lives in the fast lane

Women in NASCAR

By Shannon Reichley

It's race week at Charlotte Motor Speedway, featuring the gazillion-dollar traveling circus that carries as many stereotypes as chicken bones tossed against the grandstand fence. The uninitiated see it as millionaire good ole boys hurtling gaudy cars around a giant oval track. The fans are straight from Central Casting: rednecks with tank tops and beer coolers who get revved up at Hank Williams, Jr. and the live version of "Freebird." And there's the hard lovin' women flashing their tailpipes to the appreciative in the infield. "An embarrassment to the New South," some whisper.

But in case you've been trying to hitch a ride on the Halle-Bopp comet lately, NASCAR racing is setting attendance records and sucking in revenue in a way that has the stuffed shirts in other pro sports coveting the horsepower.

Megatracks like Charlotte, Daytona, and Texas hold 200,000 fans and boast luxury suites and condos where the got-bucks have the need for speed.

The numbers are eye-openers. Winston Cup racing attendance is up 50 percent between 1990 and 1995. Seven years ago, NASCAR-licensed merchandise, from t-shirts to trading cards, pulled in $60 million. Five short years later, cash registers rang up $700 million worth. Live races are second only to the NFL in cable TV sports ratings. Product sponsors crave the loyal fan base.

Need more? Shares in Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports are traded on Wall Street. NASCAR wowed Japan in an inaugural race last November. The Baywatch people are shooting a racing-themed nighttime soap. Surf the Internet, and it's loaded with driver and fan pages.

And the human embodiment of "Speed Racer," Jeff Gordon, is in a "Got Milk?" ad and made People Magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" list this month. Yes, NASCAR's gone global, and Charlotte's the unofficial center of its universe.

One of the little-known aspects of this macho-man sport is that women are getting in the driver's seat inside the huge business machine that is NASCAR. The courtship of female faithful, estimated at 40 percent of its fans, are a priority. Advertisers, start your engines.

SHE CAN'T DRIVE 55

Patty Moise has been married to fellow NASCAR driver Elton Sawyer for six years, but just now got around to buying a nice bedroom suite, the kind with dressers that match the king-sized bed in their Greensboro home. Blame it partly on NASCAR. Life on the circuit doesn't leave you much time to get settled when you can be on the road as many as 30 weekends a year.

This year has been different in a lot of ways for NASCAR's lone female driver in Busch Series, one division below Winston Cup competition. Another woman, Tami Jo Kirk, is racing on the NASCAR truck circuit, but Patty's been closer to the Big Enchilada. They're the only women on the NASCAR tracks these days. Driver Shauna Robinson detoured onto the mommy track, and Lyn St. James is still driving Indy cars.

Moise is without a full-season sponsor these days, the common way engines are stilled in a sport that costs team sponsors as much as $50,000 a race. It wasn't her driving, but a matter of corporate reorganization. Her sponsor, Dial Soap, got a new CEO who laid off employees and gutted corporate sponsorships, including Moise's Dial/Purex Ford. It didn't make her happy, but she says that's the way of the NASCAR world.

"Sponsoring a car isn't for the faint of heart. Not only does a company spend money on the actual racing, but they also spend a ton of money off the track promoting the team and the product. It's tough," Moise says.

Motorsports journalist Deb Williams

She also believes that the lack of women drivers might hurt sponsorship opportunities. "Until there are more of us, I think sponsors still look at us as something different. And you have to realize that it's just more than driving a car. With these companies, you better understand how to accomplish what their marketing needs are."

Now in her late 30s, Moise grew up a racing fan near Jacksonville, Florida, and started competing when she was a senior in college. By 1986, she entered her first Grand National race, and has been at it ever since. Last year, she finished 31st out of 107 drivers in the Busch series final points standings, and earned about $85,000 in winnings.

She wants no special treatment because of her gender. "I've only been me. In any other workplace dominated by men, whether you're a driver or a vice-president in a corporation, there are always gonna be some men who cause you problems. The more women that enter this sport, the better -- so we don't live life under the magnifying glass," Moise says.

Things are looking up. Moise will compete at Dover and Watkins Glen later in the summer, in a two-race sponsorship by Pfizer, which approached her, not the other way around. She'll be in the pink. Actually, in a pink race car, emblazoned with the sponsor, Pure Silk Shave Gel.

Moise is realistic about her future. "It's like the saying we have in racing: 'Money buys speed -- how fast do you want to go?' "

MUSTANG SALLY (aka Dianna)

Whither Derrick Cope goes, goest Dianna Drayson. He's a Winston Cup driver, popular with fans and blessed by a hot team sponsorship by M&M/Mars. He blasts around NASCAR tracks in the Skittles candy car, and Drayson's never far away in her role as public relations manager for the team, assigned to the job by her bosses at Muhleman Marketing, Inc. The Muhleman is Max, credited with masterminding Charlotte's successful bids for Charlotte's NBA and NFL teams. Yet the majority of the firm's sports marketing business comes from motorsports.

