Anything Boys Can Do...

The following article was written by my good friend and former World of Outlaws PR guy, Richard Day. Richard is a gifted author who currently handles PR for Woodward Racing, Redi-Green Motorsports, Dirt, Inc. and Kathryne Minter. It's a great piece about women in racing that I think most of us can really appreciate. Thanks for sharing, Richard!

Richard Petty has never believed women should compete in auto racing. He reiterated that two days before the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600.

“I just don’t think it’s a sport for women,” Petty said, “and, so far, it’s proved out. It’s good for them to come in. It gives us a lot of publicity. It gives them publicity. But, as far as being a real true racer, making a living out of it, it's kind of tough.”

It was a thrill for me to meet “The King” at the 1994 Knoxville Nationals when Petty attended sprint car racing’s most prestigious event as then-fellow-STP-sponsored racer Andy Hillenburg’s special guest. I have tremendous respect for the man who won 200 NASCAR Nextel Cup races and has been a tireless ambassador for auto racing for many years, but I’m thinking he should have kept those comments under his signature cowboy hat.

I thought 2005 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year Danica Patrick’s reply to Petty’s statements were classic when she said racing isn’t for all women, but it works for some. Two top-eight finishes in auto racing’s greatest spectacle prove she’s definitely competitive in the male-dominated sport.

There are other ladies proving they can compete with men at the track, too: Erin Crocker, Nicole Addison and Melanie Troxel.

Crocker, the only lady to win a World of Outlaws feature race, is progressing as a NASCAR Craftsman Truck driver for Ray Evernham. Evernham’s former Nextel Cup driver, Jeff Gordon, never won an Outlaws race. Nor has his current Cup driver, Kasey Kahne. Two-time Indy 500 champion Al Unser, Jr., whose crew installed phone books in his sprint car’s seat to allow him to see over the steering wheel, never won a “greatest show on dirt” feature either.

Crocker, who earned a bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Management Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is the first woman to join the Evernham Motorsports driver development program. She has also competed in some USAC Silver Crown races for Kasey Kahne Motorsports.

Crocker won the 2006 Race Babe poll on http://www.OpenWheeler.blogspot.com, receiving 31% of the votes. Patrick received 7%.

“The guys don't seem to mind having a woman around the garage,” Erin wrote in a recent installment of her “On The Road With Erin Crocker” column on NASCAR.com. “I've always spent a lot of time around guys, playing street hockey and running quarter-midgets. There were some girls, but mostly there were guys.

“I've always been able to be one of the guys. It's a fine line. Sometimes people will say, ‘You're like one of the guys.’ I'll say, ‘But I don't really want to be one of the guys.’ Let's just say I'm not the average girl. I'm still feminine. I love shopping. I love buying shoes. I also love driving racecars. I love to be in the garage. I love to understand racecars and think about them.

“There are other women involved with the team, but not directly involved with the truck. There's not many involved that way in the entire sport. I know there are women engineers and there's a tire changer on one of the teams, but they're few and far between.”

Addison, the rear tire changer for Jack Sprague when he won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Chex 400K race at Texas Motor Speedway last June, is that tire changer. In fact, she’s the only woman to work on the winner’s pit crew in NASCAR’s top three series.

“That’s probably the most memorable moment of my life,” Addison said recently. “I can’t wait to do it again.”

Addison, the only female over-the-wall pit crew worker in NASCAR, will get her chance again in this weekend’s Sam’s Town 400 at “The Great American Speedway” as a tire changer on the #10 Power Stroke Diesel Ford Terry Cook drives for ppc Racing.

“Now I know we’re going to win,” Cook said when he learned that Addison was a member of the pit crew on last year’s winning team at TMS. “Nicole’s our good-luck charm. Without a doubt, she’s proven she can handle the pressure.”

Addison participates in NASCAR’s Driver for Diversity program that attracts women and minorities to the sport.

“It’s a good thing – and NASCAR is pushing it – but it’s not why we hired Nicole,” Cook says. “We hired her because she was the best. We tried out five people. She was the only female, but she just flat whipped those guys. Being a tire changer isn’t just about speed. It’s also about being consistent and not having lug nuts come loose. Nicole had zero mistakes.”

Shawna Robinson, who ran seven Nextel Cup races in 2002, employed an all-female pit crew for a NASCAR Craftsman Truck race at Texas Motor Speedway the following year.

Troxel, one of eight women in NHRA history to win a pro elimination race, has led the Top Fuel point standings from the beginning of the 2006 NHRA Powerade Drag Racing Series.

“I read a headline on an article that said something like we women in racing are following in Danica's footsteps,” Troxel said after winning a Top Fuel national event at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in April. “Maybe the rest of the world hasn't been taking notice, but there have been women competing – and winning – in the NHRA for years. I think it's great for her and for promoting women in motor sports. She's done a lot of good things to draw attention to women, which is somewhat necessary when you're looking for the funding to run these teams.

“No matter how much you tell people that women can go out and be just as competitive (as men), it's an entirely different thing to go out and win and show them this isn't about the novelty of having a female in the car. I think we're definitely making progress in that side of it. I've really enjoyed having the bigger story be about our performance.”

NASCAR believes it will have a woman racing with the Nextel Cup series soon.

“I think there is a woman driver out there who will break through,” Vice President of Corporate Communications Jim Hunter said before the Coca-Cola 600. “There will be the emergence of a contending woman driver. When? I have no idea. But I do know there are a lot of women drivers in the pipeline today, running sprint cars or whatever, who want to make it to this level.”

Kyle Petty, who runs the two-car operation built by his grandfather (Lee) and father (Richard), says he would never rule out having a woman driver, saying that Petty Enterprises was one of the first teams in the garage to employ female engineers and mechanics.

He also said his father will never budge on his belief that women don’t belong behind the wheel, even if Kyle’s daughter decides she wants to be a racer some day.

“His position is not going to change because that is who he is, that is part of who he is,” Kyle said. “That's just a fact of life. That's how he was raised, when he was raised, the era he was raised in. And that's just the way it is.”

I believe everybody deserves the opportunity to give racing a try. I gained a whole new perspective – and respect – for sprint car racing when Charles “Smiley” Sitton gave me the opportunity to attend his Outlaw Driving School in 1996. Sitton, the first to drive a Top Fuel racecar 200 M.P.H., owned the car Norman Martin drove to victory in the World of Outlaws’ first preliminary feature race in March of 1978.Tom Motter, who co-owned the #71M EcoWater Systems Maxim with his brother Dan, and EcoWater marketing representative Jerry Johnson joined four other “wanna-be” racers and me at Boyd Raceway for my first taste of what driving a sprint car is all about. I also attended the driving school with several members of the sprint car media a few years later at 85 Speedway in Ennis, TX. The Outlaw Driving School now calls Grand Prairie Speedway – “a ¼-mile, medium-banked track formed from the best Texas cleachy” – home. I encourage every sprint car racing fan to attend the Outlaw Driving School (http://www.outlawdrivingschool). It’s awesome!