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On Being Sarah
Fisher
By Bill Zahren
(Posted 6/4/04)
I've never met Sarah
Fisher.
I've never communicated directly
with Sarah Fisher and I do not want to date Sarah Fisher.
I am old enough to be Sarah Fisher's father.
Which is part of the reason
I root so hard for Sarah Fisher.
My favorite IndyCar driver
(Sarah Fisher) started 19th and finished 21st at this year's
Indy 500. And, at the ripe old age of 23, time may be running
out for Sarah.
I spent my two-day pilgrimage
to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this year trying to figure
out just why I root so hard for Sarah. Just why, if I could,
I would will her to win.
After all, based on track performance,
these have been some lean times for Sarah. She doesn't stay
on the lead lap for long. She's never won. Her best-ever,
second-place finish came back in 2001. It's been two years
since she won the pole (was the fastest qualifier) at Kentucky
and led late in the race at Michigan.
The Gods of Indy gave me an
answer, of all places, inside the Indy Racing League merchandise
tent on the sprawling track infield. There, at the Sarah Fisher
apparel display, two extremely suburban-looking men showed
me the light.
There I saw Suburban Bubba
Number 1 point to a Sarah T-shirt and say (albeit softly),
"Boooo" to which Suburban Bubba Number 2 responded, "She shouldn't
even be here."
I don't have a thing for Sarah
Fisher. But I do have a thing for anyone who "shouldn't even
be here" kicking everyone's butt.
I'm a die-hard, frothing, freakish
fan of the underdog. So nothing would excite me more than
seeing a 5' 3," well mannered woman from Commercial Point,
Ohio who "shouldn't even be here" rise up and beat all the
well-financed, Ricco Suave IndyCar men at their own game.
A lot of IndyCar drivers will
go 20 years and win only once or twice. But, after just three
years in the league, every time Sarah doesn't win we hear
a new round of "She sucks! She's only here because she's a
woman. She's a PR stunt"-type stuff.
An extra wrinkle this year
is Danica Patrick, The Next Great Female Driver (which Sarah
was back when Lyn St. James was the lone female), who has
added to the verbal pounding. Patrick will be driving at next
year's Indy 500 after spending a few years in the Toyota Atlantic
series, a sort of minor league racing circuit that drivers
use to prepare themselves for the bigs.
A year or so ago, Patrick made
a business decision to further her career by putting on a
bunch of lip gloss and some very tight shorts, unbuttoning
her shirt and draping herself across a car for an FHM magazine
photo shoot.
Hey, it's a free country. It
certainly elevated her profile. Ever since then, I've been
expecting Patrick to pop up in the IRL. She surfaced last
week with her mouth already in gear. In a story on rpm.espn.com,
Patrick said:
During an appearance at Indy this week, she also
took a shot at Fisher's lack of success and implied that it's
stymied opportunities for other female racers.
"She's done some good things, but then there are some
bad things,'' Patrick said. "Like, she struggles, I think,
with the racing part of it.''
Fisher responded with a few obscenities and a challenge:
"I'd like her to get in that ... car and see what she can
do.''
People tend to think driving
an Indy Car is like driving go-karts at the nearest amusement
park -- the main concern is getting into the fastest kart.
In reality, it's a combination of engineer, pit crew, mechanics
and driver that wins. A great driver with a crap car on a
bad team isn't going to win. A crap driver with a great car
on a great team isn't going to win either. Where Sarah Fisher
(or Danica Patrick or Buddy Rice or anyone else for that matter)
falls in that continuum is subject to debate.
Speaking of Buddy Rice (the
2004 Indy 500 winner), he was canned just last year by another
racing team for allegedly not having what it took to win.
I heard the same stuff about Buddy that I've been hearing
about Sarah. Buddy only got hired this season to fill in for
an injured driver. The milk he drank in the Indy winner's
circle May 30 must have tasted exceptionally sweet.
It's not like someone hired
Fisher because she looks good in a racing suit. She's been
racing since she was 5 and spanking people on the track for
nearly that long. (Check the bio here.)
In the IRL, Fisher has scored a second-, third- and fourth-place
finish, won a pole (fastest qualifier) led races late and
had some top-ten finishes all in four years of on-and-off
racing. Not exactly crap, especially when compared objectively
to the records of some other IRL drivers. Yet the "what
has she done lately" stuff continues.
Personally, I think you really
gotta love racing to go through all the hoops to get on the
track and then put up with all the crap from "fans" once you're
on the track. Primarily there's the constant groveling for
cash from sponsors. It costs millions just to put a mediocre
car on the track. Without a corporate sugar daddy, you got
very little chance of ever being first in line for the checkered.
If I could write something that caused a sponsor to drop $10
million on Sarah's team, I'd do it for free. But it takes
greater talent than mine to harvest that kind of coin.
As for Bubba 1 and 2, there
are no passes handed out, so we know that Sarah Fisher earned
her spot on the 2004 Indy 500 starting grid. You have to get
a team, get a sponsor, get a car and go through qualifications
to get in. She did all that, so deal with it.
And if Sarah can't find a team
and sponsor, she won't race again and I'll have to deal with
that. Male of female, that's the law of the racing jungle.
I have nothing against Danica Patrick. If she qualifies to
line up and race more power to her. I have a feeling she won't
be talking so loudly after her first few IRL races, though.
If Sarah Fisher never races
in the IRL again, she can still be proud of all she's done
and all the little girls she's inspired, and the fact that
she made it to the bigs without taking off her shirt or trashing
on another driver. She can go back to beating men on the dirt
tracks and I'll be happy to root for her there.
Meanwhile, my daughters will
continue to wear their Sarah Fisher T-shirts while I encourage
them to be whatever they want to be, even if the Bubbas of
the world tell them they "shouldn't even be here."
©2004 Bill Zahren
-- end --
Join the Google Sarah
Fisher Fan Forum here.
Other racing-related columns:
Pressdog Does
the Indy 500
How Can You Be So
Calm?
Catch
Sarah Sorenstam Fever!
0.061
MPH
223.471 MPH
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