one place where women were never barred or hassled was drag racing,” says Brandel. “I remember in 1964, I was given access to the pits at Pomona.

“Maybe that’s one reason why women have been so successful in drag racing, because they were always made to feel welcome. It sure wasn’t that way before 1971 in either Indy cars or NASCAR. We were flat out not welcome.”

Today, the garages of all race tracks are open to women, from reporters, broadcasters and public relations personnel to mechanics and team officials.

One, Diane Holl, is an engineer on the CART circuit and will work with Della Penna Motorsports on Richie Hearn’s Reynard this year. Another, Christy Whalen, is a gearbox specialist with the Indy Racing League, servicing eight teams.

“Women make up 44% of NASCAR fans,” says Wheeler. “One of these days, women drivers will be running in the top 10 in Winston Cup. When that happens, racing will end up on the cover of Time magazine.”