Episode Transcript
There have always been adventurous women, women who did extraordinary things, and my usual sense of moderation.
I bought a Jaguar, and then I found out what I could do with it, and then I found out sports car racing existed.
That first year, they put up a little sort of a telephone booth in one corner for me to change into my driver's suit.
Him it felt as if it were glued to the track, as if you could take the whole track and turn it upside down and the car wouldn't fall off.
Speaker 2Throttal Therapy with Catherine Legg is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your book casts.
Welcome to this week's episode of Throcko Therapy with Me Catherine Legg.
This week you get the pleasure of us doing a rerun, so we have Janet Gathrie on the pod.
You've heard this one before, but it was so well received and your comments were awesome that we thought that we would give more people the pleasure of hearing what the absolute legend herself, Janet has to say.
This week we are very honored to have join us here a lady who broke barriers and really paved the way for future generations like me, and somebody that I very much looked up to my entire career and that will go down in the history books as one of the absolute greats, and somebody who I can only aspire to be like when I grow up.
So a very warm welcome to this show to Janet Guthrie.
Speaker 1Hi, Janet than Catherine, thank you very much for that glowing introduction.
Speaker 2William, more than welcome.
I've looked up to you, as you know, for a number of years now, and you've definitely been a hero to me and to millions of others.
So I are you aware of the impact that you've had on so many, so many people's lives, but especially young women and looking at being able to do whatever they want to do.
Well.
Speaker 1It was rather a surprise to me at the time, but yeah, I guess I did have an impact.
It was something I came to acknowledge, jos a responsibility more than anything.
I mean, as far as I was concerned, I was a racing driver who happened to be a woman.
So what but that wasn't the way other people saw it, and I had to eventually come around to acknowledging that.
Speaker 2Yeah, I feel very much the same, honestly, Janet.
I feel that you set out to do this thing, and it's kind of a selfish thing that you want to do and you want to achieve and you want to be a great race card driver.
And then along the way at some point you realize that you are in the public I am with.
That comes to responsibility, and so you have to do it in a responsible way for one of a better term.
But I feel exactly the same.
I didn't set out in any way, shape or form to break any barriers or do anything like that.
I just wanted to be the best race card driver that I could be.
But you didn't start out as a driver, did You started out as an aerospace engineer.
So explain to me how you got from young Janet working in engineering to being race card Janet.
Speaker 1Well, really, I started out as a pilot.
I soloed when I was sixteen, had a private license at seventeen, that was the earliest legal age for both, and by the time I got out of call age, I had a commercial pilot's life.
Sin said flight instructors rating.
When I got out of college, the first car I bought was with my wonderful new salary of one hundred and twenty five dollars a week that's over one thousand and today's dollars, and my usual sense of moderation, I bought a Jaguar, a seven year old XK one twenty m coup and then I found out what I could do with it, And then I found out sports car racing existed, and very slowly the sport took over my life.
Speaker 2So were you always like a bit of an adrenaline junkie and a bit of a tomboy and like you wanted to do with the exciting things.
Speaker 1I didn't feel like a tomboy, but I was.
I was born adventurous, that's for sure, and I grew up insufficiently socialized, and all these exciting things appealed to me for reasons which weren't really clear.
Speaker 2So how did you get from racing a jag and like being involved in sports cars to having to find sponsorship and I'm putting a team together and doing everything professionally an IndyCar and Nascot.
How did you make that leap?
Well?
Speaker 1It was one step at a time, and I really owe it all to the late great Ralla Volsted, a longtime IndyCar team owner who had always been an innovator at Indianapolis, and in nineteen seventy five he got the idea that he'd like to be the first team owner to bring a woman driver to Indianapolis.
So I got a call one day on my answering machine from somebody I'd never heard of, saying, how would you like to take a shot at the Indianapolis five hundred, And I'm thinking, yeah, right, another joker.
So the next morning I called up the late great Chris Ekanimaki and said, who is Ralaolsted?
