In an inspirational memoir, the female Indy 500 driver looks back on her challenging career in auto racing, her years of struggle, her record-breaking feats, and her joy at mentoring young women drivers and offers helpful advice to help others find the encouragement and motivation to follow their own dreams. 60,000 first printing.
Ride of Your Life
A Race Car Driver's Journey
By Lyn St. James
HYPERION
Copyright © 2002 Lyn St. James.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-7868-6866-X
Chapter One
Drive the Course
You're Given
Unlike racing, life isn't run on a predetermined course, and you aren't given a map of all the bumps and turns along the way. My life certainly didn't follow any predestined track. I can't remember a time when I developed any grand strategy to become a race car driver. Neither of my parents worked in racing, and aside from the occasional teenage drag race, we had no racing history or culture. We were a working-class family (my father worked in a family-owned sheet metal business) in the small Cleveland suburb of Willoughby, Ohio, and I, like millions of other little girls, was a child of the baby boom.
As young Evelyn Cornwall growing up in the '50s and '60s in Middle America, I never lay awake at night dreaming of one day revving my engine and racing my way around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I was far too shy to consider such things, and even if I'd had those kinds of dreams, sharing them with anyone would have been laugh-out-loud embarrassing. Women didn't drive race cars. Women didn't even set foot inside the garages, at least not at Indy. Gasoline Alley was for men only. Women weren't even allowed inside the garage compound. That rule raised a few eyebrows in the early '50s when a wealthy woman named Bessie Lee Paoli fielded a car in the 500-mile race and became the first team owner in history to be forced to watch her car from the grandstands. Actress Barbara Stanwyck of The Big Valley fame also elevated the acrimony when she appeared in the movie To Please a Lady with Clark Gable. In the film, Gable, an Indy car driver, is seen chatting with Stanwyck in the garage area. This sent racing traditionalists into a tizzy. Movie or not, women, including Dame Barbara Stanwyck, weren't allowed in Gasoline Alley, period. Officials at the Speedway later admitted that Stanwyck hadn't actually been in the restricted area. The film's director had cut a hole in the fence to create the illusion of Stanwyck in the garage compound when, in fact, her feet never crossed the neutral zone. For many years I never thought mine would, either.
Mom loved to drive, and she would spend hours telling me how a car talks to you; gives you warnings and signals when things aren't right and gives you positive feedback when things are running well. She taught me to drive in the summer of my fifteenth year, but she taught me more than the rudimentary mechanics of driving; she taught me how to listen to a car and how to identify the sounds and smells it gives you. Mom was also stricken with polio when she was young, so she had to take a car everywhere she went, and once I was old enough to drive, she let me chauffeur her around Willoughby.
When I was seventeen, we set out for Indianapolis to watch the Indy 500 with a guy named Dave Froman and several of his buddies from the local Amoco station. Mom was a frequent customer of the station, and I had worked there part-time growing up, but the trip was more of a guy thing. Mom went along as a chaperone so I could go to the race with the guys.
It was the Saturday before Memorial Day, 1966, and we got into town early. A trip to Indianapolis was a big deal, especially for a wide-eyed seventeen-year-old girl who didn't make friends easily. When we pulled onto Sixteenth Street and approached the Speedway, I got my first taste of the largest spectator-sporting event in the world, and I was both thrilled and a little frightened. If you've never seen 400,000 people migrating to one location at one time, it's a sight you'll never forget. Hordes of people as far as I could see lined the streets, slowly funneling their way through the track gates. Hippies, commonplace in California in the '60s but a rarer sight than Halley's Comet in Willoughby, camped out on the curbs and carried their coolers and bedrolls into the infield while Ma and Pa Midwesterner stared and shook their heads in disgust. I felt like the whole world was awakening before my eyes.
Mom stayed in one of the small houses adjacent to the track while I ventured to the track with my friends. Saturday morning was the drivers' meeting, a final gathering of the drivers before Sunday's big race, and the guys and I crowded the fences to catch a glimpse of those brave souls who would take the green flag. I was surprised by how small Mario Andretti looked in person, and I hoped to get a little closer so I could take full measure of his stature. But I was a girl, so I was forced to stay outside the fences at Gasoline Alley, even though my buddies had garage passes. They were able to get A. J. Foyt's autograph while I was forced to hang around outside, peering into this kingdom I couldn't visit. Only one driver, Mel Kenyon, came over to the fence to give me his autograph. Mel was a kind man who had been badly burned in an accident. I found myself staring at my shoes rather than looking at his disfigured facial features, a fact that disappointed me later in life. This man had been kind enough to trek out to the perimeter to give me his autograph, and I found it hard to look him in the eyes. It was a moment I would remember for a long time.
