Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / The Trouble with Howard and the Triumph of Lee Anne Patterson

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The Trouble with Howard and the Triumph of Lee Anne Patterson · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
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  all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
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  designers, and everything in between.
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  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that
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  wonder, how did they get that job?
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  Or become that person.
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  The road to success is paved by all of us, because everyone has a story.
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  With over 25 years of experience in motorsports, our guest has worked on
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  projects like being promotions director for Sonoma Raceway, series director for
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  Carroll Shelby, and a team owner and team manager in IndyCar, running full seasons
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  for many years at the famed Indy 500.
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  Leanne Patterson now owns a boutique promotions agency.
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  Working with select clients that have stories to tell, but she's also produced
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  her first children's book, the trouble with Howard, based on the real life
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  story of Howard and Anita Milliken.
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  And she's here to tell us all about her automotive and motorsports journey.
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  Let's welcome Leanne to break fix.
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  Hi everyone.
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  Thank you so much for having me on today.
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  I appreciate it.
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  And joining us tonight, returning to Break Fix is my cohost, Lauren Goodman,
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  supervising producer of media and exhibitions from the Revs Institute.
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  So welcome back, Lauren.
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  Good to be back.
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  Well, Leanne, like all good Break Fix stories, there's a
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  super heroine origin story.
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  So tell us the who, what, when, and where and why of how you got mixed
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  up in the world of motor sports.
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  I did not grow up in racing.
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  I actually grew up bicycling in the Southern Bicycle League.
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  So racing was not in my purview, but rock and roll radio was.
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  And so I got my start actually through rock and roll radio.
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  I was working for 96 rock in Atlanta and most Atlantans will go, Whoa,
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  that was like a huge number one rock and roll station in the country.
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  And I was the continuity chick and then I was responsible for all the
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  commercial air, which group copy did a lot of voiceover and got paid to
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  say things like super shops because everyone deserves performance.
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  It's really fun.
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  Anyway, from there, I fell in love with a promotions director, and the place that
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  gave me a shot was at Sears Point Raceway, now known as Sonoma, and so I became the
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  promotions director, and it just happened to be Motorsports that gave me the shot.
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  And my very first job was to introduce NASCAR Winston Cup
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  to the San Francisco Bay Area.
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  It was their very first job out there.
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  And I remember going and having to tell the DJs that milk was a two syllable
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  word from the South and that moonshine was no longer an appropriate question.
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  But there was a guy named Bob Weeks who worked for Bill France Sr., had
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  been working for him since the 50s.
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  Because one of the things I had to do was actually give garage tours
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  in a garage I had never been in.
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  Two days prior, I had helped the PR staff.
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  With the media day, you know, it always is an embroidery was a new thing back then.
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  And there's a guy wandering around.
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  I'm like, can I help you?
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  And he goes, Oh, I'm Michael Waltrip.
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  I'm like, great.
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  I'm Leanne.
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  Do you need anything?
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  He's like, no, no, no.
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  I'm one of the drivers.
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  I'm like, Oh, okay, great.
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  Do you need anything?
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  I mean, I was just there to do a job, right?
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  And then Bob Weeks took me on a garage tour and gave me some stories
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  about Smokey Eunick and Richard Petty and he goes, these stories, your
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  accent, you're going to be fine.
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  And so I did, I took all these people and how y'all doing?
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  Welcome to Sears Point.
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  They all elbowed each other and said, listen, honey, she said y'all.
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  We took him on a tour and when we got to the haulers who walked out,
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  but ladies and gentlemen, this is driver Michael Waltrip, who looked
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  at me like you were so full of it.
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  And then he came over and gave me the hug of credibility.
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  It was great.
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  And that's how I started a career in racing.
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  Did you live through the many name changes of Sears Point?
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  Cause I actually still call it that even though it's Sonoma and there was
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  a brief period where it was Infineon.
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  Infineon.
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  I was just there for about two and a half seasons.
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  And it was, it was always Sears Point at that time.
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  When it went to Infineon, that was slightly after my time.
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  Of course, now it's just Sonoma.
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  So I still have stickers since I get to the point.
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  So how do you get involved with Carroll Shelby?
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  One of the first things I did when I was at Sears Point.
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  Not only did I launch a race I'd never seen before, but I helped
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  liaison to a film crew, which was Tim Conway's Dorf Goes On.
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  And Budweiser had paid for the movie so they could have the
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  commercial footage of the Budweiser car going around Sonoma Raceway.
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  There's a producer named Michael Collier, he's a Brit that lives in California.
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  I mean, I was living with the crew in the hotel, so it was great.
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  Tim Conway got all the dailies, just, I mean, like a ton of fun.
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  But after I had left Sears Point, I moved back to Georgia and I made the
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  decision, really wanted to stay in racing.
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  So I was at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
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  I'd done pre race ceremonies for them that day.
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  After the race started was walking down the middle of the infield road.
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  Nobody else is on the road except Michael Collier.
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  From California who really shouldn't have been there and the races started
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  were the only two people on earth in the middle of this infield road.
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  He's like, what are you doing now?
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  I'm kind of looking for my next gig.
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  He goes, have I got the job for you?
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  And he called Don Landy and told him he'd be an idiot if he didn't hire me.
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  And Don Landy was Carol's guy.
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  So I got an interview and I became the series director for Carol
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  Shelby's Dodge Shelby Pro Series.
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  So did that require you to head back to California?
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  The Shelby Can Am series was based in Texas.
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  It was actually in McKinney, Texas.
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  And you walked into this ranch style house and there was a big pot of
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  chili in the front lobby because of all the Carroll Shelby chili.
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  And then right next to it was one of the Daytona Coupes and everybody's like,
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  what the hell do you people do here?
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  I got to tell you, that makes so much sense because Carol Shelby said the
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  best thing about winning Le Mans, it helps you get deals together.
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  And McKinney, Texas is a little more where my people are from.
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  Yeah.
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  That's what you do out there in the middle of nowhere, Texas.
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  You get deals together.
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  How else are you going to get by?
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  And the packing plant for the Shelby chili was in the brown paper baggage at
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  the time with little seasoning packages.
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  Every Shelby can and part box of parts that we sent out to
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  all the special vehicle reps and the teams smelled like chili.
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  I mean, you would open up the box, you'd be like, woof, you know, cause
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  the little chili parts were everywhere.
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  So, also a little known secret, every single one of Carol's cars that
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  was in the collection at McKinney, including Cobra 001, Smells like chili.
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  When the Daytona was going across the auction block and Bob Bondurant was going
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  to drive across the block, like, I wonder if that was the one at Carol's, you know,
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  because there's a couple of them, right?
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  I'm like, all I have to do is sniff the inside and if it smells like
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  chili, it really was Carol's, right?
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  But in order to do that, it would have looked like I was trying to kiss Bob.
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  So I just, I didn't know, Bob, you don't understand.
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  Yeah, they did have the car completely wrapped in plastic, but
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  we had this little Dodge Omni that you had to drive Carol around in.
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  And literally you'd stick your head out the window and take a deep breath and
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  then put that piece of drum a little bit.
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  So Dodge Omni GLHS Turbo Shelby edition.
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  It's got to be right.
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  He's got to drive in his own stuff.
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  Yeah, that was it is.
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  And I was out in Carol's office.
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  big L shaping California at one point.
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  And we were just, you know, just too in the bat one day about stuff.
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  He had just kind of put the heart recipient, heart fund in place.
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  And so we were talking about his heart and we were talking about
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  Lamont's and at the time, nobody really knew that he won Lamont with a
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  nitroglycerin pill underneath his tongue.
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  And that story's kind of gotten out then, but nobody seemed
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  to know that at the time.
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  But we were talking about the GOHL and it goes like hell.
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  Oh, okay, that's what it stands for.
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  How'd you come up with the number?
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  How far is it to that telephone pole?
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  Okay, 50.
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  Let's go.
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  Wasn't it the GLHS was goes like hell some more?
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  Probably.
