Mike Celizic

The Sunday before Memorial Day has been a big day in auto racing for a long time. Since forever, it’s been the day on which the Indy 500 is run. More recently, it’s become a magnificent doubleheader, with Indy and a big NASCAR race — the Nextel Cup at Charlotte — on the same day. But this Sunday might have been the biggest. That’s because a 5-foot-2, 100-pound slip of a driver named Danica Patrick made a run at winning the Indy 500 and finished fourth.

There have been women at Indy before, beginning with Janet Guthrie. And Shirley Muldowney was flat-out great in a dragster. But until Sunday, there never was a woman on what is still racing’s most famous track with a real chance to win.

Patrick is that woman.

Some will say that she didn't win, so what's the fuss? But she finished fourth and ignited the crowd and the TV commentators. She put herself on racing’s map, not as a freak show or publicity stunt, but as a great driver to be reckoned with.

And it's the best thing to happen to auto racing since five-point seat belts.

Auto racing, as the NASCAR crowd never tires of telling is, is the fastest-growing spectator sport out there. It’s got great television numbers in the right demographic groups. Its fans buy a lot of official merchandise and aren’t reluctant to pick up a six-pack of the sponsor’s beer.

But as popular as NASCAR is and as visible on the national radar as Indy is, auto racing is still a boutique sport, just like hockey. The fact it has a much bigger audience is irrelevant. What matters is that it has a dedicated and hardcore audience, but outside of that audience, it has little or no presence at all.

Go to your local library the night the hard-core literary fans are gathered to discuss Faulkner’s use of dialect or the use of imagery in Madame Bovary and ask if anyone knows who Derek Jeter or Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens is. I guarantee several people who say they have an interest in sports that’s measured in negative numbers will recognize one or all of those names.

Now go in and say Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson and you’ll get blank stares.

Slide show   Indianapolis 500 See images from the 89th running of the Indy 500

The point is that baseball seeps into every nook and cranny of American life. Auto racing doesn’t. And to make the big leap into the full public consciousness, it needs somebody like Patrick.

Since women started to be good in sports, people have wanted to see the best go head-to-head with the men. The problem is in the major professional sports, that hasn’t been possible. It may yet happen in golf, but we’re not close to it in baseball, basketball, football or hockey. Nor in tennis, for that matter. Men are simply bigger, faster and stronger. That’s not a knock on women athletes, who are every bit as good in the context of the competition as are men. It’s just reality.

In auto racing, big and fast doesn’t matter. The car doesn’t care who’s steering it, just what line it takes. There may be reasons why there aren’t a lot of female drivers, but there’s no reason why there can’t be any. And there’s no reason they can’t win.

Guthrie didn’t have the best equipment. Patrick does. She got it because she deserves it; she’s that good. And it doesn’t hurt that she’s got a great smile and a good body and, by all reports, a great personality.

A lot of women are going to notice her fourth-place finish. A lot of men who don’t care about racing are going to hear, too. And the next time she races, they’ll check to see how she did. They may even turn on the race — the first race they’ve ever voluntarily watched — to see how she does.

You want total mainstream, this is the way to get it. And the best part about it is that she didn’t beg to be in or complain that she was discriminated against because she’s a woman. She’s there on merit, and if she took grief when she was coming up, she handled it on the course, by proving her ability.

Some day, she will win a major race. I’m pretty confident of that. And when she does, there will be only one barrier left for racing to surmount before it truly gets to all of America. That’s a competitive African-American driver. Why that hasn’t happened and why it should happen is a subject for another column, though. What’s important is that Danica Patrick is on the second row.

With a chance to win.

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