- [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided by... - [Announcer] Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory, and Florist, dedicated to helping you celebrate your life or the life of a loved one for over 85 years.

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- [Alison] This week on "The A List," I sit down with a woman who made history on the track.

- I realized when I got behind the wheel of that pinto on a race track, it was like, "This is me.

I found my space in this world."

And that's what I've been doing ever since, since 1974.

I mean it's, every time I'm at a racetrack, I get in a race car, it just fills me, you know?

It's just like, this is me, this is kind of, this is who I am, this is what I'm meant to do.

- Join me as I talk with Lyn St. James.

Coming up next on "The A List."

(theme music) (theme music continues) (music fades) (upbeat music) If you are a fan of auto racing, you're probably familiar with Lyn St. James.

With a career spanning nearly three decades, she became a decorated athlete within the world of competitive racing.

And beginning her career in 1973, she was also notable for being one of the only women competing in a traditionally male dominated sport.

Among her many accolades, she became the first woman to win "Rookie of the Year" at the Indianapolis 500 in 1992.

Now, though retired from the sport that has helped shape her life, she's still deeply invested in the racing industry.

so it's no surprise that she was named Grand Marshall of the third annual Chattanooga Motor Car Festival.

Lyn, welcome to "The A List."

- Well, thank you.

I didn't know there was such a thing.

(both chuckling) - Well you're on it, and we feel like we've made it to "The A List" with you here.

And welcome back to Chattanooga.

- Thank you.

- And congratulations on being named Grand Marshall for the Chattanooga Motor Car Festival.

- It was really, you know, I came the first time, and first time I'd ever been to Chattanooga, and I love the vibe of the city, you know.

I mean, I go to a lot of cities around the country and I always appreciate what I'm seeing and all of that, but I don't always get a good vibe about it.

I always think it's not like, "Oh, I, I can't wait to go back."

You know, that kind of feeling.

But I was really excited to come back to Chattanooga for a second time and to be part of the Motor Car Festival.

And then they did say, would you like to be Grand Marshall?

Which was really sweet.

I don't have a banner that I get to wear.

Which I'm fine, I don't want to walk around with a banner that says "Grand Marshall."

(chuckling) - Well, we are thrilled that you're here, and also, I just can't wait to hear more about your story and no pun intended, but the road that you've taken to get this far in race cars.

Tell me about your childhood.

- Ooh, it was pretty traditional in the sense of what- I was born in 1947, and so 40s, 50s traditional in a sense that as a young female, as a young girl, you didn't have a lot of pressure or expectations just through the normal stuff.

But I had this thing about cars.

I did like cars.

My mom also loved cars.

She survived polio from the time she was very young.

So for her, a car was everything.

That was what her- we can walk to the store if we have to, and my mom couldn't.

She could walk, but she couldn't walk very far, and she was very unstable.

So for her, an automobile was everything.

And she taught me how to drive.

And of course, I reminded her of that often when I found out- ended up doing what I did, you know.

I'm like, "Mom, it's all your fault.

You know, you taught me a car talks to you, it gives you warnings and signals and learn the smells and how to take care of the car."

I mean, so that was a little different than probably most, but I became a secretary at US Steel Cleveland District Sales Office.

And my first car was a 1967 Pontiac Catalina 2+2 with four-speed.

And, you know, again, I had to have a hot car in the 60s, a muscle car.

So, and again, I just keep saying I did everything that a young female was expected to do.

I got married, I moved to Florida with my husband.

We started a business.

Life was okay, but there was something missing.

I knew there was something missing and I didn't really know what it was.

And we went to the races, great fan and spectator, my husband and I went to the races, and we went to this race called The 24 Hours of Daytona, which I had never seen sports car racing, I'd never seen endurance racing.

So here these cars are going around, you know, this racetrack for 24 hours.

And you get to go down in the pits and you get to go in the paddock and you get to see the people working on the cars and the drivers.

And I realized that real people drove race cars.

They weren't just super humans like Mario Andretti and AJ Foyt, and the people that we would see like that.