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  He was just so matter of fact.
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  So that puts us basically square in the early part of the 80s when those
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  cars came out and they were being campaigned and there was a coupe version
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  like a Charger slash Daytona coupe GLH and then the Omni GLH and all that.
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  So that was part of that Shelby in conjunction with
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  SCCA type of racing series.
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  Right.
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  And I heard from people like Cindy Lux who got started racing those
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  cars when she started her career.
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  Right.
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  This is later 80, early 90s.
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  The Shelby Can Am series actually got its start in 1992.
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  They had a abbreviated season in 92 and I stepped in as a series director in 93.
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  So it had a very short run.
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  It was a gift from Lee Iacocca, the Carol, the Dodge sponsorship.
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  Got three years, buddy.
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  We're not going to renew.
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  You got three years, make the most of it.
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  Because at this point he was involved in the quote unquote skunk
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  works project, which was the Viper.
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  Yeah.
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  And so the Viper was our pace car.
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  In fact, we had it at Road America.
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  And we usually had the red one, but at one point we had the first black off the
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  line that was brought to us as a pace car.
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  Oh, the one that Jay Leno argues about all the time, whether it's his
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  or I don't know that story, but they tossed me the keys and said, have fun.
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  I'm like, yeah, yeah.
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  But I offered a pace car ride to Chris Akanemaki at the time.
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  Because I got to pick a media specialist and he had already
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  been very, very kind to us.
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  But can I say on air what he said to me?
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  Probably not.
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  Absolutely.
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  He said, Oh, are you offering to take a ride in your ass?
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  Welcome to the chauvinism of the nineties, right?
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  You know, a lot of us only got to experience Carol Shelby through
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  that last film that was produced.
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  It shall be American, right?
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  Where he's doing the voiceover, he's telling the story, he talking about all
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  the different cars and the projects.
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  And he does talk a little bit about Lamont in the early
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  days, like you were mentioning.
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  So what was it like working for Carol?
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  You heard him come in the room or the office before you ever saw him.
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  He was very loud, very boisterous, very much a prankster, very much
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  a jokester, which was great fun.
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  You had to hold your own with him though.
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  And mind you, at the time, I was the only second woman to run a series.
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  Vicki O'Connor, she's the blueprint, you know, with the Toy Atlantic series.
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  The most successful support series ever in motor sports.
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  And that was all Vicky.
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  And she gave me some sage advice and said, see if you can hold your own.
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  Right.
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  When I first went to work for Carol, somebody had arranged a Boy
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  Scout breakfast for him to attend.
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  Bobby Rayhall was the keynote speaker and Carol was just
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  supposed to make an appearance.
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  So I had to go along and manage Carol like, haha, anybody's
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  going to manage Carol, right?
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  I'm pretty young at this time.
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  I'm still not quite 30 yet.
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  So way too young to be doing the job that I'm doing.
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  So we go into this Boy Scout breakfast.
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  We're in the backstage and the guy comes in, Mr.
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  Shelby, we're so glad to have you here.
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  Thank you so much for being here.
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  And he's like, great.
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  He goes, we'll get you up.
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  We'll say a few words and then just have a seat, you know, to the left.
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  And Carol's like, okay.
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  And the guy walks up and he starts turning to me, cussing me out like a sailor.
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  I am unprepared.
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  How dare you put me in this position?
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  I don't have your remarks, blah, blah, blah.
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  I actually tried to give Carol Shelby talking points.
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  Yes.
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  You may laugh at that.
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  So, I'm like, but, you know, dah, dah, dah.
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  And Sig says, I'll be fine.
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  And he goes on up to stage and I take my room at the back at one of the tables.
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  Now there's 700 little Boy Scouts in this room.
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  Carol gets up on stage and proceeds to give the 20 minute funniest
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  speech I've ever heard in my life.
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  Everybody's holding onto their belly.
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  We were laughing so hard, tears running out of our eyes.
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  And when it came Bobby Rahal's turn, he spoke for two minutes and sat down.
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  And I watched.
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  698 little Boy Scouts run to Carroll for an autograph afterwards.
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  And two chased Bobby Ray Hall out of the conference room.
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  Then when we got to the little Omni, we get in the car and we belt in, we stop.
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  And before I turned the key, I turned him and went speechless.
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  Really?
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  And we both started laughing.
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  So that's how my relationship with Carol started.
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  You know, the words, I can take the joke.
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  I can take the hit.
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  It was really funny.
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  I mostly worked with Don Landy.
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  I worked there for full season and we took the car count from, not that it was credit
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  to me, it was certainly a lot of momentum.
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  But by the time we got to Road America, we had gone from 20 cars to over 48.
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  And counting.
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  So it was explosive time and we did a lot of things right.
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  But then I received an offer to get married and go to Indy.
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  And that's a team that was running Shelby Can Ans.
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  And then when the IndyCar IRL split happened, we were one of
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  those little teams that could.
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  And we took advantage of that opportunity and became a small team in the IndyCar
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  that, frankly, one of those that supported the IRL didn't have to get going.
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  We will come back to that, but I think there's another question Lauren wants
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  to ask before we transition off of your Carol Shelby part of your story.
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  I think it's super fascinating.
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  I, you know, I'm a car history nerd, and whenever I see these adaptations in film,
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  right, about some of these characters, by the way, I don't beat up on Hollywood.
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  I have an MFA in screenwriting.
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  I I know sometimes the screenwriter has to do what they have to do.
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  That's right.
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  To read the story forward.
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  You gotta fudge some things.
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  And we have a few GT40s at our museum and the tour guides always say, well,
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  that's not what really happened, what you saw on Ford versus Ferrari.
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  And I want to say, okay, we know, but it was a good movie.
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  Yeah.
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  I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to see my own former boss
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  on film and to see Matt Damon.
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  playing my former boss on film.
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  That must've been kind of weird.
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  I was skeptical that Matt Damon wouldn't be able to pull it off because he's short.
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  He's a little New Englander.
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  No offense to Matt, but I think he actually did a great job.
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  He got lost in the characters.
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  You didn't see Matt, in my opinion.
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  I think he did a pretty good job of getting the essence of Carol.
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  His pace, his walk, his intensity, and his sense of humor.
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  Would he have thrown lug nuts out on the track?
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  Abso friggin lutely.
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  You know, he absolutely would have done that.
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  There are other stories I'm not sure I can tell, but he was a guy because
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  as Carol told me, look, I spent every single day of my life, not
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  expecting to live to the next day.
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  Okay.
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  That's how bad the heart was.
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  And so every five years long, modern medicine would come along
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  and do something and kept him going.
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  He didn't expect to grow old to 80.
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  He didn't expect to make it to 40.
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  And so he truly lived his life as what are you going to do to me?
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  Kill me?
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  I think that's actually kind of almost endemic among that generation
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  of racers because it was so deadly.
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  I think so, too.
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  They just said, I may not be here next week.
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  So you know what, tonight, my friends and I are going to
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  get so drunk after the race.
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  We're going to have to maybe roll back into the hotel room, not
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  remembering how we got there.
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  I just thinking about some really good stories I've heard from some
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  folks who drove in the 60s and 70s.
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  I won't name any names because they're guilty.
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  They're not protecting the innocent here.
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  I went to the motel room and I tried to get out the next morning and my crew had
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  nailed me into my hotel room, had just nailed the whole door shut and I had to
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  get out naked from my motel room window.
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  And run down to my car.
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  Yeah.
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  And that was just a normal weekend.
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  Yeah.
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  There, there was the guy who took the girl back and the roommate got tired of it.
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  And it was at the motel, you know, where it opened up to the outside parking lot.
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  Mm-Hmm.
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  . So he just opened up the curtains, turned on the light,
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  shut the door, and locked it.
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  And they were both sprawled out, naked on the bed, passed out.
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  You know, everybody's Googling and you know, but those were the racing of the
• 14:44
  really fun eras when there weren't any cell phones to get anybody in trouble.