And Chris basically told me that he was real that he was a longtime team owner.
He operated on rather a shoestring budget, but his cars had always made the field, which in those days with as when as eighty cars entered and only the fastest thirty to start the race.
I was a bit of an accomplishment all by itself.
So the next morning I returned his call and things went on from there.
It was certainly a shock to me after we announced our plans at the amount of naysaying that went on because I'd been working and playing in men's fields for a long time and I'd never seen any particular difference.
But oh my, all you had to do was open up a newspaper and there was another answer saying, our blood is going to be on your hands if you let her drive.
It was really an amazing rakus.
Speaker 2I am desperately sorry to hear that.
But what makes me even more regretful is that it's still happening today and I am still going through the exact same thing.
So while you changed the landscape for women in racing, I think we're still fighting that fight.
Unfortunately, I think it's getting less and less.
And I haven't had it from I haven't had it publicly from other drivers.
I can't imagine what it was like.
So when you walk into Indy okay, So was it your first time driving an Indyco when you went to the five hundred?
Speaker 1No, I had told Releival said that a prerequisite to any such thing was a private test.
Nobody to know about it, no press, no nothing.
Speaker 3I said.
Speaker 1If I like you and you like me, and the car goes fast enough, I can make the car go fast enough, then you can make all the noise about it, you feel like you need to, but up until then it's Oura's secret.
It was a little reluctant, but that's what we did.
We tested a a wonderful track in California called Ontario, which no longer exists, and at the end of that time we were all happy with each other and they scheduled a press conference to make the announcement.
Speaker 2So I'm right in thinking that the first time you walked into an Indy is like the first time at an IndyCar race, like an IndyCar experience.
And so you're walking into the paddock, did you feel like you belonged?
Did you feel like they were all sniggering at you behind your back?
Did you feel like you were an outcast?
Did you feel like strong and like I'm going to prove them wrong?
Like what was that initial experience like for you?
Speaker 1Well, I wouldn't have undertaken to do this thing unless I thought I would be successful at it, and I did feel I was going to be successful at it, And as far as I was concerned, the only important thing was what happened on the racetrack.
All the rest of it was just stuff and the way I sort of rolled off my like water off a ducts back.
Speaker 2I wish I could take that, And I mean, you're such an inspiration because that's so incredibly strong of you mentally to be like I know I can do it, so it's just noise and carry on.
While I know that rationally that's true, and I try and feel the same, it's still hard because you still, no matter how much you try not to point out the fact that you're different, you're still different.
And so even now, even after I've been racing for twenty years, I still walk into a new padd it like a NASCAR paddock, and I still have a slight insecurity about being accepted.
And I know that that's not how it should be.
And I wish that I was like you, But I just can't imagine how mentally tough you must have been.
And I don't know whether that was something that you taught yourself or whether it was just from childhood and it was just naturally who you are.
But you mean, you didn't even have women's bosrooms in their pits back then, right, so you just took it all in your stride.
Did you have allies that you could like lean on.
Speaker 1Well by the time we got to Indianapolis, I had come to know the guys on the crew, and they understood that I had a good feel for what the car was doing, and I think that was what underscored the whole thing.
I remember that first year they put up a little sort of a telephone booth in one corner for me to change into my driver to suit him, and they put on it Indie Lady is our Indy Lady, and I was so touched by that.
I'll never forget it for me.
So that was part of the key.
I'd spent a lot of years building my own engines and doing my own bodywork and things like that, and they figured out pretty quickly that I understood what was going on with the car.
Speaker 2When you went to India and you tested and you realized that you knew what you were doing and you were going to make this successful, what did you hope to get out of it?
Moving forward?
Speaker 1Back then, with some eighty cars entered down eighty, only eighty eighty cars would be entered for the race.
Speaker 3Yes I don't.
Speaker 1Thirty three and qualifying would get to start the race.
I thought, as most drivers of that era felt just putting a car in the field would be an accomplishment, so I hope to put a car in the field.
