http://usatoday.com/...24/3347120s.htm
I wonder what she will do after she grows tired of ovals and/ or the IRL? Will she get a serious chance in road racing? ALMS, CART (doubt that!), maybe even *gasp* F1 at some point?
I wish her the best every time out, I hope my daughter has the same spirit (she does) and skill (I hope) when she reaches Sarah's age.
A career on fast track Coed Sarah Fisher, just 20, is driving 'em crazy in male world of Indy-car racing
By Jill Lieber
USA TODAY
By now, Sarah Fisher should be oblivious to all those grumpy old men who have criticized her for racing Indy cars.
Like the time, a year or so ago in Las Vegas, when she spun out in front of Eliseo Salazar. He lambasted her on national television for knocking both of their cars out of the race, saying she'd be better off in an all-female Powder Puff Derby.
Or that moment last May, when she qualified for her first Indianapolis 500. The legendary Mario Andretti proclaimed that women just didn't have ''the physical aspect'' or ''the anatomy'' to compete with men in motor sports, suggesting that the topic wasn't even worth discussing until a female driver won a race.
And that afternoon last month, when she flew past Salazar on lap 189 of the 200-lap Grand Prix of Miami in Homestead, Fla., and grabbed second place -- the highest finish ever for a woman in an Indy-car race. Team owner A.J. Foyt admonished the Chilean driver, screaming disgustedly over the on-track radio, ''You just got passed by a girl!''
No, A.J., on that day he just got beat by a better driver.
Fisher, 20, from Commercial Point, Ohio, is the face and voice of a new generation of women in sports, a powerful role model for the post-Title IX regime and a testament to the American Dream.
Sunday, she'll be the youngest driver -- and the only woman -- in the 85th Indianapolis 500 (11 a.m. ET, ABC).
Her qualifying time of 222.548 mph is the fastest by a woman under current Indy Racing League rules, which prohibit turbocharged engines. She'll start from the 15th position, on the outside of the fifth row, in her blue No. 15 Walker Racing Kroger Special. And after getting her first taste of the Brickyard last year and finishing among the top three in two IRL races this season, she believes she is ready to establish herself as much more than a novelty.
''There's never been a dominant woman in this sport, and that's where I'm going to blow the door open,'' Fisher says.
Inauspicious debut in Indy 500
The third female driver in Indy 500 history, Fisher follows Janet Guthrie (1977-79) and the just-retired Lyn St. James (1992-97 and 2000). Guthrie has the best finish by a woman (ninth in '78), and St. James was the first female Rookie of the Year (in '92).
Last year, after qualifying 19th and struggling all day with mechanical problems, Fisher crashed on her 71st lap, ironically because of an error by St. James. She finished 31st.
But Fisher has a deeper, more varied and more technical racing background than Guthrie or St. James. She also has reached this level of racing at a much younger age than either of her predecessors. Guthrie was 39 when she first qualified for the Indy 500; St. James was 45.
''Sarah's the best chance we've seen for a woman to achieve success in this sport,'' says team owner Derrick Walker, who has been involved with five winning teams at the Indy 500.
Offers Al Unser Sr., the two-time Indy 500 champion who mentored Fisher at the Brickyard last May: ''She could do the same thing Tiger Woods did for golf. Tiger started a whole new generation of golfers hitting the green when they were 6 or 7 years old. If Sarah can be successful, she'll start a whole new generation of young men and women getting behind the wheel of a race car.''
Says Eddie Cheever Jr., the 1998 Indy 500 winner: ''She's the real deal. We tested the same car in Phoenix awhile back. I was driving my heart out, but she went faster. I don't say, 'She's a girl.' I say, 'There's that damn blue car again. She's fast.' ''
Which is exactly the way Fisher likes it.
''I'm tired of answering the same old questions, 'What's it like to be a chick in racing?' '' she says, rolling her eyes. ''But I don't ever get tired of being who I am.
''I don't think I should be handed anything because I'm a woman -- I never have, and I never will. I believe I have to earn my opportunities through my ability. But I do think my presence is going to be good for the sport. Let's face it, open-wheeled racing needs help.''
Once the gold standard of motor sports, the Indy 500 and its style of racing have been surpassed in popularity over the last decade by stock-car racing. Indy-car racing hurt itself with a split between its two circuits -- Championship Auto Racing Teams and the Indy Racing League -- that resulted in many of the top drivers not competing at Indy. But some Indy-car drivers also have lacked in personality compared to the many colorful characters on the stock-car circuit.
That's an area where Fisher excels. She has so many people clamoring for her in the Indy garage area that she needs an escort to reach the ladies room.
''She makes an incredible connection between our brands and our consumers,'' says Tim Waechter, head of Kroger Racing. ''They relate to her. She's the girl next door who's made it.''
Being sponsored by Kroger grocery stores -- in partnership with Procter & Gamble's family of brands (from Pantene shampoo and Oil of Olay lotion to Folger's coffee and Always sanitary napkins) -- is about the only stereotypically female aspect to Fisher on the track.