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  Not that they weren't athletes, but it's not like.
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  Quite like it is today.
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  We're like, they're all on a special diet and have 20 trainers helping them.
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  Well, we could die tomorrow.
• 14:56
  Let's have a cigarette and then go driving.
• 14:58
  Well, they also stayed in shape just by doing it because not only were they
• 15:02
  driving, you know, IndyCar or stock cars, but they were driving the late
• 15:06
  model on Wednesday night and they were driving a Sprint car race on Thursday.
• 15:09
  And they stayed in shape physically just by driving the cars.
• 15:12
  But Carol would have, I think, loved that movie.
• 15:15
  Mostly because it honored his friend and I think it did do a really
• 15:18
  nice job capturing two things one his sense of humor which is Epic.
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  And two, I think the editing of the musicality of The Perfect Lab
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  elevated driving to an art form in a way that we've never seen before.
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  I went to see the movie by myself, I didn't want to be distracted, and I
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  listened to the crowd around me and there was a young mom and a daughter
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  who said, you know, I've never really gotten racing, but I get this.
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  This is an art form.
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  And I thought, yeah, I thought they nailed it.
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  I was not a car person until the pandemic.
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  Like you, I didn't grow up in a car family or a racing family.
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  I was a film student.
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  I love movies and I saw Ford versus Ferrari.
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  And that was my reaction too.
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  I said, I grew up learning how to play music.
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  Oh, I get it.
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  Now a car is an instrument and a track is like a piece of music.
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  And so you play it.
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  What's really fun about the way you play this.
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  Somebody wins or somebody loses.
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  And then it just adds to the drama.
• 16:08
  Now, of course, there would have been plenty of sexism going on at the
• 16:11
  time, but they conveniently leave it out of the movie because they realize
• 16:15
  women are going to watch it, too.
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  And they want women in the audience and I'm seeing that a little bit, too.
• 16:19
  And honestly, I really like what Liberty Media has done with Formula One.
• 16:23
  They said, instead of it being Bernie Eccleston's, uh.
• 16:26
  Little fantasy, why don't we put women in the engineer seat?
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  Why don't we promote that instead?
• 16:32
  Which I got to tell you, if I had come upon formula one earlier, I would have
• 16:36
  been really turned off by its approach to using women as decoration, which still
• 16:40
  happens in some forms of racing, some categories, and it's changed a lot, not
• 16:45
  completely, but it's changed hugely.
• 16:48
  I'm sure you've seen it from day one.
• 16:50
  Oh, yeah.
• 16:50
  I mean, when I was in the garage in the IndyCar days.
• 16:54
  There were still literally days, and this is in 1995, this isn't the dark
• 16:59
  ages of the fifties or the sixties, and there were times on move in day,
• 17:03
  I was still the only girl there, and the ladies restroom was locked, you
• 17:05
  know, and I had to go find a key.
• 17:07
  I was also the only female owner in the group at that point.
• 17:11
  And so we'd have owners meetings and under 30, you know, here I
• 17:14
  am actually, I was right at 30 at the time, but obviously very young
• 17:17
  compared to Leo Mel and, you know, some of the other guys that are there.
• 17:21
  Okay.
• 17:21
  And yeah, there was a lack of understanding, but I've documented,
• 17:26
  which is how I got to the whole Anita thing when I met Anita.
• 17:29
  But we started understanding, and Marshall Pruitt from Racer Magazine,
• 17:32
  he was my data guy at the time.
• 17:34
  And we were just talking about, because I came into the garage area
• 17:37
  eight years after women had first been allowed in the garage area.
• 17:40
  1980, before then, women couldn't even go in the garage area
• 17:44
  and hand the guy a sandwich.
• 17:45
  Couldn't even hand them the car keys, right?
• 17:48
  And so in 1980, this all changes when they need it.
• 17:50
  And by the way, the threshold that made that possible was the media gals.
• 17:54
  Media always is the first in, because the gals can come in and say, I'm
• 17:58
  covering this, I'm reporting this.
• 17:59
  And that's exactly what happened.
• 18:00
  The Indy 500, a reporter female.
• 18:03
  Came in and said, I want to be at the driver's meeting and
• 18:06
  she sued and Tony Coleman said, okay, let's have a conversation.
• 18:11
  And so he acquiesced to any official licensed journalist, female could
• 18:16
  come in and get credentialed.
• 18:17
  And so that's why she got in.
• 18:19
  And when the Indianapolis star covered that women wants to get into driver's
• 18:23
  meeting, they posted a photo of Mario Andretti telling Johnny Rutherford a joke
• 18:28
  and they're laughing their heads off.
• 18:29
  That's the photo underneath the caption.
• 18:31
  And I'm like, okay, this is kind of horrible.
• 18:34
  But I also know that it took less than 12 hours for non credentialed
• 18:38
  women to suddenly get a pass.
• 18:40
  And I once asked Tony Holman's gal, who was his secretary,
• 18:43
  I said, so what's the deal?
• 18:45
  Chauvinist, what was up with the women?
• 18:47
  Why didn't he like us?
• 18:48
  And she goes, it actually had nothing to do with that.
• 18:50
  I'm like, okay, I'm listening.
• 18:52
  She goes, it had everything to do with, he didn't want the
• 18:55
  garage to turn into a party.
• 18:57
  And there were some men that didn't need to be in there either.
• 19:00
  People's lives are at stake.
• 19:01
  One of the reasons why you had to wear sleeves and you had to wear long pants
• 19:06
  and things like that in the garage wasn't necessarily for insurance and protection,
• 19:11
  because the girls were so scantily clad that the guys were dropping wrenches and
• 19:14
  making mistakes on cars, ogling the girls.
• 19:17
  They need the girls to cover up.
• 19:18
  You know, there's that aspect to it.
• 19:20
  I once asked one of the wives who was divorced from one of the big
• 19:23
  time guys, the era, and I said, how did they put up with it?
• 19:27
  She said, but you need to understand back then hundreds of women were
• 19:31
  throwing themselves at them.
• 19:32
  Why would they respect us?
• 19:34
  Excellent point.
• 19:35
  There's a lot of girls, their only way they thought to get
• 19:38
  in was to sleep their way in.
• 19:40
  And certainly there are tales of the girls that went around this circuit and went up
• 19:43
  and down the pit lane until they got to a driver or crew member or whatever that
• 19:47
  went up to the next level and then they slept up and down that pit lane until
• 19:50
  they finally got to the top level, right?
• 19:52
  So that's happening and yet there's girls that want to do the job.
• 19:56
  can do the job, or capable of doing the job, but we're being compared to
• 19:59
  the girls that are not doing the job.
• 20:02
  This is part of the battle, but I started trying to figure out,
• 20:05
  okay, well, who got here first?
• 20:07
  Because I had met Anita, and I started asking the right questions,
• 20:11
  and that's when we went through and documented the fact that Anita was,
• 20:14
  in fact, the very first woman ever licensed as an IndyCar mechanic.
• 20:17
  And when she came in, she kept her head down because there was no diversity
• 20:22
  executive watching out for her.
• 20:24
  No, no, or intimacy specialist on the film set.
• 20:28
  I mean, that didn't exist.
• 20:29
  And some of the women were not happy with her being there either.
• 20:32
  Why do you feel like you have to go to your husband's office?
• 20:34
  I don't go to my husband's office.
• 20:36
  And they called her names and people tried to pull her crew shirt off of her.
• 20:39
  And they tried to steal her heart card.
• 20:41
  And, you know, Howard really defended that.
• 20:43
  So in the book, The Trouble with Howard, which we'll get to, the dedication is
• 20:48
  to Anita for the first to walk through the gate, and it's to Howard for holding
• 20:51
  the gate open for her, because for every rat jerk face there was that was trying
• 20:57
  to keep us out or trying to sleep with us to do a deal or whatever it was that
• 21:01
  was a me too moment of du jour, there's also the guy that said, know what?
• 21:05
  You can do this.
• 21:06
  I think you're gonna be great.