Drayson, 30, is one of the growing number of women working in the lucrative world of NASCAR marketing. It's the linkage between the sponsor, its product, the driver, and retailers hungry to attract customers. NASCAR followers are ranked as the most brand-loyal sports fans. When surveyed, 70 percent of fans say they often decide what products to buy based on the product's sponsorship presence on the NASCAR circuit.

Derrick Cope's Skittles car is no exception. "The consumer target is women, actually mothers, who'll buy it for their kids," Drayson explains. How popular are they? "Skittles are the favorite chewy sugar candy of kids from 8 to 17." And you thought this was about driving cars real fast.

Drayson moved to Charlotte last fall after her two-year stint with the Atlanta Olympics ended, and she was already up to speed when it came to NASCAR. "I went to high school near Daytona, Florida, and my family took the RV to races, and all that. I also volunteered at the Atlanta Motor Speedway, and I knew that I wanted to work in NASCAR someday. Now, I have my dream job."

Dianna will spend 33 weekends this year at out-of-town speedways watching over the PR for Cope, and handing out, well, lots of Skittles. But, she's still a fan, and the bumper sticker on her Mustang reads, "I'm blonde and I don't brake."

"I have such a passion for it; it's not just cars going around. It's competition and strategy, too. When my folks used to camp on the backstretches, I used to run to the rail when they fired up the engines. I still feel that way."

YOU BETTER SHOP AROUND

NASCAR brand loyalty equals big bucks.

Food Lion's marketing campaign, touting itself as the "official grocery store of NASCAR," clearly goes after women fans, who still make the bulk of family food purchases. It's a financial success for the chain, which has some 1,100 supermarkets in 14 states. Sixty-five percent of those are in racing country, namely North Carolina, Florida and Virginia. Sales went up as a result of their campaign last year.

Here's what I saw in a Charlotte Food Lion store last week.

Shelf displays with cardboard cars and special signage included Skittles, Miller Beer and Budweiser. Soft drink shelves are plastered with color photo-price tags of Pepsi's new guy, Jeff Gordon, holding a cold one. Dale Earnhardt's on the Wheaties box, and back where you find the pudding, you can buy a special mold for Jell-O Jigglers, shaped like race cars.

Hanging everywhere are 4-by-4 posters hanging from the ceiling, covered with big color photos of NASCAR drivers and their wives, dressed in his-and-her racing suits. You'll be seeing them in the TV commercials, too.

TUBE TOPS

The women at World Sports Enterprises are fine-tuning their machine, just like the racers in the garages a mile away at CMS. Speed Week is just another hectic week for the Harrisburg television production company. The majority of NASCAR races and studio shows aren't produced in the rarefied air of New York-based TV networks, but by World Sports.

"We're producing 100 events this year, more NASCAR events than all the others (TNN, TBS, CBS, Family Channel, and Speedvision) combined," says Alycia Kivlighan, World Sports' general manager.

NASCAR's TV ratings growth has the company bursting at the seams, expanding from seven staffers three years ago to over 40 people this year and the freelancers it uses every race. World Sports also produces two weekly studio shows, "Raceday" and "Motor Madness," which air on TNN.

World Sports' president is Patti Wheeler, who oversaw its startup for owner Gaylord Entertainment (The Nashville Network) in 1994. Westinghouse, CBS' new owner, bought Gaylord recently. Patti's the daughter of CMS honcho Humpy Wheeler, but even competitors say she's made it on her own, with a strong background in racing television and business vision and savvy, just like her dad.

Kivlighan, 38, cut her teeth on Jefferson-Pilot commercial production, then became Creative Sports' executive producer in 1988. She was the Charlotte Hornets' inaugural TV game producer, and worked on college hoops and football.

She admits she wasn't a NASCAR follower when she arrived at World Sports, but with Wheeler's help, she's up to speed and has a new appreciation for racing and its audience. Married and pregnant with her first child, Alycia's cut down on the constant travel and has actually enjoyed some holidays at home, never a given for the TV tribe.

"It's a true spectator sport. The drivers, as a rule, are so much more accessible to the average fan. They give back to their fans, and it's refreshing to see," she observes.

"They're a totally different breed of athlete these days. In over two years on the road with the Hornets, the players seldom called me by name."

The name that Pam Miller gets called is "producer." While Wheeler grows the company and Kivlighan runs to the-day-to-day operations, Miller's in the hot seat in the giant production trucks cooking up the live telecast, with directors, graphics, and audio operators.

