Thursday 10 November 2011

Janet Guthrie - The first Woman at Indy 500 (Part 1)

Janet Guthrie

Janet Guthrie was born in Iowa City, Iowa March 7th, 1938 to William Lain Guthrie.  William was a pilot and when Janet was old enough, she took much interest in flying and being adventurous.  By the time she was 16 she had already done her first solo flight and when she was 17 she obtained her private flying license.  By the time she was 21 she had recorded more then 400 hours of flight.  Being an adventurous woman, she was excited when in 1965 NASA announced they were going to train women to be astronauts.  Janet applied and became one of the first four female astronauts.  But soon afterwards, the people and NASA decided for women to be astronauts they needed to hold PhD degrees.

Jaguar XK-120

Not to be an astronaut, Janet decided to go into another daring sport - racing.  She had bought a Jaguar XK-120 (a car she fell in love with while at a private school for girls).  She bought it for the beauty of the machine, but soon started to question how far were the limits of the car?  Looking to find an answer to this question she scoured local race clubs and events and decided to enter into gymkhana races. In 1962, she was named women's gymkhana champion of Long Island.

Wanting to improve her driving skills further, she joined the Lime Rock driving school in Connecticut.  During her time there, she had caught the eye of a veteran sports car driver Gordon Mckenzie.  Seeing she had talent, he asked her if she wanted to be a sports car driver.
Jaguar XK-140

Thinking this was a great idea, she joined another racing school, this one sponsored by the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America).  This helped her further improve her racing driving by learning to shift through corners, carrying speed through the track, how to pass, etc.  Having completed this course, she decided she need a more powerful car to compete.  So she bought herself a Jaguar XK-140 and learned the internal workings of the motor (by disassembling and reassembling it) before entering a single race to be able to fix it in case of failure.  In 1963 she began racing in the SCCA.  In her first year she completed 12 races, and by the end of the second year she had accomplished 120 races.  In nearly of all her races she finished in the top ten cars. 

This caught the eye of Macmillan Ring-Free Oil Company.

To Be Continued.

No comments:

Post a Comment