And I found out people did it as a hobby, and I became a member of the Sports Car Club of America.

Then I found out you had to go to competition driver's school to get your competition license.

And that's what I did.

And I went out and bought a Ford Pinto, which was my first race car and also my street car.

And I raced it, and I drove it back and forth to work.

And that's what was missing.

I realized when I got behind the wheel of that Pinto on a racetrack, it was like, this is me.

This, I found my space in this world.

And that's what I've been doing ever since, since 1974.

I mean, it's, every time I'm at a racetrack, I get in a race car, it just fills me.

You know?

It's just like, this is me.

This is kind of, this is who I am.

This is what I'm meant to do.

And I feel blessed that I have found something that I'm that passionate about, and that is sort of inside me that says, this is who you are.

I think we all have things inside us that we don't know individually what's missing.

And we don't always chase it.

And when we do, sometimes it's not what we think it is.

And I just feel blessed that it turned out to be the right thing for me.

- Well, that 1974 race in your Pinto didn't exactly turn out triumphant.

- (chuckling) No, no.

So you've done some homework I can see that now.

Didn't realize, yes.

So my very first race after completing driver's school, this was in South Florida.

There's a lot of water in South Florida, and I ended up losing control of the car, lost my concentration, and I spun and ended up in this body of water that I thought was just a pond.

And it turned out to be really a deep pond of stagnant water and the car totally submerged, and I got out safely, but they said it looked like I walked on water.

You know, I just hustled out.

So it was terribly embarrassing.

So I just, I got the Alligator of the year award that they created.

So it really stuck with me for a long time.

And it would've been easy to give up, but I almost did.

I almost said, "Maybe this is who I think I am and who I feel I am, but maybe this isn't what I should be doing."

And my husband, I have to thank him, said "Lyn, you know, race car drivers just aren't born.

This is a trained skill, and how hard are you willing to work?"

So... and the other thing is strange about racing is you don't get to do it all the time.

You know, like if you play golf and tennis and play other sports, you can go out and practice, you can do drills, you get to do it a lot.

In racing, you have to think about it a lot, but you don't get to actually go to the racetrack very often.

And so I had a lot of time to think about it, and I just buckled down, you know?

So I eventually started winning races in that Pinto, and I won the Florida Regional Championship.

So I mean, it did finally start to come together, but in the beginning, it tested me right away, right away.

And I think you learn more from failures than you do from success.

And racing gives you a lot of failures, a lot of lessons.

But you know, it's how bad- and it always comes down to how hard are you willing to work?

How badly do you want it?

And that's what drives me.

- In time that passion and work ethic would make Lyn one of the most successful female race car drivers in history.

But the road to get there wasn't an easy one.

As she navigated her early career during a time when women were largely excluded from the sport, it took a lot of determination and skill behind the wheel for Lyn to carve out her own space at the racetrack.

So your husband was obviously very supportive.

What about your peers in the racing industry?

Were they cheering you on?

Because you were really, really- I'm gonna keep using puns as much as I want- you were literally paving the way for women, not just across the country, but across the world, to access what we all know as a male dominated sport.

And you were able to go head-to-head with men in a sport, which is also quite a rarity.

- In the beginning, I got hassled a lot.

I mean, I would go pick up my trophies, you know, at awards presentation, and they would say, "Oh, make sure you give this to your husband."

But I'm like, I don't care what they say, you know?

I know.

I mean, I get in the car, the race car doesn't know if a gal or a guy is driving it, it doesn't say, "Oh, I got a chick driving it.

I'm not gonna give it all my horsepower."

I mean, it's really, I call it a gender neutral sport.

So I just- but in the beginning, yeah, there was my peers which are my competitors, they didn't like it, particularly when I beat 'em, you know?

But as I got to the professional ranks, less.

And most of the time they either ignored me or they befriended me, but they never helped me.

But they don't help each other either.

I mean, they razz each other, they give each other a hard time outside of the car.

But, so I had to figure it out on my own.

And so I, that's really it, I know people wanna hear these horror stories, but really I just put my head down and I just didn't put up with the BS, you know?

