Women in NASCAR: A second look

By Mike Mulhern.
JOURNAL REPORTER.

Published: April 22, 2008

Maybe it’s time to dust off Erin Crocker and give her another chance, and drag Sarah Fisher back to NASCAR and give her another look, now that Danica Patrick, with her first Indy-car victory, in the Japan 300, has put women-in-racing front and center again.

So Lyn St. James - the Ford driver who has been mentoring female racers for years, with marketing help from Ford Motor Company, the Detroit factory that has been most aggressive in promoting women racers over the years - may have a sellout audience for her annual summer seminar at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Women in Racing.

Patrick isn’t the only woman racer in Indy cars. Fisher is racing too, and so is Milka Duno. Fisher, three years ago, was part of a major NASCAR project by car owner Richard Childress, but Childress eventually abandoned that effort.

Of course women have been running NASCAR stockers for years, though not regularly, ever since Bill France Sr. decided in 1949 that South Carolina’s Louise Smith, a hellion on the streets, would make a good box-office draw for his new sport, and Sara Christian and Ethel Mobley quickly joined the game, too.

Smith, who died two years ago at 90, stayed active in the sport for years after quitting the wheel, with 38 wins in various NASCAR divisions; she was voted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame 10 years ago.

All that was lost until Janet Guthrie, in 1976, tried to turn her successful road-racing ventures into an Indy-car career. When she was bumped from the Indianapolis 500 field, Charlotte promoter Humpy Wheeler quickly jumped in and got her a ride in his Coca-Cola 600, and she finished 15th. She bounced around NASCAR for a while, running her last big race in 1980.

The next woman to join the NASCAR field as a regular was Patty Moise, who ran 133 Busch (now Nationwide) events between 1986 and 1998, and five Winston Cup events from 1987 to 1989. Moise, married to Elton Sawyer, who helps run Team Red Bull’s Sprint Cup operation, has been a TV announcer at times since.

During the past few years several women have tried to make it in NASCAR, with mediocre success: Shawna Robinson, Kelly Sutton, Tammy Jo Kirk, Deborah Renshaw and Tina Gordon.

But the most impressive lately has been Crocker, who burst on to the NASCAR scene in 2006, as a diversity development driver for Ray Evernham.

However Crocker, 27, with a degree in industrial and management engineering from Rensselaer (2003), has watched her NASCAR career flounder the past two years.

It’s ironic that Danica Patrick’s victory in Motegi, Japan, should be stealing the thunder from NASCAR’s own international venture last weekend in Mexico City.

But in some NASCAR circles Patrick has been privately criticized for not being willing to give NASCAR a look the past year or so, as her sports image has hit such a high. Many top Indy-car stars, including Sam Hornish Jr. and Dario Franchitti, have made the move into NASCAR, and even Juan Pablo Montoya, from Formula One. In fact, the Indy Racing League’s loss of so many top stars to NASCAR has been striking.

What happens next in the Patrick-NASCAR debate, and the whole women-in-NASCAR question, may be a hot topic this week at Talladega, the Sprint Cup tour’s next stop.

Then again, maybe not.

NASCAR is hot; Indy-cars are not.

The reunification of the Indy-car world, split 14 years ago, was just completed a few weeks ago, and that part of the motorsports world has a long way to go to catch to NASCAR, both in popularity and in sponsorship marketing.

All of which makes Patrick’s victory so important to Tony George’s rebounding Indy Racing League.

Meanwhile, down in Mexico City the boys were playing rough and dirty in the Mexico 200.

Kyle Busch’s third straight Nationwide tour win, against a charging Marcos Ambrose, will make him a headliner naturally at Talladega Speedway. Busch and Carl Edwards are NASCAR’s two hottest drivers.

While the Mexico City event has focused, naturally, on Mexican drivers, the NASCAR world encompasses more - with Ambrose, from Australia, and Canadians, with Carpentier.

Busch says Sunday’s race didn’t really follow any plan.

“Some pit strategy played into it, in the middle of the race and at the end. We didn’t know which way to go, so we just stayed with our game plan, to pit on lap 12 (of the 80-lapper) and lap 44 to 46 (to give him enough fuel to go the distance). Luckily we didn’t have a caution at the end for a green-white-checkered; Marcus was pretty good at the end and coming on. But I had a little bit of a lead, enough to hold him off.

