Louise Smith was no ordinary woman. In 1949, just one year after NASCAR was founded, Smith started taking the family sedan and racing it on weekends-without her husband's knowledge. Her run as a race car driver lasted 10 years and brought 38 victories.
Then there's Janet Guthrie, whose racing career started in 1963 only after she had earned her pilot's license, graduated from college and qualified for NASA's astronaut program. In 1977 Guthrie became the first woman to compete in the Indianapolis 500, and she competed in NASCAR for the first time that same year.
These are the stories Shawna Robinson, Tina Gordon, Sunny Hobbs, Molly Morter, Kelly Sutton and Angie Wilson grew up hearing. The obstacles of being a woman in a male-dominated sport will no doubt always be there, but these women have overcome them just as others will in the future.
Angie Wilson grew up knowing what it was like racing and being the only girl in a group of boys. Tina Gordon just "stumbled onto racing" in her late 20s and is progressing quickly on her learning curve.
Shawna Robinson started out racing semi-trucks, and is trying to get her foot in the Winston Cup door, having run one Cup race last season. Sunny Hobbs, in an attempt to better understand race cars, helped build one from the ground up. Molly Morter enjoys the bumps and grinds of off-road racing. Kelly Sutton is too tough to let a medical condition keep her down.
These ladies see themselves simply as race car drivers. There is no separation between genders once the green flag waves; these ladies are out there to win.
So read about what makes our racing divas tick. And if you're a woman who races, we'd love to hear your story. Just write to us at: Stock Car Racing, 5555 Concord Parkway South, Suite 330, Concord, NC 28027.
Busy SignalShawna Robinson Doesn't Know What It Means To Take A BreakShawna Robinson has plenty on her plate. She's the mother of two young children and the wife of a busy husband who is usually MIA working on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s race car every weekend. Still, she has somehow worked being a race car driver into her schedule.
Busy is just an everyday thing for this mother/wife/race car driver.
"Honestly, I don't know any other way," Robinson says. "I have always been high-strung and motivated. Even when I was pregnant and wasn't driving, I was still non-stop. I was painting, up and down on ladders, and going from this job to that job (with her former interior design business). So, it just seems normal to me. It's just the way to be."
Robinson is coming off a difficult racing season. Of the four NASCAR Winston Cup races she tried to qualify for-California, Michigan, Chicagoland and Indianapolis-she made only the Michigan race and finished three laps down in 34th position. Robinson uses the season as motivation.
"If anything, it made me more frustrated that I am not racing on a more consistent basis," she says. "I won't let it go until I do that. If I fail and don't have the talent to get it done, then I shouldn't be out there. However, I feel that I do have it and I just need the ability to show it."
Robinson's start in racing is somewhere on the outskirts of normal. She grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, and her father was involved in the sport first as a driver and then a promoter. With the release and popularity of the movie Smokey and the Bandit in the early 1980s came the introduction to truck racing. Not your ordinary pickup, but diesel semi-trucks. They served as Robinson's first race car, beginning in 1983. She was 18.
During the 1983 season Robinson raced the big trucks on various short tracks and dirt tracks across the country. In 1984 she moved up to the Great American Truck Racing Series and ran more than 60 races at places such as Atlanta, Bristol and Pocono, as well as dirt and half-mile asphalt tracks in the Northeast.