And if you gave me a lot, I always looked at it, this is the way I looked at it, is here I am and here's where I gotta go.

So whether it's for a race, or for my career, the next lap, if there's something between me and where I gotta go, I gotta deal with it.

But if I can go around it, I can go under it, I can go over it.

In other words, I can avoid that barrier or that thing that's between me and where I gotta go, then figure a way around it.

And if you can't, then you gotta drive through it.

You know?

Then you gotta take it head on, right?

But if you take everything head on just because it's in front of you, you're gonna waste a lot of time and a lot of energy, and you're gonna be distracted.

And so that was a great thing that I learned.

And actually my husband was, when I had an early issue, and he said, "Lyn, it's nothing more than a distraction.

They're just trying to do that and you're not gonna be ready for the next session.

So, I just learned so much about life through racing, you know?

And so it's all good.

- The margin between victory and possible disaster is so slim, right?

I mean, even 500 lap race or a 24 hour race, at the very last minute, everything can change.

And I know that's happened to you.

Tell me about Riverside.

- So Riverside was one of those totally unexpected things that happened.

A lot of times when you are in an incident, you kind of see it coming, you feel it coming, and whether something breaks on the car or you've screwed up.

Where that was completely out of the blue.

So I had just gotten in the car from a driver change where it was my time to be in the car.

It was a Ford Probe at Riverside in an endurance race, a 500 mile.

And all of a sudden I got hit from behind and then it threw me into a car that was on the outside of me.

So it was a three car collision.

Totally- I had no idea how it happened.

I just couldn't figure it out.

Couldn't figure it out.

But it was bad.

So I ended up hitting a wall, the pit wall, and it turned me upside down.

And then I was spinning, 'cause I was going about 180 miles an hour at the time.

And then the car burst into flames 'cause we had just made a pit stop.

so I had a full load of fuel, everything was at a very high level.

And so I'm on fire and I'm spinning.

All I remember of it now, is a couple things.

One was because I'd had fire, minor fire in incidents before that you learn from everything, by the way, your mind is like a human computer, is that if you start to hyperventilate, which is what you do when bad stuff happens, right?

(gasping) - Right.

- You know, you start doing that, well, you soak in, that's how you burn your lungs.

And so I remember saying to myself, "Don't breathe, don't breathe, don't breathe."

I had this voice sort of repeating in my head and of course I didn't know I was upside down.

And so when I released the seatbelt, bang, I hit my head, but I was able to crawl out of the car.

And if you watch the film, it was like at the very end it sort of did about a 90 degree rotation.

And so the car was out of the fire, but I had to crawl through the fire when I got out of the car.

So the car wasn't engulfed in the fire, the fire was right there 'cause it was a fireball from the fuel and the oil.

And I had to crawl through it.

But I walked away from it and I was worried that that might end my career, even though I knew it wasn't my fault.

But I just thought "I'm gonna get blamed."

You know?

And as it turned out, it actually helped my career.

I found out later.

- In what way?

- I found out that, I was factory driver for Ford Motor Company.

They were my primary sponsor at the time.

And this was my fourth year of my Ford sponsorship.

And so they knew, I mean, I was one of them, right?

Well, I found out at one of the executives said, "Boy, she really does just drive like the man, and she didn't cry."

I'm like, "You gotta be kidding."

I was like, "Who said that?

I gotta get them., I mean, I was so mad that that happened.

But it actually, it elevated the confidence they had in me and the attitude that they had that I was actually like the guys.

And to them that was important.

So that's why I feel it enhanced my career.

'Cause I was able to maintain Ford after that.

- Not only was Lyn able to maintain her sponsorship, but she was also able to get back in the driver's seat again and again, racing across North America and abroad.

She proved to be quite a competitor winning at Daytona and Sebring.

But despite her successes, she could have never dreamed that her next step would make history at the Indianapolis 500.

So let's talk about the first time you get to race at the 500.

- Yeah.

- What was that like?

- Did you ever have a dream?

You know, a dream that, oh, would I love to play Wimbledon or win an academy or I don't know, something, be in a movie, you know, whatever?