“And I was able to get around Pruett when he made a mistake and smoked the tires. And then all I had to do was hit my marks.”

Busch was irritated with Pruett’s blocking tactics down the stretch, and bumped him several times, bringing up memories of last spring’s similar Pruett vs. Juan Pablo Montoya duel that wound up with Montoya spinning out Pruett to take the lead and get the win.

“Road racing is a little different game than oval-track racing,” Busch said. “You go down lower in the corners, to keep him from under braking you. He did that a few times.

“Then I got on his outside a few times, and he ran me out into the grass.

“He was just blocking a little bit too much, I believe. Now I understand why he got dumped last year. And if it came down to it, it was going to be again.

“But he smoked the tires, and I was able to get by him clean and ran away from him, and didn’t have to deal with anybody else.”

“Kyle shoved me a few times, telling me he was getting anxious to go,” Pruett, who led 36 of the 80 laps, said. “So, instead of getting turned around and my car tore up like last year, I gave him room and thought I could hold on ... but Marcos came up as well.

“It was a good run, not a great run.”

“Marcus was a little rough too,” Busch said. “And Boris (Said) was a little upset with that. And I’m sure Kyle Krisiloff, who was having a decent run, wasn’t appreciative of that either.

“And David Ragan got spun out by somebody, too.”

Ambrose, Busch complained, “was a little over the top. When I got on the outside of him through the first part of the esses, he pushed me out to the grass. Finally I just took the outside on turn six and forced him out of the groove in turn seven and made him go through the dirt. I’d just had enough of him.

“What goes around comes around, dude. It was time to go. We could have rubbed doors, but I got by him cleanly and went on soldiering up to Pruett.

“There was just too much rough racing there at the end. Guys were not being cooperative at all, and driving over their heads.”

Sounds like some complaints about Busch not so long ago.

Now, though, Busch is perhaps the best driver in NASCAR, perhaps the best driver in America, at 22. And his maturity level has increased dramatically in just the past year, since car owner Rick Hendrick decided to dump Busch and hire Dale Earnhardt Jr. for that ride, a move that naturally didn’t set well with Busch.

Since Earnhardt has been a top Talladega racer for several years (though winless on the NASCAR Cup tour the past two years), a Busch-Earnhardt duel at Talladega could be in the cards.

Whatever happens at that upset track, Busch’s win at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez shows he has added another big piece to his game: “Winning my first road course race is exciting, especially coming in Mexico City. It’s fun to win on a road course, because not many guys are capable of doing that. My first few times I really wasn’t good, I was terrible. I finally picked up on it somehow, in 2006 and 2007. We should have had better finishes at Watkins Glen, should have won there two years ago.

“When I got off-track on the frontstraight (late) and got into the door of Marcus on that restart, it bent my right-front fender in, and I couldn’t make the moves I wanted to. I couldn’t get the car to turn just right in turn seven.

“There at the end I was playing a little game with Marcos.... trying to take it easy and let him think he was closing, so maybe he would start pushing even harder and then screw up. But he did a good job keeping it on the course to come home second.”

Dave Rogers, Busch’s crew chief, called the race “crazy, with all those restarts. Anyone but Kyle would have probably brought that thing home wrecked.

“But now that I’ve calmed down, it was fun.”

Some of NASCAR’s yellows were questioned. “I don’t know exactly the reasoning for all the cautions,” Busch said. “But there was an oil-down in turn eight, and a car in the fence, for the first caution. And then Adrian Fernandez was in the wall.

“So a couple of them were OK. But I don’t know what those end cautions were about.

“It just gets everybody jumbled up. And then Scott Pruett was really screwing up the field on the restarts - waiting a long time before starting ... and then everyone just went down into the first turn and wrecked. Fortunately we made it through there.

“I’m sure (with his three straight Nationwide wins, and teammate Tony Stewart’s two Nationwide wins) that everybody thinks we’re cheating or doing something.... but this Joe Gibbs team is on top of its game, and I’m up on top of the wheel ... and that makes us hard to beat.”

Mike Mulhern can be reached at .