• 21:07
  Let me help you.
• 21:08
  And open up the door.
• 21:09
  And you have to acknowledge that, and you can't say, you know, only
• 21:12
  women should be doing this either.
• 21:13
  We need men to be men.
• 21:15
  But we just need everybody to be able to do what they are passionate
• 21:18
  about doing regardless of gender.
• 21:20
  That's the goal.
• 21:21
  We've stepped back into your IndyCar era.
• 21:24
  And you've mentioned Anita.
• 21:26
  So if you're listening to this the first time and you didn't listen to the
• 21:29
  episode that Lauren and I were on that Leanne helped get organized with Anita
• 21:34
  Milliken and Caitlin Brown, I highly recommend that you go back and listen to
• 21:38
  Anita's story to kind of put the context and the reference back into what was
• 21:42
  just discussed because it's extremely important to motor sports, especially
• 21:45
  women in motor sports in North America.
• 21:48
  That being said, as we bring the audience back into sequence here,
• 21:52
  we're talking about your IndyCar time.
• 21:53
  And so you said Anita predated you for about eight years, but she worked in
• 21:58
  the IndyCar world for many, many years.
• 22:01
  She said she retired in the mid 2000s or so.
• 22:04
  And so she had a good long run there.
• 22:06
  So did you encounter her as part of like the shock support that
• 22:10
  she was giving or working at Penske and that as a team owner?
• 22:14
  Yes, we knew Howard at the time too.
• 22:16
  He was very sick at the time, but by that time they had opened up their shock shop,
• 22:20
  say that three times fast, in Danville.
• 22:23
  And she was handling shocks for us for the Can Am cars.
• 22:26
  And she was caring for Howard at the time.
• 22:28
  And then I didn't get really close to her.
• 22:31
  She ran the shock business by herself for a year or two.
• 22:34
  So she was just down there working her tail off.
• 22:37
  And then Jeff Ryan, who had founded Penske Shocks and had been kind of a
• 22:40
  son to Howard and Anita, inventing the first two way shock, the first three
• 22:44
  way shock, and asked them to do the shock dyno, pulled her up to Penske.
• 22:48
  And so she went up there for a couple of years, but when she came back
• 22:51
  to Indy, that's when the women that were part of our racing sorority
• 22:56
  just really absolutely embraced her.
• 22:58
  And that's when I actually got to know her.
• 23:00
  But she was still doing shocks at the time, Fred.
• 23:02
  So as a team principal, you get to see a lot of different angles of how the
• 23:06
  motorsports world works, not just from the drivers out there competing, but from the
• 23:10
  business side behind the lines and in the pit boxes and everything else like that,
• 23:15
  you're there in the late eighties, early nineties, as you said, you mentioned the
• 23:19
  media teams coming in and kind of breaking the barriers and opening the doors for
• 23:22
  women to be allowed at Indianapolis.
• 23:24
  And I remember the first time I interviewed Lynn St.
• 23:27
  James, she talked about being one of the female journalists
• 23:30
  in the middle eighties period.
• 23:32
  And her goal was always to get behind the wheel of an Indy car.
• 23:37
  And that happened in the early nineties.
• 23:39
  So that would have overlapped with your time as a team owner.
• 23:42
  Yeah.
• 23:43
  Lynn raced when I was there.
• 23:44
  What was that like?
• 23:45
  I mean, she was the first woman behind the wheel to win rookie of the year.
• 23:49
  I met Lynn actually at Sears Point.
• 23:50
  She was in the Trans Am series and we ran a women's racing 101
• 23:55
  day with the Bondurant school.
• 23:57
  60 winners on the radio station got to come up and get behind the wheel
• 24:01
  with the Bondurant cars and they got hot laps with Lynn, which was great
• 24:04
  for Lynn because she basically got to drive a Trans Am car around the track.
• 24:07
  A whole lot of track time but in front of the race.
• 24:10
  But that's when I first met her.
• 24:12
  And then obviously she came in and she was running at Indy while I was there.
• 24:15
  She was running for Dick Simon.
• 24:17
  In fact, she and my driver got tangled up at one point.
• 24:20
  So I'll defer that part of the question.
• 24:23
  Lynn has done an incredible job dealing with women drivers, but there
• 24:28
  was a void in supporting the girls in the pits, you know, the ponytails
• 24:33
  in the pits and in the fire suits.
• 24:34
  That wasn't happening.
• 24:36
  This is where we went and documented.
• 24:37
  Anita is P1, 1980.
• 24:40
  Right on top of her was Eloise Agarza.
• 24:42
  Eloisa Garza built the chaparral car for Jim Hall, Dale, the carbon fiber work.
• 24:47
  That was Johnny Rutherford's car in her first race ever.
• 24:50
  She got flown in a private jet to the Indianapolis Motor
• 24:53
  Speedway on Jim Hall's team.
• 24:55
  And believe it or not, Eloisa was the first woman paid.
• 24:58
  Anita just got a portion of Howard's check.
• 25:01
  So she didn't actually get a paycheck.
• 25:02
  Eloisa was the first woman actually hired and paid as an appropriate crew member.
• 25:07
  And then she ended up opening up her own shop, E.
• 25:09
  G.
• 25:10
  Composites, in the most inventive era of all of IndyCar, and she's
• 25:14
  doing all the composite work.
• 25:15
  So she's P2.
• 25:16
  We think P3 is Linda Connie.
• 25:18
  Linda Connie went to small engine block GM school, and then she went to
• 25:22
  the Russell Mechanics School, and A.
• 25:24
  J.
• 25:25
  Foyt hired her on her crew.
• 25:26
  There's a whole lot more to that story, but she ended up going into Simpson
• 25:29
  Helmets and getting to know all the drivers and all the helmets, but she
• 25:33
  could disassemble a small engine block in a pair of chinos looking dapper.
• 25:36
  Faster than any man I know and then from there, you end up, I think, with Rosella,
• 25:41
  who was the engineer at Indy lights.
• 25:44
  There's 1 or 2 other girls in there that don't quite know their name.
• 25:46
  They were rubbing on body work over here.
• 25:49
  And there's a couple of others in there.
• 25:51
  That's a little bit sketchy at that era.
• 25:53
  Right after Rosella, you get Kate Goodlock, and of course, Kate's now
• 25:56
  a championship winning engineer, but understand that by the time Anita
• 26:01
  starts in 1980 and you get Kate, it's almost 15 years, so you're
• 26:05
  talking about five, maybe seven women that are working on cars, turning
• 26:10
  wrenches on cars in a 15 year period.
• 26:12
  I'm management, so I'm not making any executive decisions about performance.
• 26:16
  I'm doing all the team stuff and marketing and hospitality and PR and
• 26:20
  paying the bills and transportation and all that kind of stuff.
• 26:22
  I once figured out that Michael Andretti had six people doing
• 26:25
  the same job I was doing.
• 26:26
  I'm like, Oh, I should get some help.
• 26:28
  But I was tired and there were a lot of PR chicks, polite term, respectful
• 26:33
  term, because that's a hard job too.
• 26:34
  There were certainly ones that made their way up into the
• 26:37
  upper echelons of the media.
• 26:39
  May was there when no other girls were there.
• 26:42
  There was some girls working, uh, hospitality in Penske that
• 26:45
  were doing just fantastic work.
• 26:47
  But that engineering squad was a really, really, really small number.
• 26:51
  And it didn't explode really until the last five years.
• 26:54
  I was at the season opener for IndyCar at St.
• 26:57
  Pete.
• 26:57
  And you know, I got a pit lane pass.
• 26:59
  If you're coming from European Grand Prix racing, you go to IndyCar race.
• 27:04
  And it's like, wait, it only costs me how much, and I can just walk around.
• 27:09
  I spent that on beer at the Miami Grand Prix.
• 27:12
  This is amazing.
• 27:13
  So my sister and I are just like walking around.
• 27:15
  We almost get run over by Mario Andretti on a scooter.