Well, being in the Indy 500 was just like that dream, you know, but I figure it's never gonna happen.

And I got to drive test drive drive an Indy car for the first time in 1988 with this team owner, Dick Simon.

And that was all I thought it would ever entail was just to drive the car.

And I did really well.

And at the end of the day, he said to me, "We can do this."

He didn't say, "You can do this."

He said, "We can do this."

And that's when I knew I had somebody in my corner and somebody who believed in me.

So we got to work.

I got to work and took four years and 150 companies that said no, 150.

First company, JC Penney, said yes.

I'm like, "Oh my God."

And we went to Indy and it was like Christmas every day.

I mean, I just couldn't believe it.

I mean, and Dick Simon, the team owner, did such a good job of preparing me.

And so when you have somebody in your corner like that and he's the kind of person that is a good teacher besides being a former driver himself and the owner of the team.

So, you know, not everybody's good at teaching and good at doing.

And he happened to be good at both.

And so he had that ability to tell me what I needed to know when I needed to know it.

I mean, that was a lot to absorb and to process as a rookie at Indy.

And if somebody would've just unloaded the whole deal and then said "Go, have at it."

I don't know if I could have been successful.

And he just is a fantastic human to be, and it was just a perfect fit.

You know, he was a good teacher and I'm a really good student.

And so we ended up finishing 11th and won rookie of the year.

Which could not have been in- that was not on my radar screen at all.

- Rookie of the year.

- Yeah.

- You're very first time.

- Yeah, you're a rookie the very first time.

There were nine rookies that year.

So- - Right.

I guess you can only be rookie once,(chuckling) - That's right.

So doesn't matter where you came from.

If your a Formula One driver, or you're Jimmy Johnson, seven time NASCAR champion.

Once you're a rookie, that first year you're a rookie.

But I never ever just thought that was, I mean, it was just being in the race doing well, qualifying being in the race and then finishing and that was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And but the rookie of the year, I thought, no way.

And so that was- and I remember Dick Simon, my team owner, saying to me, "I know you're excited.

This is a cool thing now.

But," he said, going forward in your life and in your career, you're gonna find this is even gonna have more meaning" I didn't know what he meant.

It's turned out that, I mean, now people introduce me it's like, "Indy 500 rookie of the year."

- You started in the whole industry late, I mean, relatively speaking.

So you're racing against men who had been literally driving and preparing for this from families of race car drivers.

You get in at aged what, 27 then you're navigating this as one of the only women in the industry.

When you look back, did you realize that you were forging these new paths instead of following, like so many other men in the industry were, in other people's footsteps?

And did that make it easier or harder?

Like when you don't know what the bar is, right?

When you're actually setting the bar?

Is there, I know there's that added pressure and responsibility, but it also make it, when you look back, a little bit easier to navigate because you were always sort of the first in getting there?

- Hmm.

It was never easy to navigate.

But at the same time, I never felt that extra pressure as long as I knew I was really doing a good job.

I have to admit that when Janet Guthrie went to Indy in the 70s and I had just been racing a few years and I watched her on TV.

I really was concerned because A, she didn't look like she was having a lot of fun.

I mean, she just didn't emulate that this was a joyful, wonderful thing.

And secondly, there was so much criticism from her competitors and from the officials and so it's like they don't want her there and she doesn't look like she's having fun.

At that point in my life, I was racing still amateur.

I was having a blast.

And I didn't feel that that was sort of that feeling that they didn't want me there.

They just didn't want me to beat them.

And so I realized I have to change that spirit, I have to change that.

I have to change what it means to be a woman in the racetrack because I don't want that memory of what Janet went through.

I don't want that to carry- now she was racing Indy and I was just racing amateur stuff in South Florida.

And then I got to Atlanta when it was the, you know, I got outside of the regional.

But I still never felt that extra pressure.

I never did.

I mean my pressure was my own pressure to beat, to be the best, to be the fastest on the track, to qualify as possibly as best as I can.

That was always the pressure I had.

The pressure was to beat Scott Pruitt, to beat my competitors, to beat my teammates.