Racing may be the toughest live sporting event to televise, because of the fleeting visual nature of speed. Cars that move in a blur are hard to capture and viewers expect a lot. They want to follow the leader, see one-on-one battles, hear from the pits, and see graphic updates of the leaderboard. And you must never, ever, miss showing the wrecks. It's a high-pressure stew of over 25 cameras (some inside the cars), audio, graphics, and announcers keeping viewers on track for several hours.

A New Englander, Miller earned her stripes at ESPN in hockey and college football production, when she "fell into" racing coverage in 1991, though she laughs that she "didn't even know where the oil went in my own car."

She came to World Sports over two years ago, and also admires the stars' accessibility and their lack of "a secret locker room." Miller says it's the one sport where NASCAR pros like crew chiefs Barry Dodson and Larry McReynolds answer questions and teach her about racing strategy and the work that goes into maintaining cars masquerading as 190 miles-an-hour rockets.

She feels equal to other men in her role, formerly a man-only job, and says the rest of the country is catching on to NASCAR: "I was at Fenway Park in Boston not too long ago, and actually saw two guys wearing Rusty Wallace and Dale Earnhardt shirts."

MORE THAN ONE OF THE BOYS

Motorsports journalist Deb Williams covered her first Winston Cup race in 1979 at Darlington. When she picked up her press pass, there was a problem. On the bottom of the coveted ticket, it said, "No women allowed in pits." Right away, she found the track's PR guy and "jumped his case." He told her not to worry, that rule didn't apply to her.

"Back then, it was usually just me, a NASCAR PR woman, and Dorothy Patrick, who was a photographer, in the pits and the garages. It was a rule meant to keep the groupies out, but it also kept the wives out. I remember a race in '77, when Ricky Rudd was a rookie, when they wouldn't even let his sister in the garage, and she was spotting and keeping stats for his team," Williams says.

Things have changed since then, including her career rise. Williams is racing's only female publication editor. She's overseen Winston Cup Scene since 1993. It's the country's largest weekly racing newspaper (circulation 140,000), housed in 22nd floor offices-with-a-view in uptown Charlotte.

Only two writers have won all three of motorsports journalism's three top awards. One is the Charlotte Observer's just-retired NASCAR reporter, Tom Higgins. The other is Deb Williams.

"A family friend gave me World 600 tickets as a high school graduation gift. I remember looking up at the press box and I promised myself I'd be up there in 10 years. I made it seven, working as the Raleigh bureau chief of UPI," she says.

Williams grew up with racing in Canton, NC. Her parents followed the sport and always joked that as a baby, the only place they could get her to nap was in the track infields. Her dad was a machinist, and explained to her how cars worked, what had gone wrong in the races they heard on the radio. "Iíve always loved racing because of the competition and how these human beings can make these cars do what they do."

Now in her forties, Williams hasn't just reported on NASCAR's evolution; she's lived it. "When I first showed up, I was a curiosity. I've always been treated with respect, but I know that a lot of the male veterans in the press back then were leery of me when I started. But there were things that showed that I was all right to them and the drivers' wives and girlfriends, too. Linda Petty was always good to me, and when the other writers saw that Richard himself would talk to me in the garage, they started to say, 'Sshe must be OK.' "

Higgins and reporter Mike Mulhern also helped by mentoring her and would invite her along when drivers held impromptu press conferences. Things were improving, but she still laughs about at an invitation-only dinner she attended years ago in Darlington.

"I went to the country club, and they seated me in the back of the room behind some TV cameras, and I knew people, especially the older men, were looking at me weird. I was already used to that, but the dinner got started and I was the only woman there. I found out afterwards that women weren't allowed. The drivers' wives had been taken through another door, put in a another room and watched the whole thing on closed circuit TV!" The dinner's rules changed not long after that.

She also cautions NASCAR's gurus that higher ticket prices and the upscale commercialism may be dangerous: "They're already turning off some of the longtime fans who've been with them all along. Your average working person is getting to where they can't afford to take their family to the races anymore. NASCAR needs to remember the grassroots, the people who got them here."

Williams still spends a lot of time on the road, and reporting on races you've covered year after year can make the writing stale now and again. Physically, you're beat. "But when the next season rolls around, you find yourself ready to get going," she says.

The traveling circus is her life. "We're a small town that picks up and moves every week -- NASCAR, their families, and the press. There's the same type of things going on, like jealousy, and rumors. But it's also a big family, with our own church and get-togethers. I wouldn't want it any other way."

Lives in the Fast Lane is reprinted,
with permission, from
Creative Loafing Online.