That first year at Indianapolis seventy six, Ralla's car never did reach a qualifying speed.
His previous driver, Tom Bigelow, who was an all time sprint car champion, had not been able to bring it up to speed the previous year either, so I had to wait until seventy seven, when Ralla got a better car, to make a qualifying attempt.
However, something did happen in seventy six that changed.
Speaker 3A lot of people's minds.
Speaker 1AJ Floyd agreed to let me take his backup car out in practice, and of course we hoped he would let me make a qualifying attempt with it.
But the fact that I brought AJ's car up to qualifying speed so quickly at opened a lot of people's minds and changed a lot of people's minds, and so I'll always be grateful to AJ Foyd for that.
Speaker 2That's amazing.
I honestly had no idea that there were eighty cars trying to qualify.
I think most people of this kind of generation and era don't realize that, and that is absolutely like mind boggling, Like two thirds of the people are going home.
That's crazy.
How was it different?
So you were driving your car and then you got the opportunity to drive Ajs And kudos to AJ for for learning you do that like it.
I am a big fan of the men that have helped and supported us along the way, because without them we couldn't have done it.
So very grateful to him for doing that.
But when you jumped in his car, was it night and day different?
Was it better?
Did it feel the same, but just went quicker?
Like was it a development thing, a technology thing?
Like?
What do you think made a good car good back then?
Speaker 3Well, it was like night and day.
Speaker 1I mean I didn't say this out loud at the time because I didn't want to hurt Ralla's feelings.
Speaker 3But AJ's car was just a revelation.
Speaker 1It felt as if it were glued to the track, as if you could take the whole track and turn it upside down and the car wouldn't fall off.
Speaker 3That was quite an experience.
It was really a revelation.
Speaker 1That year seventy six, I did drive in some other indie car races, and I also got a chance at NASCAR, which is another story.
But at the beginning of seventy seven, Ralla acquired a much better car, and I did put that in the field in seventy seven.
Speaker 2I mean, honestly, if I was him, I probably would have just gone off at AJ some money for his car.
Did help you then moving forward?
Or was it just kind of a one off like let's see what she's got and what she's made of kind of deal?
And did you feel like people's perceptions were up for being changed, Like they had this idea that you know, their blood was on your hands if you made the race and what have you.
But then once you'd proven to them that you could drive, their opinions changed or were they reluctant to change their opinions?
Did they not want to did they still keep the same opinions?
Like how honest were they to themselves about you and your abilities?
Well?
Speaker 1I remember the very first indie car race I ever drove in seventy six at Trenton, New Jersey, another track that no longer exists.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1I did notice that most of the drivers in the field gave me, or rather why the birth, as if they figured I was about to do something unusual.
The one exception was Gordon John Kak who would drive pretty close to me.
Speaker 3As time went on, that changed.
Speaker 1I mean they figured out I knew what I was doing and I could give them some good competition, and so that that started changing fairly quickly.
Speaker 2Do you think it motivated them not to be beaten by the girl?
Speaker 1Well, I had experienced that in sports car racing.
Actually, you'd come upon some other driver, a guy, because most of them were guys, who when he figured out who that was, quit babying his car.
Maybe he was babying it because it was about to break or something, and he couldn't stand being passed by a woman, so he would speed up and break the car.
Speaker 3So I was accustomed to that.
I thought it was pretty funny.
Actually, it's amazing.
Speaker 2Did you have somebody that went with you and helped you?
And for me, that's been my dad, because he's been there every step of the way, and he's amazing.
You've met him.
He's great, and I can cool him and say so and so did this and such and such happened, and how would you do this?
And I do that less and less now, obviously, but I don't I relied heavily on him in my early years.
Did you have somebody like that for you, Well.
Speaker 3Not really.
Speaker 1No.
There was a guy who let me use his small boat mover's shop to work on my race.
Speaker 3Carries in and every now and then he'd come with me to the races.
