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 News from Around the Americas | May 2005 
Woman Makes History at Indy 500 Without Checkered Flag
 Michael Conroy - AP
| | Patrick's car is co-owned by late-night talk-show host David Letterman, left, and Bobby Rahal, the 1986 Indy 500 winner. Three women had driven in a combined 15 Indy 500's before Patrick, and Janet Guthrie was the only female driver to finish in the top 10 when she came in ninth in 1978. Patrick, who has been a sensation all this month, did much better than that. (Photo: Kirk Debrunner/Reuters) |
Danica Patrick, a 23-year-old rookie who does not drive like one, rocketed into the lead with 10 laps left Sunday in the 89th Indianapolis 500, chasing away earlier misfortune and storming toward a first with each left-hand turn.
No woman had ever led the race, let alone won it. About 300,000 fans at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway clapped, pumped their fists and screamed, urging Patrick to hang on. She would have loved to, she said, but she also had to save fuel merely to finish the race.
Forced to conserve fuel because of a gamble by her team that she could make it to the end without an additional pit stop, Patrick was passed with six laps left by Dan Wheldon, a 26-year-old Briton who held on for his first Indy 500 victory. Patrick faded and finished fourth, behind Vitor Meira and Bryan Herta.
Three women had driven in a combined 15 Indy 500's before Patrick, and Janet Guthrie was the only woman to finish in the top 10; she was ninth in 1978. Despite making two mistakes, Patrick did much better than that - achieving a rare distinction for a woman by competing against men at the highest level of a sport and almost winning.
Asked if she had made the point that female drivers could compete against men, Patrick quickly said, "I made a hell of a point for anybody, are you kidding me?"
Patrick, driving in only her fifth Indy Racing League event, had become a phenomenon at the speedway this month, posting the fastest speed in practice on May 12 and qualifying fourth, another best for a woman, for the 33-car starting grid.
Before this year, Patrick, a native of Roscoe, Ill., and a resident of Phoenix, was an accomplished driver in the Toyota Atlantic series. She finished fourth in the previous I.R.L. race, on April 30 in Japan.
The co-owners of her car are Bobby Rahal, the 1986 Indy 500 winner, and David Letterman, the late-night talk-show host. The team's top driver, Buddy Rice, won the Indy 500 last year. The consensus among race aficionados was that she had a good chance to win.
Patrick has been marketed by the I.R.L. as an ingénue. The I.R.L. took full advantage of her appearance, posing her for glamorous pictures. But she can also drive fast.
"She's not 23 years old," Letterman said in a television interview after the race. "She's no kid."
Wheldon's victory was the first for a British driver at the Indy 500 since Graham Hill in 1966. Wheldon, who has won four of five I.R.L. races this year, also chased away a speedway ghost for Michael Andretti, the co-owner of his car.
Andretti, who retired after the 2003 season, drove in 14 Indy 500's without a victory.
He led 426 laps in his races here, but never the last one. His father, Mario, drove in 29 Indy 500's and won only once, in 1969.
"No more talk of this stupid curse," Michael Andretti said. "It's dead. It's going to be nice coming back here next year and not talking about that. You know, it gets old, I'll tell you."
Patrick certainly had to overcome more to get to the front of the pack than Wheldon.
She fell to 16th from 4th when she stalled her engine after a pit stop on the 79th lap of the 200-lap race, then spent the next 70 laps climbing back into the top 10.
"I'm going to be mad at myself for the stall," she said.
The preceding caution period was caused by a crash involving Bruno Junqueira and A. J. Foyt IV, the grandson of the four-time Indy 500 winner. Junqueira hit the first-turn wall hard, his car disintegrating as it slid to a stop.
Junqueira, complaining of lower back pain, was taken by ambulance to nearby Methodist Hospital.
He was reported to be in fair condition, but he was kept overnight and is scheduled to have surgery on two fractured vertebrae Monday.
"I'm sure he was running a lot better than I was," said Foyt, who was running six laps off the pace at the time.
Patrick had a close call on Lap 132, clipping wheels with Kosuke Matsuura. Later, as the field reached race speed after a caution period, Patrick made a mistake, abruptly lifting her foot off the gas pedal on the 155th lap to avoid hitting a car driven by Scott Sharp.
Her car went into a spin and had its left front wing knocked off. Her crew replaced the wing.
"I can't believe that my car didn't completely demolish because I got hit, like, twice," she said. "I spun it around, and I can't believe I kept the engine running. Somebody is sitting by my side."
Patrick made another stop so her fuel tank could be refilled, and that decision gave her a chance to win the race. The drivers ahead of her had to stop one more time. If she ran a lower concentration of oil in her fuel, she would have enough to finish.
"Saving fuel had to override everything else," she said.
Patrick, who had become the first woman to lead the Indy 500 by going to the front in the 56th lap, passed Wheldon for the lead with 28 laps left because he had to make another pit stop. She led the next 14 laps before Wheldon caught her.
Wheldon beat her to the start-finish line by no more than three feet before a trailing car driven by Matsuura brushed the wall, bringing out a caution flag for the eighth and final time. The pass benefited Patrick more than Wheldon.
"Unfortunately, you're a sitting duck when you restart in the lead here," Wheldon said. "And she was able to get back by."
Rahal told Patrick that she needed to come up with the restart of her young career, and she blasted past Wheldon at the start-finish line with 10 laps, or 25 miles, left in the race.
"I thought for a second we were going to win this thing," she said.
But Andretti knew Patrick's tires were older and did not have as much grip as Wheldon's. Her car was also much closer to running out of fuel than Wheldon's. He passed her entering the first turn of the 194th lap.
Meira, her Rahal Letterman teammate, passed her, then Herta, another of Andretti's drivers, did the same.
Meira had been overshadowed by Patrick this month. Everyone else in the field had been.
"I would have liked to have had more attention and everything," Meira said, "but to have attention, you have to do credible things like everyone else is doing."
Wheldon won the race under caution, after Sébastien Bourdais's car slapped the wall on the next-to-last lap.
Denied for so many years as a driver at Indianapolis, Andretti took the bottle from Wheldon and tasted the milk.
"Never had a sip of that," he said.
Now, Patrick must wait. She did not seem to mind.
"I kind of screamed in my helmet a few times," she said. "But nobody could hear that, and you have to calm down and be smart and not make stupid mistakes. I think, as a result of that, you're in the game." |
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