first woman nascar driver

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sara Christian (1918 — 1980) was the first woman driver in NASCAR history.
Driving career

[edit] 1949

She competed in NASCAR's first race on June 19, 1949 at Charlotte Speedway (not Lowe's Motor Speedway). She qualified 13th in the #71 Ford owned by her husband Frank Christian. She let Bob Flock drive the car part way through the race after his engine expired on the 38th lap. He drove the car until it overheated, and finished 14th.

She competed in the second race at the Daytona Beach Road Course on July 10, 1949, and finished 18th. The 28 car field also included Flock's sister Ethel Mobley and Louise Smith which made it the first race to include three woman drivers. Frank also competed in the race, and they became the only married couple to compete in a NASCAR race. Frank finished sixth in his only career start.

She finished sixth at the fourth race at Langhorn Speedway, and became the first woman to earn a Top 10 finish. Race winner Curtis Turner invited Christian to join him in victory lane. Mobley and Smith again competed against Christian in the race, and it was the last NASCAR race to have three women drivers until July 4, 1977 when Janet Guthrie, Christine Beckers and Lella Lombardi all competed in the Firecracker 400.

She finished fifth at the ninth race at Heidelberg Raceway in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The finish was the only Top 5 finish by a woman in NASCAR history [1].

She raced in six of the eight events in the 1949 season, and finished 13th in the final points standings.
1950

She competed in one event in 1950. She finished 14th at the 12th race at the Hamburg (NY) Speedway before she retired.

Awards

* She was inducted in the Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame in 2004.[1]
* She received the 1949 United States Drivers Association Woman Driver of the Year.


It’s been a long week, but now that I’m back from Powershift ‘09, I’m feeling renewed and ready to step up and keep working towards the goals we outlined in D.C. The student climate movement is alive and well, and I think we’re going to see some important change finally reach the country this coming year.

For those of you out there who don’t know what “Powershift” is, there’s plenty of information available on the website, with all the details including schedule of events and speakers. As they describe the event themselves, “Power Shift 09 will bring 10,000 young people to Washington to hold our elected officials accountable for rebuilding our economy and reclaiming our future through bold climate and clean energy policy.” Speakers this year included Lisa Jackson (Head of the EPA), Van Jones (Green Jobs Now), Ken Salazar (Secretary of the Interior), Congressman Ed Markey and Congresswoman Donna Edwards, as well as musical performances by The Roots and Santigold.

For those of us traveling from Des Moines, the weekend involved some long-haul driving. I was joined by three freshman students from Drake University and another from Iowa State, and the 17-hour drive flew by in a haze of political and environmental discussion. By the time we reached D.C., I think we had finally figured everything out, but promptly fell asleep on the floor of the convention center and tragically forgot our solutions to the world’s problems before being able to enlighten the world.

Saturday and Sunday were set aside for workshops and panel discussions during the day, and musical performances and speeches at night. There were over twenty different meetings to choose from for each two-hour block, and though they focused on fascinating things like “Ecopedagogy” and “Bird-Dogging for Change” and “The Road to Copenhagen,” a quick walk around the Washington Convention Center Saturday morning revealed that a good number of the 12,000 students there had chosen to spend the first few sessions getting some rest as well. (Powernap ‘09, you might say) After a restful hour curled up in one of the thousands of corners at the DC Convention Center, I attended a great panel discussion on creative media activism, featuring the likes of Leilani Munter (Celebrity NASCAR driver, the fourth woman to ever race on the circuit and an outspoken environmental activist) and Daryl Hannah, who surprised me by being not only extremely eloquent, but by being a phenomenally inspirational public speaker.

Saturday night’s Roots performance was inspirational as well, though in a slightly different vein, and by Sunday afternoon I was feeling far more informed and equipped for the challenges ahead. The students from Iowa had a “Break Out” meeting to discuss Iowa specific issues Sunday night, where we went over the QC Rail project, the Marshalltown coal plant, and the possibility of securing a National Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (and how Iowa would benefit from that.) I met a lot of other committed, interested students from around the state and did some important networking before taking in a short documentary and getting some well-needed sleep. In the morning; it was time to lobby congress.

Monday morning started off with an extended discussion with a member of Boswell’s staff, who engaged our group of 25 interested students in a lively discussion about things like a carbon cap and renewable energy. He played Devil’s Advocate for much of it, reminding us that Boswell agreed with almost all of our demands, but threw out figures about how weaning our state off of coal would increase electricity bills by 3 fold, a point that we heatedly refused. Later, at a meeting with Harkin’s representative, we were told Harkin would likely continue to spearhead projects in line with our demands. Though I wasn’t able to attend the meetings with Loebsack, Braley, or Latham in full, I heard they had similar outcomes, and in the meeting with King, who has traditionally been opposed to environmental measures in the past, some common ground was found when discussin the potential for the wind industry to help create new jobs.

The most noteworthy meeting of the weekend was with Senator Grassley himself, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, which was held on Monday afternoon. More than forty students crammed into his meeting room and used our alloted fifteen minutes to the best of our ability. We made our pitch and asked if we could count on him to support a cap-and-trade system in the upcoming year, and received an unclear answer that suggested he wouldn’t. When I asked him if we could count on him to support a renewable energy portfolio standard in the future, he turned to one of his aides and said, “Doesn’t he know I’ve supported the last four RES bills?” A humorous skirting of the question; we never got clear answers from either him or his staff, though they treated us very respectfully.