But never to the point where I regret one ounce of it. You've paid a price in family sacrifices, in personal relationships. If they don't figure out their career path in those first few years, that window of opportunity has passed. I'm mostly looking at 12- to 14-year-olds. What does it take to be accepted as a candidate? You've graduated about 250 female drivers from your Complete Driver Academy since 1994, and that includes Sara h Fisher, Danica Patrick, Melanie Troxel, and Liz Halliday. None of them made me think that this is something I don't want to do anymore. The one at Riverside, where Doc Bundy ran your IMSA GTP car into the wall and you landed upside-down and on fire. But to take the checkered flag at Indy, when you know you couldn't have done any better than you did, those are the ones you really value. I didn't have that many wins in my career. To me, the point was that it is not always the significance of the race, it's how well I did given the circumstances. But so was being able to go back when everyone had written me off-at 53, I was by far the oldest driver in the race. To get to Indy-and win rookie of the year-was so satisfying. Which was more satisfying-that race, or your last one in 2000 after being bumped out of the lineup by faster qualifiers at Indy for the two years prior? You were already 45 when you made your first Indy 500, but you did well, finishing 11th. That first Indy 500 was my first oval-track race and my second open-wheel race. But I got out of that Indy car, and I thought, "If I've got to climb a mountain, this is the mountain I'm gonna climb." I'd never driven an open-wheel car. I made up my mind on the spot that I didn't want to do sports cars anymore, though staying there probably would have been the best career move. He called me and said, "You've been bugging me about driving an Indy car-be at Memphis tomorrow." So I went to Memphis, and I drove the whole day. I was getting far along in my career, and I knew I wanted to drive an Indy car before my world came to an end. JEFF BLOXHAM, BERNARD CAHIER, INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY PHOTOS You made your name in sports cars, but what you really wanted to drive was Indy cars, though you just didn't know it. I mean, Jack Roush-I was ready to kill him a couple of times. Well, there were lots of those, but I never listened to them. On the other side, how many people worked to make you feel unwelcome? So my mentors were people like Al Holbert, Peter Gregg, Brian Redman. I tried to enlist her help, but she had no interest. Actually, I had raced with her at Sebring as a teammate in 1978 or 1979, but she didn't remember that. LSJ: Well, I did meet Janet Guthrie in 1981. Was there a woman driver to give you advice 30 years ago? That was in 1978, and I didn't get Ford as a sponsor until 1981, but that was the start. I wrote the Mercury general manager a letter. There was an article in Car and Driver about the new Mercury Capri and how Ford wanted to provide opportunities for women because they wanted to sell the car to women. So you changed your name from Evelyn Cornwall to a more marketable one inspired by McMillan & Wife and went looking for a racing sponsor, which led to 15 years with Ford. If not, now's a real good time to give up." I didn't give up. My husband said, "Look, if you want it bad enough, we can figure it out. Put in a roll bar and belts, and it was my street car during the week. We could only afford a Ford Pinto race car. James: I went through an SCCA drivers' school with my husband, and he saw how excited I was. Car and Driver: When you went racing in 1973, you were a married, 26-year-old secretary and piano teacher from Ohio, living in Florida with a new husband. From the August 2010 issue of Car and Driver.
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