That is, after her blond bob haircut disappears under her blue and silver helmet and her French pedicure gets swallowed by her fire-retardant boots.
Just listen to her instruct her Walker Racing engineers after taking dozens of 200-plus-mph practice laps at Atlanta Motor Speedway one day in late April:
''Maybe there's too much wing angle for the front straightaway . . .
''In the draft, the front of the car is lighter, which makes it easier to steer, but if we could work on that later in the day . . . ''
Says Walker: ''You'd be surprised at how many drivers have a limited vocabulary. You're going 200 mph, and you've got to think about what you're doing. Sometimes a driver's memory isn't that sharp. There are hundreds of changes that can be made to make the car go faster, but you can't say, 'I think it does this.'
''Sarah's very clear: This is what the car's doing.''
After running practice laps, Fisher spends almost 1 1/2 hours in the garage debriefing her crew, going so far as to draw intricate maps filled with details about how the car is handling almost every inch of the way.
''This is the part I love. This is the feel I have,'' Fisher says. ''It's something natural, a gift from above.
''When I get in my car, I sit down, take a deep breath and say, 'I'm home.' My car's more comfortable than my bed.''
Racing runs in the family
Growing up as the only child of Dave and Reba Fisher, Sarah was first taught to feel comfortable with herself. And she had strong female role models to bolster her self-esteem.
Her maternal grandmother, Evelyn Grindell, was raised on a farm outside Columbus, Ohio, performing chores without asking whether a task such as plowing fields was suitable for a girl. In 1941, Grindell got her pilot's license at 50 and flew in the Civil Air Patrol during World War II. At 60, even though she had gotten her college degree years earlier, she re-enrolled at Ohio State.
Reba Fisher was the only woman in her class at Ohio State to receive a degree in education with a major in industrial technology. And she was passionate about racing, hopping into her first go-kart at age 7.
In fact, that's how she and her future husband met -- as teenagers competing in a senior go-kart street race. She beat him badly.
''I was so fast, I got out ahead quickly,'' she recalls. ''When he came across the finish line, he'd thought he'd won. He was so proud of himself. Then, his brother said, 'That girl's already off the scales and in the pits. She beat you.' ''
Two weeks after Sarah turned 5, her parents gave her a 3-horsepower quarter-midget. It was painted blue and white with the No. 9, just like her dad's sprint car -- except for the two red hearts Reba added at Sarah's insistence.
When a reporter from a local TV station asked Fisher why she thought she was so fast, she daintily touched her hand to her cheek and said, ''Cuz I won a heat race.''
And it snowballed from there. At 8, she graduated to go-karts, becoming a four-time World Karting Association grand national champion.
She and her father crisscrossed the country with their race cars, her go-kart and his sprint car, until he sold his cars so he could concentrate his time and money on his daughter's career. To pass the hours on the road, they'd talk about the technical elements of a race car.
''How does it work? Why does it work?'' Fisher would continually pester her father, a mechanical engineer who owns Fisher Fabrication, which builds hydraulic and air-bag presses for industry.
At 15, Fisher turned to sprint cars, a route taken by three-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon and 1999 Winston Cup rookie of the year Tony Stewart.
And when she was 18, she tried midgets.
''We hung around long enough to learn, not long enough to win,'' Dave Fisher says. ''Then we moved on to better competition. If you win the track or the points championship, you're doing the same thing all year.''
Her motor just keeps going
At the same time, Reba Fisher, a technology teacher at Teays Valley Middle School in Asheville, Ohio, pushed her daughter academically.
Before she was 1, Sarah had learned to swim, and by 3, she was playing the piano via the Suzuki method. She attended the exclusive Columbus School for Girls from preschool through third grade. Her mother got her involved in science fairs (her high school project on the aerodynamics of race cars finished second in the state) and brainpower contests such as ''The Odyssey of the Mind'' and ''The Power of the Pen.''
In 1999, Fisher graduated seventh in her class of 178 -- with a 4.178 grade-point average -- from Teays Valley High School. As a senior, she also earned 30 postsecondary credits at Columbus State Community College.
''Being an only child is the only reason I'm here,'' she says. ''My parents put so much time and money into me. They drove around in cars that fell apart so that Dad and I could have fast race cars. They saw how much potential I had.
''If I ever make it to the big time, I'll buy them a Corvette.''
Says Reba Fisher: ''We brought her up treating her with the same respect that we treated grownups. I think it explains how she is today.''
After taking last year off from school, Fisher is a freshman at Butler University in Indianapolis, majoring in mechanical engineering. This semester, in addition to putting in 60-hour weeks racing Indy cars -- which includes traveling on weekends, making sponsor appearances, speaking with the media and working out four times a week with a trainer -- she's dating the new man in her life, Josh Mauch of Indianapolis, and still somehow squeezing in classes in calculus and computer science.
''Hey, I'm 20 years old, in my first job out of high school, and I'm not flipping burgers,'' she says. ''That's pretty cool.''
Sarah Fischer wouldnt either if she wasnt female. 
