Ron Kantowski flags down Kim Lopez Johnson to find out what it’s like to be the woman in control at the Speedway

Monday, Sept. 24, 2007 | 7:19 a.m.

It was just a half-hour before she would drop the green flag - or at least show honorary grand old flag waver Tom Jenkins of Las Vegas Events how to do it - at Saturday's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race. So next to the person stationed at the infield tunnel who kept telling me to park in the wrong place, that made Kim Lopez Johnson the most powerful woman at Las Vegas Motor Speedway as dusk was about to put daylight a lap down.

Nobody could recall a woman ever serving as the chief starter for a NASCAR touring series event. But Lopez Johnson wasn't worried about making history. She was more worried about dropping one of the racing flags onto the track at the start-finish line in front of more than 50,000 spectators and a national television audience.

"That's all everybody keeps reminding me about," she said with a nervous smile.

Don't think it couldn't happen. This spring Alicia Osborn, who serves in a similar capacity at the LVMS Bullring, threw the green flag as a car was about to begin its qualifying run.

Literally threw the green flag.

Then she became the first female chief starter in Las Vegas Motor Speedway history to throw - er, wave - the yellow flag.

On herself.

Although she can laugh about it now, the date - June 9 - and the driver - Josh Groves - have been indelibly emblazoned onto Osborn's subconscious like "Craftsman" on a socket wrench.

"I wear gloves now," she says.

Kim Lopez Johnson wasn't wearing gloves like a wide receiver, but she did not literally drop the green flag Saturday night. Or the yellow one. And lord knows there were plenty of opportunities to do that as the race was slowed by eight caution periods, just one shy of the record.

Between waving the yellow and the "move over" flag, the blue one with the funky yellow stripe, for former Indy 500 winners Buddy Lazier and Jacques Villeneuve, Lopez Johnson was lucky she didn't develop carpal tunnel in her right wrist.

But she performed her duties without incident, which is more than can be said of the race.

"I just feel so honored that NASCAR gave me the chance to do it," she said.

In addition to their flagging interest in stock car racing, Lopez Johnson and Osborn, her understudy of sorts on the local level, also are unusual in that they did not grow up around the sport.

Lopez Johnson was reared in the Bronx, which, with the possible exception of Timbuktu, is as far from NASCAR as one can get. Being of Puerto Rican descent, she was more partial to Jorge Posada than Jeff Gordon. She was managing a Pep Boys across the Hudson River in New Jersey when, while visiting her parents who had relocated to Charlotte, she was invited to her first NASCAR race.

The sport became grease under her fingernails.

Three years ago she put in an application with NASCAR, which was looking to diversify even before Juan Pablo Montoya left Formula One. She paid her dues by counting lug nuts on pit road and calling penalties on the teams which did not replace each and every one during pit stops - probably not the best way to make friends in NASCAR.

But hey, she's Kimmy from the block. It's not like she had never heard a swear word before.

Osborn didn't grow up sniffing exhaust fumes, either. She was working as a cameraman's assistant at Channel 13 when she got dragged to Las Vegas Motor Speedway on assignment. Nobody had to drag her back.

Although their femininity is in large part responsible for Lopez Johnson and Osborn getting their opportunities in NASCAR's rapidly evolving world, both know genes will only take them so far once the green flag waves - especially if they're the ones waving it.

"Out here, now, I'm just one of the guys," Lopez Johnson says. "And that's a great thing."