Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Ron Kantowski on how women have come a long way, baby, since Janet Guthrie climbed into her bag of bolts

It was May 1976, 31 years ago this month, that I talked my girlfriend into telling her mom we would be borrowing her car to go to the movies - and instead drove 140 miles to Indianapolis to watch Janet Guthrie attempt to qualify for the 500-mile race.

I think it was the first time either one of us had driven without adult supervision on the interstate highway system. I know for sure it was the first time a woman had set foot in Gasoline Alley, at least with the express purpose of driving in the race.

Guthrie would have to wait a year to make history, not because she didn't have the skill or guts to compete with A.J. Foyt and Johnny Rutherford and assorted Unsers, but because the bag of bolts that passed as her race car was no faster than the Chevy Bel Air belonging to my girlfriend's mother.

Women were back in the news at the hallowed Brickyard this year, as three - Danica Patrick, Sarah Fisher and Milka Duno, a rookie from Venezuela who has four master's degrees and talks like Charo - qualified for the 91st running of the race.

Patrick, who became the first woman to lead at Indy in her maiden voyage in 2005, ran among the leaders most of the day but was relegated to an eighth-place finish when she pitted just before a second thunderstorm ended the race after 166 of its scheduled 200 laps.

Fisher finished 18th and Duno crashed early and wound up 31st among the 33 starters. Of the three, only Patrick drives for an established team. Her Andretti Green Racing teammate Dario Franchitti, heretofore known as Ashley Judd's husband, won the race, and when the rains hit the first time, team drivers were running 1-2-3, with Patrick so lidly in third.

In her three years in the sport, Patrick has become something of its savior because of her good looks and heavy right foot (in that order). But she's never finished higher than fourth in any race. There are those who believe her 15 minutes of fame soon may be going the way of the Offenhauser engine.

Before Sunday, I was getting a little skeptical myself. But that was before Patrick drove low in Turn One to put a pass on Dan Wheldon - the 2005 Indy winner and the series' current dominant driver - that would have done Joe Montana and Mario Andretti proud.

Then, after the rain stopped and the race restarted, she blew the sidepods off Mario's grandson Marco as if they were being held on with chewing gum.

I wonder what Bobby Unser made of that.

The outspoken three-time winner of the 500 once referred to Guthrie's assault on Indy as a "publicity thing" and said "a girl" will never win Indianapolis because they don't have the strength.

But after watching Patrick drive to the front on Sunday, there are two things I would like to share with the most cantankerous member of the Unser clan :

First, those girls he referred to prefer to be called women. Second, he had better dust off his Helen Reddy records. Because if the breaks go Patrick's way it would seem only a matter of time before she roars into victory lane.

She may not be strong.

She may not be invincible.

But she's a woman and she sure can drive a race car.

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