On Sunday, race day, we took our seats in the stands at Turn One, and I had a feeling of electricity like I'd never felt before, a rush of nerves and senses that would stick with me throughout the rest of my adolescence and well into adulthood. This was cool. When the drivers started their engines, the rumble rattled my entire being. This race, in this place, was the greatest spectacle I had ever seen. Even though I didn't set the goal of driving at Indy until years later, the dream crept into my noggin for the first time that day.
I also got my first taste of the hazards of auto racing. Moments after the green flag fell, Billy Foster's car spun out and hit the outside wall of Turn One less than 100 yards from where I was sitting. A. J. Foyt then plowed into Billy's car, and nine other cars followed. Wheels and suspension parts flew through the air like leaves in a storm, and I found myself dodging and wincing, even though nothing came close to hitting me. A. J. scrambled out of his car and climbed the high-wheel fence directly in front of me, and other drivers did their best to get out of smoldering vehicles and run toward the infield. In those days race cars burned gasoline instead of the methanol we burn today, and with 75-gallon fuel cells, they were as flammable as tanker trucks. Drivers who could get out of their cars after a crash always did so as quickly as possible, and all eleven drivers in that crash scurried out of harm's way. I think I heard someone say something like, "Oh my God," during the ordeal, but I was too consumed with the drama on the track to pay much attention. This was Indy racing, and I was in love.
The first auto race I ever entered came later that same year at a drag strip in Elizabethtown, Indiana. I entered on a dare after being teased by some friends. Even though I won a trophy, my mother was not pleased. She informed me in no uncertain terms that I had made a tragic error, and that I would never do anything like that again. Ladies didn't race cars. Ladies wore dresses and makeup and played piano. I'd taken piano lessons for thirteen years and attended the St. Louis Institute of Music after getting a business degree from the Andrews School for Girls in Ohio. That was to be my career path. I would become a secretary and a piano teacher, a nice, sophisticated, ladylike profession that I would dutifully pursue until marriage, at which time I would devote myself to being a housewife and mother. Boy, did that plan fall apart!
After working as a secretary at U.S. Steel in Cleveland and teaching piano part time, I got married at the ripe old age of twenty-three to a man named John Carusso. Even though I taught piano on the side, my family was far from wealthy and I had to work to support myself. John had started an electronics business in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, a spot as exotic to me as Tahiti. Anything south of Cleveland was a tropical paradise as far as I was concerned, and the thought of living in South Florida gave me goose bumps. Throw in the fact that I would be helping John run his business—that my husband and I would be partners and live together in paradise!—and it seemed too good to be true. Still, I was young and shy and unsure of myself. It took me a couple of months to agree to move.
John also reintroduced me to racing (our second date was another trip to the Indy 500), and he put me behind the wheel of a race car for the first time. It was 1974. We'd been married four years, and John had been racing for a little more than one of those years. He loved cars, and I loved him and cars, so we bought a 1973 Ford Pinto (a car that was later the center of controversy because of several rear impact explosions) and modified it, adding a roll bar, a five-point seat belt, and a fire extinguisher, so John could go to race school. I always thought that Pinto was a great car, and John enjoyed running in the local Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) races in West Palm Beach, Lakeland, Daytona, and Sebring, Florida. The Pinto also was my street car.
I was the gofer gift on John's crew, running errands, making sandwiches, and lending a hand in the garage when needed. The other mechanics were somewhat dismayed by my interest in the technical aspects of the car, and they were surprised by my willingness to jump in and get my hands dirty. Sports car racing had progressed a little on the gender-equality front by that time, but the sport was still light-years behind the rest of the world.
In early 1974 John moved up to the B Production class in the Florida Region SCCA, driving his Corvette in a much faster, more competitive league than the Pinto-driving crowd. After a great deal of pestering and nagging, John finally agreed that I could give racing a try. We had the car anyway; it was ready to race; and I certainly wanted to be a racer, even if it was only at the amateur level. With John's help, I enrolled in the two driving schools SCCA requires before you are allowed to race. I was twenty-seven years old, but the day I strapped myself into that car on a racetrack I felt like I had been reborn. I was alive! This was the feeling I had always wanted out of life.
SCCA driving schools aren't akin to fighter jet training, but they are pretty comprehensive. Local chapters host these schools at tracks all over the country, and the instructors are volunteers who hold national race licenses. Unfortunately, the quality of the instruction can be hit or miss. Having a national racing license means you've been racing a long time. It doesn't mean you're any good, and it certainly doesn't qualify you to teach others. Some SCCA instructors are great drivers and excellent teachers. Others come into the schools with good intentions and dubious credentials.
