COMMENTARY

By Jim Litke

updated 1:47 a.m. ET June 25, 2005

Jim Litke

INDIANAPOLIS - No more jokes about women drivers. The moratorium starts right here, right now. A splash more fuel, one less mistake, a little more racing luck or a few less capable predators chasing her to the finish line and Danica Patrick might have won the Indy 500 on Sunday. As it was, she turned in one of the most stirring rookie runs ever, coming back from a stalled car in the pits and a spin-out on the track before running low on gas and settling for fourth place. Some 700 different drivers have started on this oval in the 89 years the race has been run, all but four of them men and few with half as much to prove.

“I made a helluva point,” Patrick said afterward, “for anybody.”

But she did more than that.

For the better part of a month, Patrick made the sport seem hip again. She put open-wheel racing on the morning and late night TV talk-show circuits, in headlines and magazines, on posters and people’s lips. On Sunday, she gave ABC’s hyperventilating commentators something worth shouting about. She even helped fill in most of the gaping holes in the grandstands left by no-shows in recent years.

“The largest infield crowd in years,” speedway spokesman Fred Nation crowed. “Interest really picked up the last couple of weeks, especially with all the interest in Danica Patrick.”

Twice in the final 30 laps, she brought a roaring crowd to its feet by zooming into the lead. From inside the cockpit, Patrick had only a vague idea of the electricity rippling through the stands and even less time to enjoy it.

“I did notice a few people standing, actually. I saw some arms waving,” she said. “But I was very focused on my race.”

Few people were cheering harder than Lyn St. James, who followed pioneering female driver Janet Guthrie onto the starting grid and was herself succeeded by Sarah Fisher. But in the 28 years since Guthrie bent the gender barrier here, Patrick is the first to get a spot in the field with a top-flight team like Rahal Letterman Racing. So it wasn’t enough for Patrick to prove she simply belonged; she had to prove she could compete for the trophy.

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“About half of the kids in soap box derbies are girls and a third of those racing quarter-midgets,” St. James said. “This is going to open their eyes and the people who make decisions. It tells them if they have the passion and the commitment, they can work their way up the chain.

“It proves to them what’s possible.”

Patrick stands only 5-foot-2 and weighs 100 pounds, but she has guts and toughness to spare. After the race, she was still steaming about her two costly mistakes and having to battle the last 30 laps with a fuel gauge too far in the wrong direction. That explained why she was less interested in what she had done for others at the moment than what she might have cost herself.

“I’m just racing. I don’t know. It sounds so,” and here Patrick paused, searching for the right word, “goober.”

It was a perfect choice, especially here in what remains the heartland of U.S. open-wheel racing. The Indy 500 was one of the great franchises in sports until a civil war between Speedway boss Tony George and owners and drivers of the Championship Auto Racing Teams, now called the Champ Car World Series, drove fans into NASCAR’s waiting arms. Ten years later, with popular American drivers like Tony Stewart, Kasey Kahne and Ryan Newman following the exodus of fans to NASCAR, the problems that caused the split remain just as daunting.

But that’s where Patrick comes in. Her looks and pedigree make her a marketer’s dream, but she wouldn’t have taken off without the ability to drive.

“She’s not 23,” said team owner David Letterman, who interviewed his employee on national TV at the start of the week. “She’s no kid. She had that car perpendicular to the track. I don’t know how she got it going down the track again.”

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