Guthrie broke Indy gender barrier

Janet Guthrie was about to take another practice spin at Indianapolis Motor Speedway when TV star James Garner (“The Rockford Files”) walked over and introduced himself.

“Oh hi,” Guthrie said. “Do me a favor, will you?”

Garner nodded even before hearing Guthrie’s request — to give her sister a spin in the $20,000 Oldsmobile pace car that would be driven by Garner. Their exchange was significant because Garner wasn’t the biggest celebrity on the premises. That distinction belonged to Guthrie, the first female driver to gain a spot in the Indianapolis 500 field.

Four days later, on May 30, 1977, Guthrie, then 39, hurdled another gender barrier in sports and society by finishing 29th after enduring engine troubles. A year later, she came in ninth at Indy — the best showing by a female driver at the Brickyard until 2005. But as tennis champion and women’s rights pioneer Billie Jean King told Guthrie years later, “Without you, there wouldn’t have been a Danica [Patrick].”

Guthrie’s road to Indy was long and littered with figurative potholes. Auto racing was a sport for good ol’ boys mostly from the South, and women were tolerated only when a beauty queen showed up to plant a kiss on a race winner. For years, females weren’t even allowed in the garages, much less behind the wheel.

A veteran of SCCA events, Guthrie first was invited to drive at Indy a year earlier by team owner Rolla Vollstedt. She failed to qualify for the nation’s most famous auto race, but her mere presence was enough to alarm traditionalists.

“When I shook hands with Richard Petty, I thought I’d get frostbite,” Guthrie said in her 2005 autobiography, “A Life at Full Throttle.” She added: “Later he would be quoted as saying of me, ‘She’s no lady. If she was, she’d be at home. There’s a lot of differences in being a lady and being a woman.’ ”

Thirty years later, King Richard hadn’t changed his mind on the subject of women in auto racing.

“I just don’t think it’s a sport for women,” the seven-time NASCAR champion said in an interview with the Associated Press. “It’s really not. It’s good for them to come in [because] it gives us a lot of publicity. It gives them publicity. But as far as being a real true racer, making a living out of it, it’s kind of tough.”

Yet even Petty was able to appreciate Guthrie’s true grit.

“She come in just as herself and done a decent job,” said Petty, obviously no grammarian. “She said, ‘I’m here, I’m going to do it,’ and she was able to get it done.”

Well, sort of.

All told, Guthrie competed in 33 NASCAR races over four years, finishing as high as sixth, before a lack of money and sponsors forced her to end her driving career. Yet her race suit and helmet are in the Smithsonian Institution, and she was elected to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame not because she won but because she tried.

Today relatively few women drive at the sport’s top level, but the sight of them no longer scandalizes fans and competitors. Pioneers like Guthrie and Lynn St. James have made it easier for successors like Patrick and Shawna Robinson to be accepted.

“From an initial attitude that was skeptical to hostile with quite a bit of hostility, that has changed to an attitude of acceptance and camaraderie, both in Indy cars and NASCAR [racing],” Guthrie said. “It took a little longer to see that happen in NASCAR, but it did happen.”

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