• 27:18
  That was worth the whole price of admission.
• 27:20
  Everywhere I looked on the pit wall, in the engineer's chairs.
• 27:25
  I saw women and I was like, well, that's how it should be.
• 27:28
  It shouldn't be a, like a little example.
• 27:30
  Like it should just be like, well, why wouldn't a woman want to do this?
• 27:33
  And that wasn't historically I know the way it was.
• 27:37
  Yeah.
• 27:37
  But now it's gotten cool.
• 27:38
  Now it's gotten popular and the women are doing the job.
• 27:42
  And I will say from the girls back in our era, we were women that didn't really
• 27:47
  want to be singled out as quote women.
• 27:49
  Now it's cool to talk about it.
• 27:50
  Right.
• 27:51
  But back then I just wanted to be able to do the job.
• 27:53
  Because I love the work.
• 27:55
  Racing was my sport too.
• 27:57
  Okay.
• 27:57
  And so that's what everybody forgets.
• 27:59
  It's like, why do you want to be there?
• 28:01
  And because I love this job, I'm good at it and I can
• 28:05
  balance it and it's competitive.
• 28:07
  I mean, out of all the jobs I had, promotions director, series director,
• 28:12
  team, I'm actually one of the few people that's worked in all three of those
• 28:15
  components, which is what racing has.
• 28:17
  You got to have a track, you got to have a sanctioned body
• 28:19
  and you got to have a team.
• 28:20
  Some people have gotten two, I've had all three.
• 28:22
  By far, the hardest was the team, but it was also the best
• 28:27
  because you got to compete.
• 28:28
  And I know that I made decisions and I put drivers in seats that held
• 28:32
  their career, put us in a winning position, got us a poll at Richmond.
• 28:36
  We outperformed Penske that day and we were a little team.
• 28:40
  It's very cool to do that.
• 28:42
  It's a thing where we just wanted the chance to do the job.
• 28:46
  We weren't there to prove that women could do it.
• 28:48
  We weren't there to flirt.
• 28:50
  We were there to get a job done.
• 28:52
  Once you get that credibility and you're not dubbed a Pit Popsie,
• 28:55
  that's what they're called in California, then it's okay.
• 28:57
  You get a lot of big brothers and uncles that are going to defend
• 29:00
  you and take care of you and help.
• 29:02
  Having experienced motorsport in all of these different areas, these
• 29:07
  three main legs of motorsport, you're dealing with sponsors.
• 29:11
  At every single level, even though I like historical racing, I'm very
• 29:14
  interested in women's participation in the history because once you look into
• 29:18
  the history, you realize, oh, wait, women have been here since day one.
• 29:22
  Oh, 1895.
• 29:23
  They invented the car.
• 29:25
  They built the second car.
• 29:26
  They went racing and a woman showed up and said, Oh, I could do that.
• 29:29
  That's not that hard.
• 29:30
  What I find really interesting is, I think for a while, it seems to me,
• 29:34
  like if you're talking about the 60s and 70s, you are talking about women
• 29:38
  having to prove they could even do it.
• 29:39
  Men saying their brains and their wombs make them too unstable to drive a car.
• 29:45
  No, I know.
• 29:47
  Okay.
• 29:48
  Hold on, their hysteria has calmed down.
• 29:50
  I feel like now they can drive a car effectively.
• 29:52
  But now I think the big discussion, and I'm, you know, I'm talking about
• 29:55
  WMNA, I'm talking about our friends at Shift Up Now, I'm talking about
• 29:58
  our friends at More Than Equal, the sponsorship dollars have to be there.
• 30:02
  Now you're in my wheelhouse.
• 30:04
  Sponsorship is my bread and butter.
• 30:06
  And here's the big thing that people miss.
• 30:08
  If you go in and sponsor a female driver, let's say like when Sarah Fisher
• 30:12
  was knocking this out of the park, why can't we get Sarah more money?
• 30:15
  And why can't we put her in a female program?
• 30:18
  And like Secret came in and did Danica Patrick.
• 30:20
  In order to back a female driver, you're not just talking about the money
• 30:24
  that you're going to put on the car.
• 30:25
  Let's just talk round figures.
• 30:26
  I don't care if you're talking IndyCar or NASCAR about the
• 30:29
  time, six to eight million, okay?
• 30:31
  In order to activate that sponsorship, you're going to put another
• 30:34
  10 million, 20 million in it.
• 30:36
  So this is a 25 million decision to now make your sponsorship a
• 30:41
  female based centric program.
• 30:43
  Taglines, marketing, colors, comprehension, product, et cetera.
• 30:47
  It's all going to be female oriented.
• 30:49
  What happens if Sarah gets hurt?
• 30:51
  There's no female at that time to back her up.
• 30:53
  There was no other female that could step into the seat.
• 30:57
  And now you've got a 30 million dollar campaign and no female driver
• 31:01
  that can actually do what Sarah did.
• 31:03
  That was the problem.
• 31:04
  So Tampax can't sponsor a car.
• 31:06
  Their driver gets hurt and Jeff Gordon steps in and says,
• 31:09
  Hey, why don't you try Tampax?
• 31:11
  That's a huge problem.
• 31:13
  It doesn't work.
• 31:14
  And understand this happened with the boys.
• 31:16
  The example here is Texaco Haviland.
• 31:18
  It's Davy Allison.
• 31:19
  Texaco Haviland came in and wrote a check for 2.
• 31:21
  5 million.
• 31:22
  We were at Sears Point at the time.
• 31:25
  Huge money.
• 31:25
  Nobody spends that kind of money.
• 31:27
  That's crazy, right?
• 31:28
  Davy Allison was killed shortly after that.
• 31:31
  And they had centered everything around Davy Allison and suddenly
• 31:34
  Davy Allison isn't with us.
• 31:36
  Now what do we do?
• 31:37
  So Texaco Haviland changed their marketing message to Team Yates and
• 31:41
  suddenly it was about the team and while there was a little focus on the
• 31:44
  driver, suddenly it was about the team.
• 31:46
  It wasn't just about the driver.
• 31:48
  They had to pull.
• 31:49
  So here's the other soapbox.
• 31:52
  NASCAR's audience has usually been 50 percent female.
• 31:55
  Has been for years.
• 31:56
  But the machismo of the sport never wanted to acknowledge that.
• 31:59
  And if you don't have cute drivers in the seats, you lose market
• 32:03
  share and you lose viewers.
• 32:05
  And you can see that in some of the classes as they've come along.
• 32:08
  The cuter classes of rookies puts the ratings up.
• 32:11
  But NASCAR themselves, up until, gosh, maybe this year,
• 32:16
  treated females as eye candy.
• 32:18
  Do you remember when we had the very first beer commercial where a woman
• 32:21
  came home, kicked her heels off and grab a beer out of the fridge?
• 32:24
  It was only like three years ago.
• 32:27
  Up until that point, women had only been eye candy in a beer commercial,
• 32:30
  short shorts, make them guy look good, all that kind of stuff.
• 32:33
  They had never actually done a beer commercial where a girl comes in,
• 32:37
  you can see the bandaid on her heel.
• 32:39
  She pops off her bra underneath her shirt, goes and grabs a beer out of the fridge.
• 32:43
  She's suddenly the target of their beer commercial.
• 32:46
  That's the first time we had that.
• 32:48
  Okay.
• 32:48
  That changes everything because at this point, MLB national football
• 32:52
  league and stuff have groups of women in their ads in football jerseys
• 32:57
  going to the game as a group of women.
• 32:59
  NASCAR doesn't even acknowledge that.
• 33:01
  So if NASCAR isn't talking to 50 percent of its fan base, if IndyCar
• 33:05
  is not talking to 35 percent of its fan base, why would a sponsor come
• 33:10
  in and try to talk to that audience?
• 33:12
  Because the sanctioning bodies aren't, which is so stupid because guess what?
• 33:16
  How many sponsors with women who decide the consumer spending dollar, by the way,
• 33:20
  we decide who drinks what beer at home.