Speaker 1Really a great guy, Ralph Farnham, but he knew nothing about racing.
My father knew nothing about racing either, and didn't want to know anything about racing.
He wasn't in the least enthusiastic about it.
My brother, my next sibling in line, was Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Iowa and as his doctorate from Yale, and that's in keeping with the family system.
So my father was quite proud of Stuart's accomplishments, but mine he doesn't think much of, which was a disappointment to me.
Speaker 3But that's the way it was.
Speaker 2Yeah, that must have been incredibly hurtful, just because you've achieved so much.
And I mean, that's that sponkers to me, how you wouldn't be proud.
But I know that my mom says the same thing about my granddad.
Right, Like the son went to college and all the effort was put behind them, and then the girls were there and they were just kind of having babies, and that's it's crazy to me how that was just one generation ago and now it feels like I thinks have definitely changed.
You've seen us all come and go up until this point, right like it was you, then you saw Lynn and Sarah Fisher and Danica, and then there was the wave of Me and Simona and Beer and then there's like maybe Jamie came along.
You know, you've see the ebbs and flows of all the women in racing, and you've seen the flow of life and how women are treated in society.
They're saying, have you noticed a big shift, a big change?
Or do you think that we're still fighting eighty percent of the battles that you were fighting?
Would you like to do it all over again now with the opportunities that we've got, or do you not like the fact that they're segregating the women in the W series?
You know, like, how do you feel like it's gone since your time?
Speaker 1Things have changed tremendously until your recent difficulty is I thought that we had gotten to a spot where a woman driver was basically accepted on her ability, and clearly that's not entirely the case.
Speaker 3But all you have to do is look at television.
Speaker 1When I was growing up, television was exclusively the province of white males, and now you see women everywhere.
Most of the news broadcasts are hosted by women.
When I was growing up, women driver jokes were socially acceptable.
Well they're no longer socially acceptable.
Speaker 3So there have been huge changes.
Speaker 1Yeah, growing up as a woman in the nineteen fifties was not particularly easy.
I just declined to identify with those women about whom people make jokes.
I was myself, so I wanted to fly our planes and the erasing driver, well, you.
Speaker 3Know, so what?
Speaker 2But I feel that you changed it for us.
Honestly, I feel like that era, like there was a handful of you that really challenged perception and changed it moving forward, and then that kind of started the ball rolling.
And I would agree with you.
I would have said, there are women running countries and companies and it's widely accepted.
It's in a very short amount of time.
I would say, if you look at history, like the changes happen.
But then this year has been a eye opening experience.
I think, backing up a little bit.
Last two years ago, I did Indie again after ten years of not doing Indy, and I noticed a marked difference in the fan base, like there was a lot more women, a lot more families, and a lot more support, a lot more like girl power, where we all kind of get together and it isn't this competition between the women.
It's like we stand together on it.
And so I was really happy about that.
And then I switch and I try my hand at NASCAR this year, and I noticed a little bit of a different perception.
And I don't know whether that's because there hasn't been a woman in NASCAR and sometimes since Stannika was there, or whether it's a different demographic or what the reason is behind it, but I was honestly shocked to some of the comments and some of the things that I read, because I thought that we had moved past that.
And it sounds like your reaction was very similar.
Speaker 1You're hitting a point to sort of touch a point.
As far as I am concerned, there have always been adventurous women, women who did extraordinary things, and over the course of history what women have done has been forgotten and then denied ever to have happened.
So women in every generation keep reinventing the wheel.
And that's a touchy point.
Speaker 2With me.
That's actually a really good point, because I think I'm guilty of ninety nine point nine percent of the population the same thing.
I don't see it either.
But then when you point out like that and you look back hundreds of years, if not thousands of years, and you realize that going back through the history books, you're absolutely right.
There have been groundbreaking women in history and it's just been forgotten.
That's really sad.
Speaker 1Actually, well, we certainly don't need to reinvent the wheel every generation.
