Full Throttle

Dodge’s Ray Evernham signed Erin Crocker, and Chevrolet’s Richard Childress added Sarah Fisher and Allison Duncan. So how many women did Ford’s Jack Roush invite to his annual driver-wanna-be Gong Show tryouts?

Women with helmets were a big NASCAR story-line last month during the media’s annual preseason romp through stock-car shops.

Roush took 400 driver applications for his most recent tryout, and the bottom line is that his roster for 2005 includes no female drivers. So is Roush Racing behind the curve on the marketing of female drivers? Or do Roush and Geoff Smith, the president of Roush Racing, simply not buy women at the wheel?

Or did Dodge and Chevrolet just win a game of one-upmanship? Certainly Dodge and Chevrolet are taking a page right from the Ford marketing playbook in showcasing women as drivers.

The questions certainly get a rise out of Smith.

“Jack Roush is the first racecar owner I knew who campaigned a woman full-time in a racing series, and that was Lyn St. James, in road racing, when he was trying to build a reputation,” Smith said. “Jack chose to build a reputation with a woman.

“A couple of years ago, we went out and hired a gal, Sara McCune, out of Indiana, and I marketed her as hard as we could. An open-wheel driver.

“And Jack was the first guy to have a full-time African-American driver, too. Three years ago, I worked on a joint business venture with Hank Aaron and spent a lot of time there.

“So we’ve tried to be ahead of it. “For our list of 400, we almost had no women even apply, and those that did were like Midget(-car) racers.” “Lyn St. James (the veteran Ford racer, now retired) told me at Homestead (in November) that she had this driver - I forget the lady’s name - that I had to give a tryout, and she’ll be in our Gong Show this year,” Roush says. “We looked, in that 400, at a number of female drivers. We also had a number of minority male drivers that got consideration, and a couple of them got in a racecar.

“But the fact is, when you come down to making the tough choice of who had the best package ready-to-go, we didn’t have a minority or a female who was ready to do that.”

“Lyn has this cadre of young women that she keeps track of (for Ford), and we’d be happy to run any of them if Ford would like to help us finance that,” Smith added.

Dodge and General Motors, in a significant corporate move, are suddenly pushing women as stock-car drivers.

Smith says he’s holding reservations about the new moves by Detroit rivals.

“Until I see it all in play - I want to see for real - whether it was just a PR mistake for Ford not to bring the gals down and put them in part of a Ford Team media day,” Smith said.

“All these companies are pretty careful about making commitments that are comparable to one another. So it would surprise me if in real terms that the support Ford is giving the people they selected is much different than the support General Motors or Chrysler is giving these gals.”

“We stand ready to celebrate the success and the preparation of somebody when we’re sure we can make them competitive. Beyond that, we’re anxious to do development programs around minorities that can help them get ready.

“We’ve got Sam Belnavis, our minority manager, who is looking for the resumes of the ladies and other minorities who can do it.

“It is important for us to help bring minorities in. But in the final analysis, before you put a minority in a Busch, Cup or Truck, right now they’ve got to win a contest of some kind.”

So, can a woman really do this? Or is it all simply PR and marketing?

“I think women can do it,” Roush said. “I’m looking right now at four women reporters … no, they’re not race drivers, but they are kingmakers, so I’ve got to be very careful with this.

“Women can do this. But the main advantage the guys have who find the success is all the things that happen to them socially and competitively by the time they’re 14. It’s not what happens between 14 and 18, it’s what happens between 6 and 14.

“Mark Martin took his son Matt when he was 6 or 7 and put him in a quarter-midget. I took young Jack, my son, and put him in a go-kart when he was 6 or 7. And I’m sure the Labontes and Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson were in their karts pretty early, too.

“Until we come back as a society and push our youngsters … I took my two daughters go-kart racing, too, with my son, but my wife just really dug her heels in, because my daughters ‘are so pretty and have other things they can do, so why did I want to do that to them?’

“So the ‘women’s lib’ considerations have to go in the direction of letting the young girls take the same kind of risks of marking their bodies up and possibly getting stoved up in other ways that dads don’t seem to care so much about as it relates to their sons.”

A big problem, Smith says, is corporate America.

“We have tried to recruit corporate money to support a diversity candidate, for a number of years,” Smith said. “And we’ve been rejected many, many times.

“We’re trying to understand, with Sam, why corporations, with diversity budgets, don’t treat this sport as part of a diversity program but rather as a ‘racing’ buy. When they do that, they go into it looking at the situation like they’re looking at a Mark Martin.

“The catch is for the candidates who have a chance to do it, it’s hard to get sponsorship to give them seasoning when sponsors want to buy front-running performance.

“It’s similar for women, too.”

Source: Winston-Salem Journal