• 33:22
  Women choose that, not the men.
• 33:24
  We decide everything at the home.
• 33:26
  Why would you not gear your campaign toward the women and
• 33:29
  50 percent of that audience?
• 33:31
  It doesn't have to be cosmetics.
• 33:33
  It doesn't have to be beauty products.
• 33:35
  It doesn't have to be a skirt product marketed to a female.
• 33:39
  You should talk to females about all your products.
• 33:41
  When I was at WMNA last year, you know, you hear from racers, you hear
• 33:44
  from owners, you hear from sponsors, but I love especially hearing from
• 33:48
  people who study the marketing.
• 33:50
  This is probably my background in TV commercials.
• 33:52
  I'm like, show me the money.
• 33:54
  Where's the money?
• 33:55
  The research they've been doing at places like More Than Equal
• 33:58
  to be like, hey, guess what?
• 33:59
  People who are fans of female athletes and women's sports, spend
• 34:04
  more money, are more likely to change their buying habits based on an
• 34:09
  endorsement from the sports they follow.
• 34:11
  And women athletes are incredibly undervalued.
• 34:14
  You're getting more from the sponsorship.
• 34:16
  Way more bang for your buck.
• 34:18
  This is the best deal on the planet.
• 34:20
  How are people missing out?
• 34:21
  But you're right.
• 34:22
  It's exactly the people in the big leather chair saying,
• 34:25
  well, it doesn't appeal to me.
• 34:26
  So it wouldn't appeal to other people.
• 34:28
  And that's true in Hollywood too.
• 34:29
  This isn't, I'm not just pointing fingers at sport.
• 34:31
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 34:32
  So now you have Elf that's come out for Catherine and they actually did
• 34:37
  a marketing deal that was geared toward women at the racetrack.
• 34:41
  The booth actually looked like something women want to go in, but
• 34:44
  it made a couple of assumptions.
• 34:45
  It assumed that all women wanted to look pretty and have their nails
• 34:49
  done and have their makeup done.
• 34:50
  Okay, that's kind of a wrong assumption.
• 34:53
  You know, there's girls there that, you know, are perfectly happy, not worried
• 34:57
  about having their nails done, and they're beautiful and they're powerful
• 35:00
  and they're smart just because they're not worried about their hair product.
• 35:04
  So again, we've backed ourselves into a corner thinking that the
• 35:07
  only people that should sponsor women are actually female products.
• 35:11
  No, you know, BMW should really not just put Jamie Chadwick in commercial.
• 35:15
  They should put their damn logo on her car because she's brilliant and she's
• 35:19
  technology savvy and you need female people to have diversity because we
• 35:24
  know that a board of directors with diversity is a more profitable company.
• 35:29
  We know that statistically.
• 35:30
  You got to get yourself out of the thinking that the only sponsor I
• 35:34
  should go look for is a female sponsor.
• 35:37
  We used to talk about with the girls that if you were going to actually have a
• 35:41
  female sponsor, when you took Sarah Fisher and she was in the middle of IndyCar,
• 35:45
  she's kind of your standard racer, but the minute you took Sarah Fisher and put
• 35:48
  her in Cosmo, put her outside the racing world, now she was an enigma, right?
• 35:53
  And something interesting.
• 35:54
  And that's how some of the sponsors looked at it.
• 35:57
  But again, if their only thing was, hey, we should only have her talk to women.
• 36:02
  I once asked the Gatorade lady, I said, so were you going to
• 36:05
  put Propel on Sarah's car?
• 36:07
  Because that was a more women's centric product.
• 36:10
  She goes, Oh no, she's an athlete.
• 36:12
  She actually needs the Gatorade.
• 36:13
  I was like, Oh my gosh, I love you.
• 36:16
  That was the right answer because you needed to treat her
• 36:18
  like the athlete that she was.
• 36:20
  So we need to, Stop pigeonholing our women and recognize that they are powerful
• 36:26
  for any product, not just the feminine.
• 36:29
  Sorry, that was a bit of a soapbox.
• 36:32
  I could go off on a tangent and I won't.
• 36:34
  There's so much I want to know about what it's like to run a team.
• 36:38
  What do you wish you had known before you ran a team that you would tell yourself?
• 36:42
  Going into it.
• 36:43
  I mean, we were a small team.
• 36:45
  We were nine guys and we bloomed up to 16 on a weekend when we ran Sam Schmidt
• 36:50
  and helped Sam Schmidt become Sam Schmidt Motorsports, which is now Aaron McLaren.
• 36:54
  We had 1 car, we had an engine and a half and the backup car on the
• 36:58
  track was a car that we put together.
• 37:00
  Dallara allowed us to carry it for all the teams, but nobody could
• 37:03
  use it till they wrote a check.
• 37:04
  That was the backup.
• 37:05
  for all the small teams that couldn't afford a, a backup, there really wasn't
• 37:09
  the opportunity for me to go get help.
• 37:12
  You're running 18 hour days and you're working seven days a week.
• 37:15
  You take Christmas and Easter off 'cause nobody will talk to you.
• 37:18
  I mean, it was a lot and you run very, very hard deadlines.
• 37:21
  Green flag will drop at noon on Sunday, which means the truck to get
• 37:25
  to Texas has to leave at 10:00 AM.
• 37:27
  Doesn't matter that you didn't get your uniforms back to the
• 37:29
  dry cleaner until Monday at 8 a.
• 37:31
  m.
• 37:31
  They still have to be locked and loaded and on that truck at the end of the day
• 37:35
  as a small team It would have been nice to have a bigger knowledge of having
• 37:40
  people that could help manage that But i'm not sure we could have done it any
• 37:44
  differently because we were small So I took care of everything that didn't have
• 37:48
  to do with putting the performance of the car on track literally everything
• 37:51
  else So whether it was PR or marketing or hospitality or whatever, I think the other
• 37:57
  thing that would have been nice is there were no girls doing marketing at all.
• 38:01
  That just didn't exist.
• 38:02
  There were no girls on any marketing department of any
• 38:06
  track, any team, any corporation.
• 38:09
  There were no females in marketing.
• 38:11
  There were girls doing activation, in other words, asking as hostesses for
• 38:15
  hospitality, but there were none in the boardroom, none making decisions.
• 38:19
  And so I can literally go in the boardroom and if I had an intern that was male, they
• 38:22
  would ask the intern the questions and not me, even though my title was director.
• 38:27
  It was very difficult because I would go in and pitch an idea and
• 38:30
  they would literally stop about five minutes in and go, Oh, you
• 38:34
  know what you're talking about?
• 38:35
  I'm like, would you like for me to start again?
• 38:36
  Okay.
• 38:37
  I actually did a lot of work laying out strategies and proposals, but
• 38:41
  because I couldn't play golf with the CEO of Home Depot, what I
• 38:44
  pitched to Home Depot ended up being the program that they ran, but Mr.
• 38:48
  Joe Gibbs got that program.
• 38:50
  So I laid it all out and explained it to everybody at Home Depot, and
• 38:53
  now they understood how to do it and how to make money out of it
• 38:55
  and how to turn an ROI out of it.
• 38:57
  But I didn't get that because I was really a nobody.
• 39:00
  And so that was probably my most frustrating deal is that I
• 39:04
  couldn't get into the boardroom.
• 39:06
  I once asked the former CEO of McDonald's, Ed Renzi, really, really nice guy.
• 39:10
  He was from an Abish program at the time.
• 39:12
  And we were just talking and said, how does a gal like me get to a guy like you?
• 39:16
  Because you don't.
• 39:17
  And he was really nice.
• 39:18
  He said, you would do much better if you were selling for the LPGA for ladies golf.
• 39:22
  But I was the, to the best of my knowledge at the time, the only woman
• 39:25
  trying to actually sell and market sponsorship for racing at the time.
• 39:29
  And that I don't think has changed a whole lot, but we now have women that
• 39:33
  are in the heads of boardrooms and, and are marketing managers and communication
• 39:37
  with self, because there's now a female on the other side, which there was none.