Speaker 3I'd like to see that change.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, me.
Both.
When you went from IndyCar and you were doing NASCAR as well, how did you adapt to driving all the different kinds of cars?
Because I know that you can become a specialist in one or the other leg I also have a similar experience where I love sportscar racing, I love IndyCar racing, I love NASCAR racing.
Did you feel that you could just race anything with four wheels and you would be good at it?
Speaker 1Yeah, I would say that's how I felt like.
I say, I wouldn't have undertaken these things unless I thought I would be successful at them.
But I remember early on I might even have been nineteen seventy six USAC.
At that time, the sanctioning body for IndyCars also had a stock car series, and they ran a double header at Michigan Indy Cars and stock cars, And in that event I was entered in both races, and I remember getting out of the IndyCar and heading out.
It was a new track to me, obviously, heading out in the stocker and my eye being tuned to Indy car speeds.
I went down and on the first turn I thought.
Speaker 3Ooh, I am in deep trouble.
Speaker 1It was definitely an adaptation from one set of speeds to the other set of speeds, and from the enormous ground hugging power of an IndyCar to the less ground hugging car power of a mask.
Our cup car, which was basically what we took to the USAK race, was our NASCAR Cup car.
Speaker 2If you could get in one car tomorrow and have the experience again, would it be the IndyCar the stuff car on this Botska.
Speaker 1Well, back then IndyCar was so much more important and so much more prestigious than stockers.
I wouldn't have done anything differently, But I must say, for pure flat out enjoyment, I really did enjoy NASCAR Cup racing.
I mean, you've got this great, big roll cage around you, and it feels safe, even though it isn't particularly safer than IndyCars, but it feels safer.
And I always did like big, heavy front engine cars.
Speaker 3Anyway.
Speaker 1It was definitely different, but they were both race cars and you just had to tune your eye in properly to each one.
Speaker 2Yeah, I feel like they will have their merits too, but I am having fun like you.
I'm having fun with a stock car.
It's just this big, heavy, burly car that you have to manhandle around more than the finesse of an IndyCar.
I think it probably is the same thing back then.
It was far more dangerous than it is today.
Luckily they've made leaps and pounds in safety.
Were you ever concerned about that?
Did you ever think about crashing of fires or was it ever in your head?
Speaker 1Well, they had solved the problems of fires by the time I came along.
We did have fuel cells and dry break fittings that if the car is cintegrated, all the fuel lines would seal themselves off.
So that problem had been solved both in IndyCars and in Stockers.
That was a great relief to me, but still it was I think more dangerous then.
Speaker 3Than it is now.
Speaker 1A huge advantage has been the development of the safer barriers, the collapsible barriers that most of the fast race tracks have now.
That has made survivable accidents out of some really horrific incidents.
Speaker 2Yeah, I feel like that's the same.
And the hands device, I.
Speaker 1Mean facing at these speeds is never going to be completely safe.
I mean it can't be, but it's safer that it used to be, for sure.
Speaker 2Yeah, talking about safety equipment.
Actually, I have a helmet reveal to do at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
It's a throwback helmet to your design.
It's basically, instead of having Janet written on the side, it's got Cat written on the side because Catherine was too long to fit on it, and it matches with the children's book that I just did Cat's Magic Helmet.
The reason I chose your helmet for the magic helmet was because I feel like there's a certain amount of magic and nostalgia.
And I was fortunate because I had people like you to look up to you, right, I had examples.
I had Michelle Muton, for example, I had Lynn, I had you, I had people that I could see it so I could believe it.
You really were the first, So you didn't.
You didn't have that, and that's so special to me.
I mean, it just takes an immense amount of gumption to be able to do that.
When you see us the next ones coming along, Like when you saw Lynn come along, when you saw Sarah Fisher come along, did you think, Okay, this is amazing.
Let's see and support them.
I know you've been a supporter of mine, but how do you feel about the next one on the block, Like, how do you analyze them?
