Best Looking Female Athletes
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Rookie sizzles on and off the track
If fame seeks the young, talented and good-looking, Sunday's Indy 500 spotlight belongs to Danica Patrick.
She's 23, a rookie fast enough to qualify fourth, hot enough to pose for the men's magazine FHM.
Qualifying fourth for the Indianapolis 500, 23-year-old rookie Danica Patrick turns heads on the racetrack and in front of the paparazzi. She has said she has 'a great chance of winning this race,' and many who know the sport agree with her.
THE INDY 500 ? ABC will broadcast the 89th Indianapolis 500, with programming beginning at noon Sunday. The race starts at 1 p.m.
Should she perform well ? and some observers think she could be the ninth rookie to win ? her success and persona could wave like a checkered flag for a sport struggling for fans.
Like a Tiger Woods, Patrick not only gets props for her talent but attracts eyes of those who care little about sports. She's got a fresh face, guts and a good Midwestern story of gumption. If anyone can reverse the dipping popularity of open-wheel racing, it's she.
"She has got a spark," said David Bowes, CEO of the Braselton-based Elan Motorsports Technologies that produces the Panoz chassis of Patrick's car.
He met the 5-foot-2, 100-pound brunette in a race trailer with an all-male group of team backers. He has seen her race at 220 mph, a concrete wall a few feet away.
"She's confident and has a belief in herself. This is a sport where there are a lot of physical demands on a driver. She is a petite girl and a good-looking girl and has battled through the physical requirements very well. Anyone doing well in their rookie year is noticeable in such a difficult and dangerous sport."
After Patrick finished fourth at a big race in Japan last month, Bowes told Bobby Rahal, the co-owner of her team, "You've got the All-American girl next door."
The road to Indy
One motor sports marketing executive, Rodrick Cox, called her "a sponsor's dream" because of her appeal to males age 18 to 34.
"As long as she has on-track success and builds momentum, which doesn't mean she has to win, she has the fresh face and media savvy and athleticism to put fans in the stands," he said.
Patrick began racing go-karts at age 10 in her hometown of Roscoe, Ill. Her potential drew attention from Lyn St. James, who finished 11th at the 1992 Indy 500 as a rookie and ran it six more times.
"She had a look in her eyes that was calm, cool, collected in all vehicles," St. James recalled. "It was a lot of determination, not just bravado. There were intangibles that a team owner would look for."
Just as important: Patrick's family has a glass company and was willing to pour their financial and emotional resources into her racing dreams. (Speed was in her DNA. Her parents had met at a snowmobile race her dad was in.)
"All the funding that could have gone to a nice home and vacations for the family went into Danica's racing," St. James said. "Her younger sister was there to help polish the car. So not only did you have talent, drive and determination, you had everything you need to have. I thought, 'This girl needs to have some doors opened, some cages rattled for her.'"
St. James helped hook up Patrick with funding from Ford and independent sponsors. At 16, Patrick moved to England to race in lower formulas across Europe. One of her mentors was Jackie Stewart.
'I'm so different'
She honed an aggressive style on road courses, and she had to learn patience. Though she finished second at the 2000 Formula Ford Festival in England ? the best-ever showing by an American, the first woman on the podium ? she followed with an entire season hardly racing.
And learning to promote herself, St. James said.
"You can have the credentials, but your phone won't ring," St. James said. "It's part of the sport, and partly gender. A lot more male drivers get called."
As the fourth female driver at Indy, Patrick's gender is not as big a story as her talent, St. James says. But her looks are "another asset. In any business that is male-dominated, you need as many assets as you can get. You have to stand proud of those assets but not so vocal that you overshadow your skills. And that's her attitude coming across."
In a pre-race news conference, Patrick showed that poise. She said the interest she's brought, especially from schoolchildren, is "what the sport needs."
"I'm so different," she said. "And it's not that there hasn't been a female that's come through before, but one that's truly competitive and truly race-savvy and goes out there, qualifies and races well, and does it consistently."
With chutzpah, she said she has "a great chance of winning this race," though she acknowledged her lack of experience.
Extra media attention, she said, fires her up. And if her peers resent her, they're not saying.
"I'm not jealous at all," top qualifier Tony Kanaan told reporters. "I don't get bumpy if she's in front of me because I'm taking her as one more competitor. Doesn't mean if she's a man or a woman. When she put her helmet on, I can't see it, if she's a man or not. I think it's great. She's done a great job. I have to say that I am really impressed. She's very mature. She's in the right team, in the right place, in the right time."
She gives that team, Rahal-Letterman, much credit for her success. It won last year's Indy 500.
The team signed her to a three-year deal and put her behind the wheel of the Racing Argent Pioneer No. 16 Panoz/Honda/Firestone ? denoting her chassis/engine/wheels. The Panoz chassis, for instance, has won the past two Indy 500s and 11 cars in this year's race will feature it.
She who paved the way
If not for veering slightly, Patrick could well have won Sunday's top qualifying position.
"Equipment makes such a difference," said an envious Janet Guthrie, who in 1977 was the first woman driver at Indy, finishing 29th.
"Don't I wish that [Roger] Penske had even given me a test drive back then. I would have given my eyeteeth to do as well as Danica has."
Guthrie, for one, hopes to benefit from the extra attention Patrick brings to the sport. She has a new autobiography, "Life at Full Throttle," that she hopes will sell more because of the headlines sparked by the young woman driver.
Guthrie's book chronicles the obstacles she faced as a pioneer, some of which Patrick avoided. Cultural expectations have changed. The book ends with the prediction that a woman will win the Indy 500, and the Daytona 500.
Statistics are promising in that regard. The number of women in amateur racing is surging. In last year's Soap Box Derby World Championships, 42 percent of the racers were female, up from 27 percent in 1985.
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Indy racing can be a dangerous place for a woman.
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Half of the gals playing in the Collegiate World Series. Seems like it is a pre requisite to be hot & blonde to be playing.