• 39:41
  And if I had known going in that I had that big of a barrier to go through,
• 39:46
  I probably would have done something differently to change my position so
• 39:50
  that I could have had more success.
• 39:52
  I didn't know that.
• 39:53
  I didn't fully get that.
• 39:54
  I think it's an astounding thing to think about.
• 39:56
  I think anybody who's coming from any kind of minority in a business will
• 40:00
  experience this, is that as much as we tell ourselves, Oh, we live in a
• 40:05
  meritocracy and cream rises to the top.
• 40:08
  That's actually the biggest lie in Hollywood.
• 40:10
  I can't tell you the number of times I have been to some God awful.
• 40:14
  Ugh, some panel and some producers get up there and say, well, if you're
• 40:19
  having trouble as a writer, you should submit to some screenplay competitions
• 40:23
  because then you will win them.
• 40:25
  And then we will find them, because of course, good screenplays get found.
• 40:29
  First of all, I know as many great screenplays that will never get
• 40:32
  made as, you know, great drivers who will never get to a top
• 40:35
  series, who will never have a shot.
• 40:36
  Yeah, and I remember at one of these panels, I got up and said, how many
• 40:40
  screenplays have you purchased?
• 40:42
  Based on a screenplay competition and they go, Oh, well, then there's
• 40:47
  usually some nonsense about, well, my assistant looks at those.
• 40:50
  I said, is your assistant also a writer?
• 40:52
  Why would your assistant slip in a great screenplay and not their own screenplay?
• 40:56
  If this is the deal, if what you do is you hire these struggling
• 40:59
  writers to be your assistant.
• 41:00
  This was also true at some panels about women's sponsorship in motorsports and
• 41:04
  women have gotten asked, Hey sponsor, How many women do you sponsor right now?
• 41:08
  And they go, Oh, well, well, well, it is a lot of talk.
• 41:12
  Talk is cheap.
• 41:13
  It's almost like, well, if we don't see any women here, it's because
• 41:17
  they didn't work hard enough as opposed to it being like, I love
• 41:20
  that CEO was so honest with you.
• 41:21
  You would just never get in the door.
• 41:23
  The funny thing is, is that I then pitched him an idea and he looked at
• 41:26
  me like, Oh, well, that makes sense.
• 41:28
  Can I set you up?
• 41:29
  And I ended up getting a meeting with the McDonald's people who I presented
• 41:32
  things that they hadn't thought about.
• 41:34
  Did I get the work?
• 41:35
  No, I did not.
• 41:35
  Did they make changes internally in the house?
• 41:37
  Yes, they did.
• 41:38
  That's a piece of it.
• 41:40
  The other thing that you have to remember, a lot of racers
• 41:43
  also don't get sponsorship.
• 41:44
  So I remember sitting on a panel when I was working for Carroll
• 41:47
  Shelby, and it was an SCCA panel, and it was like me and the tire guys.
• 41:50
  I mean, that was kind of who they brought in.
• 41:52
  They were asking questions and everybody said, well, how do we get money?
• 41:55
  And we present this and we present that.
• 41:57
  And you should do this because I'm a great driver and blah, blah, blah.
• 42:01
  And I kind of heard enough of it one day.
• 42:02
  And I finally stepped up, ma'am.
• 42:05
  She was a driver in the back.
• 42:06
  I said, you're missing the point.
• 42:07
  It's not what we can do for you.
• 42:09
  It's what you can do for them.
• 42:11
  It's how many tires can you help them sell?
• 42:13
  It's how many distributors can you grow the product for?
• 42:16
  It's how much exposure can you get them in a newspaper?
• 42:19
  And the guy who was at Goodyear at the time, it turned out we became
• 42:22
  really great friends, came up, give me a hug afterwards and goes, Oh my
• 42:25
  gosh, somebody that finally gets it.
• 42:27
  Because a lot of racers don't get that.
• 42:29
  I remember being in the head office of the guy from all of this major beer companies
• 42:34
  office, and we were talking about it.
• 42:36
  He opened up a cabinet door, 500 proposals fell out on the floor.
• 42:40
  And that was just like the last 3 weeks worth.
• 42:43
  And every last 1 of them had a bill.
• 42:45
  pretty picture of a race car on the cover of why they were a great race
• 42:48
  car driver and you should sponsor them.
• 42:49
  Not one of them said how I'm going to help you sell more beer.
• 42:52
  And so a lot of racers miss that.
• 42:54
  And so that's where, you know, when you get to these upper echelon
• 42:57
  levels, you got smart marketing people that understand that kind of stuff.
• 43:00
  But kids coming up from the grassroots that are trying to get into this
• 43:04
  sport, they're not getting that.
• 43:06
  Because nobody's had a conversation.
• 43:07
  In fact, you can't even find a sponsorship class in any of the universities.
• 43:11
  Nobody talks about it.
• 43:12
  They talk about marketing, but nobody talks about sponsorship.
• 43:14
  And sponsorship is the ultimate promotion vehicle.
• 43:17
  I try to tell people and I tell for any racer out there that's trying
• 43:21
  to understand what sponsorship is, Understand that your race car is
• 43:24
  the ultimate promotion vehicle.
• 43:26
  It's not the promotion.
• 43:27
  So if you buy Radio Time and now you have this Radio Time and you've paid for it,
• 43:31
  now what are you going to say with it?
• 43:33
  Well, the race car is the same thing.
• 43:34
  You've bought the car.
• 43:35
  Now how are you going to leverage it to get more distributors, retain
• 43:39
  your employees, build your PR?
• 43:41
  How are you going to use those toolboxes to get that ROI?
• 43:44
  So the car is the promotion vehicle.
• 43:46
  It's not the promotion.
• 43:48
  If you can get that in your head when you're pitching a sponsor.
• 43:50
  Then you're going to do so much better.
• 43:52
  It's what you can do for them.
• 43:54
  It's not what they can do for you.
• 43:55
  So if you flip that conversation, you'll be much better off.
• 43:58
  But most drivers don't understand that.
• 44:01
  I've seen so many people at the upper echelon that still didn't get that.
• 44:05
  And I thought, Oh my gosh, you've been in motorsports for 30 years.
• 44:07
  How do you not understand how this works?
• 44:09
  But a lot of people really just don't understand the psychology involved there.
• 44:13
  And therefore they end a lifetime of trying to chase sponsorships,
• 44:17
  but all they're trying to do is say, Hey, I'm great.
• 44:18
  Give me money.
• 44:19
  As opposed to how can I help you sell more products?
• 44:22
  And that's really key to help some of our gals and guys get that right sponsorship.
• 44:27
  So to all those women raisers out there, first, understand you're the
• 44:30
  promotion vehicle, not the promotion.
• 44:32
  And two, quit trying to go down the rabbit hole with finding something pink.
• 44:36
  We like orange, too.
• 44:37
  Go find a company that needs women in their sport.
• 44:40
  Did you know that if you use a female voice in the automotive promotion
• 44:44
  spectrum of commercials and stuff, you will increase sales by 40%?
• 44:49
  Girls, go after that automotive market because you will increase their
• 44:52
  sales by virtue of your femininity.
• 44:55
  Go find products that, you know, you think the men should only be
• 44:59
  male because they need girls, too.
• 45:01
  After a decade.
• 45:04
  What came next?
• 45:05
  And you alluded to this earlier, your new book that just came out.
• 45:09
  So fill in the gap.
• 45:10
  How do we get to the trouble with Howard?
• 45:12
  What happened after IndyCar?
• 45:14
  Okay, so I ended up managing drivers after we stopped running a team.
• 45:18
  I helped a lot of drivers make their way on the road to IndyLadder System.
• 45:21
  Getting them into the right teams, the right placement, finding their
• 45:24
  sponsors, managing their media.
• 45:26
  I had three or four drivers that I was working with.
• 45:28
  The key is that Anita retired.