You know, that was the pressure.

And that's good pressure.

That's competitive pressure.

That's not external stuff, you know, that's 'cause you can't control that, but you could control how you react to it, whether you let it in.

And I never wanted to let that in.

- Lyn continued to shatter expectations and break down barriers throughout her long career on the racetrack.

She went on to compete at Indy seven times and she is credited with being the first woman to break 200 miles per hour in a race car.

Though she didn't set out to be a trailblazer, there's no doubt that Lyn St. James paved the way for so many women to follow in her footsteps.

And she has made an indelible impression on the racing industry as we know it today.

So we talked about your first race.

Let's talk about your last race.

- Hmm.

My last, last race?

Or my last 500?

- Well, your last 500, was- - That didn't turn out so good either.

(chuckling) - was, 2000, right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I can say this now.

I'm not proud of it actually.

I'm so proud of my competition performance in Indy cars because in reality I didn't have the right experience to get there to do as well as I did.

The Indianapolis 500 was my first oval track race and only my second open wheel race.

I had come from a total different discipline and I did good.

Well, the last '98 and '99 I got bumped, meaning my speed was not fast enough to hold, to make the field.

And Roger Penske has been bumped.

Robbie Ray Hall's been bumped, you know, so it's not like I was the only one that's ever been bumped, but I know what it feels like.

I thought I can't end it this way.

I have to, I can't end my career in Indy Car that way.

So I was able to get sponsorship in 2000.

I was 53 years old, I hadn't been in a race car for two years prior and I did okay.

I ended up crashing and qualifying and they got the car together, they got a new car and put it all together and I was confident I was very much confident in my skills, but when we got into the race, the clutter of all of those cars, I mean there was just so much going on.

And we ended up in a three car trying to go through turn one and we ended up crashing.

Two cars could go through turn one, but not three.

But I still feel like I at least qualified and felt good about my own personal performance and for my last race at the Indy 500.

- So for the young girl especially who's watching this and watching you, what advice do you have to her about navigating any world where she may feel like she is the only, or the unwanted, or the outsider?

- Oo.

Well, you have to be true to yourself.

And that is a really hard thing 'cause sometimes that changes in your, in your inners, you allow influences coming in, you start doubting yourself.

I've gone on through all that and I know it, but you've really got to be as true to yourself as you possibly can.

And even if there's doubt there, have good advisors, you know, have people in your life, whether it's your parents, your friends, your teachers, your, I don't know, but have people that are not just cheerleaders, but that who really believe in you and really want what's best for you and want to support whatever you think is best for you, not just advisors telling you what to do.

So be very selective about who you allow in, not just people, but also information today.

I mean with all the social media and all the influences that are out there, it's very hard to navigate now.

So just, you have to be incredibly selective about what you let in and know that you have those choices and if it's something that you truly believe in that you wanna do, then you just gotta stay the course and figure it out.

And it'll never happen in the timeframe that you want it to happen, then that's just because that's the way the world is, I think.

But you know, if you're true to yourself and you are willing to work hard enough, I think anything is possible.

I really do believe that.

I mean, I'm so motivated by female astronauts.

I follow what's going on in the world and I'm inspired by what I see other women accomplishing.

And so that, and often over those decades of my racing, those other women helped inspire me.

And they didn't know it, but just knowing that they accomplished something, 'cause you gotta- it's hard to accomplish something when you feel like you're the lone ranger but you're not the lone ranger.

You just have to seek out that those pieces of inspiration that keep you true to yourself.

- Well, and thank you for being an inspiration to every woman out there, including me.

- Oh, thank you.

- And thanks for being with us.

- Wow.

Wow.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] Watch even more of the shows you love anytime with WTCI Passport on the free PBS app.

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- [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided by... - [Announcer] Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory and Florist.

Dedicated to helping you celebrate your life or the life of a loved one, for over 85 years.

Chattanooga Funeral Home believes that each funeral should be as unique and memorable as the life being honored.

- [Announcer] This program is also made possible by support from viewers like you.

Thank you.