Speaker 1Well, I suppose my favorite among drivers of her generation is Sarah Fisher.
It really was a tremendously talented driver.
She qualified on the poll for an Indie car race.
She finished second, I believe, in an Undy car race, and I thought she was going to be the first to win in a DG car race.
And it didn't work out for her because she had, like all women always do, trouble getting the funding to get it done with.
And I've always said that what this sport needs is a woman who has all the stuff that it takes, I mean, desire, concentration, judgment, emotional detachment, a feel for the car, all the stuff that it takes, and her own fortune as well.
Speaker 2Though I think the problem with that is if you have your own fortune, I don't know whether you're that hungry for it, like you've seen it with all the Formula one drivers taking the women part out of it.
Like I think, if you to want it badly enough, you have to have that desire and then it can't be easy, so you have to work for it.
And if you've got the fortune and it's easy, then maybe it doesn't work out that way.
I feel like all of us that have done it, to the life that we've done it have had to fight and claw and scratch our way into it.
Speaker 1You know, certainly that's true.
As far as finding the sponsorship is concerned.
The rest of it, I'm not sure I agree with you, or I didn't think I did, But finding sponsorship is, in my opinion, a big reason why we don't see more women in the sport.
Speaker 3That and the fact that little.
Speaker 1Girls don't normally grow up race and go karts.
Speaker 3Some of them do.
Speaker 1I read in USA Today that when Danica was a kid, her family spent six figures a year on her go kart racing.
Speaker 3Not too many families like that.
Speaker 2Wow.
Speaker 1I don't know how Sarah Fisher got started, but she was certainly an outstanding driver.
Speaker 2Yeah, Sarah's a good friend.
I looked up to her as well for a number of different reasons, but mostly because she put everything else to the side and just focused on being the best driver that she could be.
And she was supportive of other women.
I think along the way, some of the women have seen other women as competition, and I think there's a fine line with that as well, like I would love to see other women succeed, and I think that takes the championing of women, if that makes sense.
And I think Sarah was just a really good person as well as a really great race card driver.
Speaker 3Yeah, she's definitely one of my favorite people.
Speaker 2Yeah, I am.
So.
How did you go about getting sponsorship and funding to race or was it the teams came to you with it already.
Speaker 1Well, my first team owner, Rellivalst, came to me with the funding in place Brant heating and cooling, and after that it got more and more difficult.
I in seventy eight, when I ran my own team, I had help from a guy in New York who was a successful business man, but one of his major talents was fundraising, and he decided that I ought to have a better shot.
He was really quite instrumental in my finding funding from Texico.
Speaker 2I remember both the Bryant car and the Texco car.
I I'd love to do throwback schemes of those two because they were so iconic.
How did you find when you ran your own team?
How did you find the balance of being the team boss and being the driver.
Speaker 1I remember almost wishing that I were in a position of driving for somebody else again, where all I had to do is get in the car and drive it and not handle all the team owner responsibilities like, oh, well we have a new transaxle.
Speaker 3Oh, we don't have anything to start it with.
Speaker 1Oh we need to have fabricated the link between the starter and and the transaxle.
Speaker 3Oh who can handle that?
Speaker 1Being a team owner was really difficult, but it worked out all right.
That's when I had my best finish in spite of some difficulties.
Speaker 2Do you love the competition or do you love the cars?
Speaker 3I love the competition.
Cars are just a tool, a means to an end.
Speaker 1I really don't have much interest in cars, but as a means to an end, there's no beating it.
When I was flying, there was the thrill of exercise and good equipment in an environment that could pose certain hazards, although in flying those were minimal, but racing added the exercising of the machinery and this challenging environment.
Added to that the door handle competition where you were responsible for the other person's well being as well as trying to beat that driver under the deck's turn, which makes it a very challenging combination.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's kind of like mortal combat, but you have to use your brain at the same time.
It's kind of an interesting combination.
I feel very much the same.