I was lucky. My first instructor would barely look at me. I was a female and had no business in a race car, or so he thought. When I complained to the chief, I was assigned the best instructor the school had to offer, an Italian professional who rode with me in the Pinto, then drove the car while I rode along. He talked to me about the feel of the car, often drawing maps of the track in the South Florida sand to make his points. He was a fantastic teacher, and I soaked up every syllable like a sponge. He also made sure I understood my responsibilities as a driver. Racing might appear to be inherently dangerous, but contrary to what some believe, race car drivers don't have a death wish. We are not maverick road warriors. We race hard and run to win, but we do our best to drive safely and responsibly. That was the message my first instructors taught me and it's the message I tell students at my driver development program today. In 1974, I listened to those instructors, and I learned enough to make my racing debut a few months later.
It was at the Palm Beach International Raceway, a popular road track (now called Morosso Motorsport Park) near what is now PGA International Boulevard. Back then it was little more than open fields and a couple of swamps. PBIR, as it was called, was our home track, and John had been racing there long enough to gain veteran status. I knew all the track workers, and I was friendly with most of the crews, but that didn't sway anyone when it came time to plaster the big "X" on my Pinto. All recent race-school graduates had to run four races with the cross on their cars. This let the track staff identify you as a rookie. As if I wasn't anxious enough crawling into a race car for the first time in competition, the "X" ensured that I would be monitored more closely than the veteran drivers. Every mistake would be watched and analyzed, and everyone would leave with an opinion about my skills. If you had learned something in your schools, hopefully it would show up early. If not, the big "X" told everyone that you were a novice.
I was determined not to be one of those drivers who caused track officials to say things like, "Oh, no, there's a woman driver." I had learned a thing or two at race school, and I was going to show the world that I belonged in a race car as much or more than anyone else out there.
The Scuba divers never entered my mind. Like much of South Florida, PBIR was surrounded by canals, small ponds, and murky wetlands where all sorts of reptiles and amphibious creatures dwelled. Before any races could be run, divers had to be stationed around the track. I'd never seen anyone drive a car into the water, so I assumed these Scuba divers were a precautionary measure, maybe dictated by the raceway's insurance carrier or some overzealous attorney who thought the divers might protect the track from litigation. I never saw them standing ready in their wetsuits, so I never gave them a second thought.
Once the race began I ran with quiet confidence and authority. I wasn't going to win—I knew that going in—but I also wasn't screwing up, and that was a major accomplishment. I rounded the turns focused on my lines, just as I had been taught, and I kept my eyes on the track ahead of me. What I didn't do was check my mirrors. That proved to be a terrible mistake.
The leaders lapped me, which meant they gained a complete lap on me, and came up on my rear. I wasn't checking behind me, so I didn't see them. I just watched my lines, and concentrated on making nice smooth entries and exits into each of the turns. This wasn't so bad. In fact, I was doing great!
Suddenly a little Sprite roared around me. It was like someone had jumped out of a dark closet and yelled "Boo? I jumped and shuddered. Then I lost control.
The rear wheels of the Pinto shot around and I spun the car toward the edge of the track. Asphalt turned to grass, which quickly turned to sand. The car was off the track, still spinning as I fought the wheel and tried to regain control. Then the spinning slowed as though I had landed in a puddle of glue. I looked out and saw that I was in one of those murky wetlands, the kind of hole where vegetation grew out of black water and gooey muck.
I quickly unlatched my seat belts, opened the door, and ran for shore as fast as I could. One of the track workers later said it looked like I had walked on water. Once I was safely on dry land, I took a few deep breaths, unstrapped my helmet, and turned to assess the damage to my Pinto. I hadn't hit anything or anyone, so I assumed the car would be in pretty good shape. I certainly didn't expect it to disappear.
It looked like a scene out of a slapstick comedy. The good guys get out of their car after a harrowing high-speed chase, pat each other on the back, then gaze in disbelief as their car sinks in quicksand or roils off the end of a pier and bubbles beneath the surface. Only I didn't have a straight man beside me, and as far as I knew, no cameras were rolling and no director stood nearby to yell "cut." This was real. My first race ever, and not only had I spun the car off the track, I had run into a thick, black, South Florida pond, a gator hole as we called them.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Ride of Your Life by Lyn St. James. Copyright © 2002 by Lyn St. James. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
