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She's driven 19-year-old rookie eyes Indy 500 title
Posted: Saturday May 27, 2000 01:09 PM
INDIANAPOLIS -- She's just 19 years old and one of the few women in a sport dominated by men. But there's no doubt. Sarah Fisher is a racer through and through. "I love racing because it's so competitive," she said. "There's only one winner. I love the speed. I love the technology. When you're going around the track, you're in a zone, you're in a focus. You're concentrating on your line, and you're trying to perfect that line." Fisher was 5 years old when her parents, Dave a machine shop owner -- and Reba, a teacher -- put her in a quarter-midget car. "Well I think I knew that she had desire when she was 11 or 12," Dave says. "And you know, the talent, you just have to race to see Fisher became a national go-kart champion, moved on to sprint cars and was eventually noticed by team owner Derrick Walker, a 30-year veteran of the racing business who was part of five Indy 500-winning teams while working for Roger Penske. Walker was looking for a driver for his fledgling IRL team and gave her a chance. "I was very impressed," Walker said. "She is very smooth, very focused, very mature for a 19 year old girl. (She's) very well disciplined, which in this business you need to be."
Someone who knows a little something about driving and winning is Al Unser Sr. who serves as the IRL's driving instructor and consultant. He likes what he has seen so far in the young driver. "I think Sara thinks very straight forward. And whatever you try to tell her that you think should be going on out there, she goes and tries and see if she can make it happen. And I think she is very good. So far she responds to everything very well." From Fisher's point of view, learning the trade from the likes of the Unser is an opportunity of a lifetime. "I think as a race car driver, you have a lot of wonderful people around you," she said. "And what better than Al Unser Sr. to tell you how to drive the Indianapolis 500? He's got just about as much experience there than anyone. I think that if you are going to learn anything from that, you've got to listen." Fisher found herself in the media spotlight earlier this season at Las Vegas when she admittedly made a rookie mistake. Fisher was running second until spinning out and taking a very angry Eliseo Salazar with her. "What I've seen about Sarah, I've seen her at Phoenix and I've seen her at Vegas," Al Unser Jr. said. "She does a great job. She uses her head. What happened at Vegas is just something that you learn from. If you don't take it to the edge, if you're not aggressive, then you're not going to win. She was trying her hardest, and she's human."
However, the glare of that incident was nothing compared to what she's been through at Indy. After becoming the third woman, and third-youngest driver to make the race. The second women to ever race in this event says she can appreciate what Fisher is going through. "If it had been another woman in her 30s or 40s, or maybe at the tale end of her career, then to me, it would have been history repeating itself," said 53-year-old Lyn St. James who won rookie o the year honors in 1992. "What really makes this so significant is that it is a 19 year old girl. It's a girl whose been racing since she was five years old." For Fisher, it's a novelty that won't go away any time soon. "I think there's always going to be questions about being a female, or being young, because I'm gonna be young for a little while, and I'm always going to be a female. So, I think there's going to be questions like that for a while. And yes, it's going to be something that I have to answer." And no doubt the line of questioning gets a little old. "Yes, I do get tired of answering them," she says, "but, hey, it's a part of what I'm doing." However, Fisher's age and gender will soon take a back seat to her ability to navigate the Brickyard's 2.5-mile track. "She'll be measured by how quick she can go," says Derrick Walker, team owner of Walker Racing. "So if she's a girl, she's a quick girl or a slow girl, but she's got to be quick or people are not going to give her the time of day.
"So right now she is showing the potential and people are interested in her. But at the end of the day, people are only going to measure if she's a success." St. James thinks that will be only a matter of time before her younger counterpart reaches that level. "The talent she has. The ability she has, and the equipment and the team. So her greatness, it's postured, it's sitting right there. Now she's gonna have to grab it and run with it, and we're all gonna get to watch it." Fisher has a sign over her desk at Indy spelling out her personal guidelines for the race: patience, focus, relax and smile. "My long-term goal for now is to definitely win the Indy 500," Fisher said. "I don't know if. I don't know when. But I certainly want to do that. It is an accomplishment I've wanted to do for all of my life. I've always dreamed of drinking that milk." On Sunday, she'll get her first chance.
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