It's like you you can always do something better, Like experience counts for so much, but you're always learning, and you're always racing against yourself and everybody else, and all the strategy and the feel through the seat of your pants, and there's just so much to it that it just keeps you motivated and keeps you driven.
For want of a better term, let's go post racing.
How did you get your kicks or how did you get that adrenaline and that part of you because you're obviously.
You know, we're similar in a way that we need something to keep us motivated and keep us going and like drive us and that's it.
And I am happiest when I'm at a racetrack and I've got something to focus on and I'm working either towards the sponsorship or they're racing or whatever it may be.
Like when you stopped racing, how did you get those kicks?
Like not get bored?
Speaker 1Unfortunately, there isn't anything that can replace racing, and I missed it dreadfully badly for a good number of years after I was forced out by lack of sponsorship.
No, I never have found anything to replace it.
Actually, but my life changed.
I finally got married and bought a house, and I gave dinner parties and started leading a relatively normal life.
Speaker 3But I never found anything to replace racing.
Speaker 2Yeah, that terrifies me, honestly.
Like I I don't know what I want to do when that time comes, but I just want to race as long as I can, and then I probably will do something in racing.
I don't know, but yeah, maybe I'll get married, you know.
So if you could go back and give younger Janet or younger Catherine advice.
What would you say the most important things to keep focused on?
Speaker 3Well, that's easy.
Be born rich.
Speaker 1Yeah, when I look back at swartscar racing, that was a sport for the wealth aid and my era and I used to go to a great deal of trouble to pretend I was as rich as the rest of my competitors when actually I was building my own engines in a rather dismal shop.
But you wouldn't find me looking as if I were an engine builder.
But yeah, that's the biggest problem is finding the money to get it done.
Speaker 3For sure.
Speaker 2Before I let you go, and I wish that we could talk all day, to be honest, But you have an upcoming movie coming out called speed Girl.
I offered to do the stunt driving for it, so I'm hoping that Clink gives me the nod and I can do my ode to Janet there and you're being played by Hilary Swank, I believe to you.
How does that feel.
Speaker 1I was very surprised when I learned about the project because I had known nothing of it, and I was also disappointed that they had based the movie on a book that had certain problems and existed only as an ebook rather than on my own book, which took me twenty seven years to finish and which I'm really quite proud of.
Speaker 3I think of it as my legacy.
Speaker 1It's out of print now, unfortunately, but there are still copies floating around on eBay and Amazon.
I haven't heard anything at all about this project in quite some time now, so I don't know whether it's on hold or what the story is there.
Movie isn't terribly important to me.
The only exception is that it might provide a way to get my own book back and print again.
That's what I hope for.
My own book got great reviews, but it didn't make a bestseller list.
I mean, Sports Illustrated called it, and I quote and uplifting work.
That is one of the best books written about racing, and I did read it myself.
I didn't have a ghostwriter, and I would really like to see that book back in print again.
Apart from that, a movie, well, I have friends who keep telling me, oh, you've got to make sure this movie gets made, But to me, it's just a means to an end.
Speaker 2Frankly, Yeah, maybe somebody out there is listening to us, and maybe someone can have you a book put back into print, but I think that it absolutely should be, and it should act as a inspiration for the future generations that haven't read it or know anything of what you've achieved, what we've achieved.
Motor racing is a very small genre, and I feel like it should be expanded, and I feel like more people should be exposed to it.
Well, I hope so well, Jennet.
It's absolutely lovely talking to you.
I appreciate your time, and I appreciate everything you've done for the sport in general, really, and I know that everybody always focuses on the women in racing aspect, and that kind of pisses me off sometimes if I'm honest, because we just set out to be the best race card drivers that we could be.
But in the end, I think what you did was incredibly special and I'm very grateful to know you and class you as a friend.
Speaker 1Well, thank you, Thank you so much.
It was a pleasure tarking with you.
Speaker 2Hopefully we can do it again soon.
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Throttle Therapy is hosted by Katherine Legg.
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