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What: Ride of Your Life: A Race Car Driver’s Journey

Author: Lyn St. James

Publisher: Hyperion Books

Price: $22.95

Janet Guthrie was the first and Sarah Fisher is the fastest, but Lyn St. James has been the most persistent and most durable of the women who have raced in the Indianapolis 500. She has been in seven 500s, from 1992 to 2000.

This is not your usual race driver’s book, chronicling the ups and downs of a career. It focuses on St. James’ frustrations trying to find sponsorship for the 2000 Indy 500, then the excruciating moments trying to qualify -- first hitting the wall and then squeezing into the field at the final moment -- and finally the embarrassment when she and Fisher, the only two women in the race, crashed into each another.

“Major sport sponsorships are a precious finite resource ... we’re all going after a piece of the same size pie, and unfortunately for those of us in Indy car racing, NASCAR has put a padlock on the bakery,” she writes.

That, she says, forces drivers to become split personalities, slick pitchmen pounding the pavement for money, and intense athletes in search of speed.

“One could not exist without the other,” she declares.

Her book tells how she did it.

-- Shav Glick