• 45:30
  And she moved to Costa Rica and when she moved to Costa Rica, she
• 45:33
  left me with a giant crate filled with all of their memorabilia, press
• 45:38
  releases, photos, personal photos, stories about their life, et cetera.
• 45:43
  And I'm going through this scrapbook of Polaroids, you know, you got to
• 45:46
  shake it to make it kind of thing.
• 45:48
  There are all these Polaroids of a skunk.
• 45:50
  And I'm like, Anita, what's up with the skunk?
• 45:52
  She goes, Oh, that's trouble.
• 45:54
  I'm like, yeah, it's a skunk.
• 45:56
  And she goes, no, no, no, that's trouble.
• 45:58
  He's our pet skunk.
• 46:00
  Like, you've got to be kidding me.
• 46:02
  And then she told me the story about how they really rescued Trouble
• 46:06
  on the way to the racetrack and found a little baby doll bottle and
• 46:10
  started feeding them at the track.
• 46:11
  Well, because they were running sprint cars every single weekend,
• 46:14
  they raised Trouble at the racetrack.
• 46:16
  And I sat there and went, The Trouble with Howard, that would
• 46:20
  be a great children's book.
• 46:21
  That's where the seed gets to.
• 46:23
  So what is the book about for those of us out there with little kids that
• 46:28
  might want to read the story to them?
• 46:29
  Or maybe, you know, they're old enough to read it themselves.
• 46:32
  What's the premise of the book?
• 46:33
  So the premise is based on the fact that we use a kid version of Howard and Anita.
• 46:38
  Howard.
• 46:39
  gets punted off the track by Jack.
• 46:41
  It's a very bully kind of tacky move.
• 46:43
  And he gets punted off so far he's in the shrubs and there he hears a little whimper
• 46:48
  and he gets out of his car to explore.
• 46:49
  The racetrack is done, it's quiet, sure enough there's a whimper
• 46:53
  and there's a little baby skunk in the weeds and he needs help.
• 46:57
  And so he puts him in his driver's suit and he brings him back and
• 47:00
  introduces him to his very best friend and awesome mechanic Anita.
• 47:04
  And they end up taking care of Trouble and having him at the racetrack.
• 47:08
  And of course he lives up to his name.
• 47:09
  He dug in coolers and jumped into toolboxes and got into Trouble.
• 47:13
  And not everybody liked Trouble, which was actually true of the real Trouble too.
• 47:18
  Jack the Nemesis decides to come into the Hauler one night and starts messing with
• 47:23
  their things and instead he finds Trouble.
• 47:26
  The double intenders will never end.
• 47:28
  And from there, trouble gets lost.
• 47:30
  That's where he ends up finding his cozy place to sleep, his favorite
• 47:34
  place, which he thinks is in Howard's car, but he's actually in Jack.
• 47:38
  And this is the night before the race.
• 47:39
  After that, we get a big finish and there's a happy ending, but
• 47:43
  Jack does get sprayed in the end.
• 47:47
  But it is based on a true story and we cover themes of sportsmanship.
• 47:52
  And we cover some themes on how to deal with bullying and taking the high road.
• 47:55
  And I don't shy away from racing terminology.
• 47:57
  We talk about sanctioning bodies and officials and being online
• 48:01
  and inline and pits and paddocks and all those kind of things.
• 48:04
  And then the illustrations are done by Roger Warwick.
• 48:07
  He was an extraordinary illustrator.
• 48:09
  He does all the cartoons for Marshall Pruitt.
• 48:11
  And he did those posters for Seneca Lodge and Seepkins of all the Last
• 48:14
  Call stuff, which is so great.
• 48:16
  He really brought this book to life.
• 48:18
  But the race cars look like race cars.
• 48:20
  And inside the hauler, you see fuel jugs and bungee cords and coolers
• 48:23
  that say Gurney for President.
• 48:25
  So we got a lot of Easter eggs on it too.
• 48:27
  And so when Roger stepped up, it just made it a magical thing
• 48:31
  because he understood the racing.
• 48:32
  He's a racer too.
• 48:33
  So it's really a book created by racers about racers.
• 48:39
  You're the first children's author that we've had on the show.
• 48:43
  When I have other authors on, I usually ask them, when you set about
• 48:46
  a journey of 80, 000 words, you know, how do you get off the blocks?
• 48:50
  What's your first step?
• 48:51
  You know, how do you put it all together?
• 48:52
  But a children's book is very different.
• 48:54
  Had you written any books before this?
• 48:57
  Was this the first book you'd ever written?
• 48:59
  And what kind of challenges did you face?
• 49:01
  Did you find trying to distill down the motor sports world in
• 49:04
  a way that kids could ingest?
• 49:06
  Well, first off i've been telling stories to vintage children for a long time in
• 49:10
  the paddock area I mean i've probably given more garage tours than anybody I
• 49:14
  know i've probably talked to more fans than most drivers You know, I understand
• 49:17
  how they think and the things that they like but for me it was It's taking reality
• 49:23
  and creating something fun out of it.
• 49:25
  I am a visual person, so I too have written some treatments in movies
• 49:30
  and videos and things like that.
• 49:32
  And so when you visualize the story almost as an animation first,
• 49:36
  then it was much easier for me to then to go into a children's book.
• 49:39
  So I actually wrote it as an animated story, and then I
• 49:42
  actually paired the language down to a children's book from there.
• 49:46
  But we made some calls and we broke all the publisher's rules.
• 49:49
  If you want to publish a book today you're supposed to only
• 49:51
  have two and a half sentences per page and if you're supporting STEM
• 49:55
  the book's supposed to be pink.
• 49:56
  They wanted me to cut the story in half and I'm like, uh, no because
• 50:00
  I wanted to do a real racing book.
• 50:02
  I mean it needs to look like a race car.
• 50:04
  An oversimplified race car doesn't really help us, does it?
• 50:08
  With this book, you can actually say and see this is the roll
• 50:11
  bar and this is a chassis.
• 50:13
  You can explain that to a younger kid.
• 50:15
  You can see shop images.
• 50:18
  Everything about the racing experience in this book is very authentic.
• 50:21
  And that was important to me.
• 50:23
  That's how we did it, just one step at a time.
• 50:25
  Went from an animation to the children's book, and then I self published.
• 50:28
  Because that seems to be the craze these days, especially with providers
• 50:32
  like Amazon, where you can bend the rules of publishing and get something
• 50:36
  to develop the way you want it to.
• 50:37
  Is that the route you've gone down?
• 50:39
  And if so, how do you go about getting a copy of The Trouble with Howard?
• 50:43
  We did go the self publishing route because we got to control Our art
• 50:47
  and the length of the book and the story and all these kind of things.
• 50:50
  I even have a brief bio of Howard and Anita in trouble, the real trouble in
• 50:55
  the back of the book, again, to just inspire those ponytails in the pits and
• 50:58
  encourage the boys to be encouraging too.
• 51:01
  And if you want to get it, you can go to the trouble with howard.
• 51:04
  com.
• 51:04
  So it is on the website and we've had some fun.
• 51:06
  We actually have an official trouble team t shirt that is, uh, an H and a hot.
• 51:12
  Racing and it says Danville, Indiana, which is where their actual shop was.
• 51:16
  So again, lots of Easter eggs and troubles hanging off the back of that shirt.
• 51:20
  We also did a trouble car air freshener because why would we not?
• 51:25
  What does that smell like?
• 51:26
  The sweet smell of victory.
• 51:27
  Glad you didn't say skunk.
• 51:31
  It doesn't smell like it's gum, but we have some stickers and we have all
• 51:34
  that kind of stuff on too because, you know, this is, this should be fun.
• 51:37
  We're getting into trouble together.
• 51:38
  Let's say one of my daughters reads the book and stumbles across you in the
• 51:42
  paddock and says, Leanne, why racing?
• 51:45
  Why should I get involved?
• 51:46
  What do you say to them?
• 51:47
  You have to only decide that from your own heart.
• 51:50
  What I will tell any young girl is that don't be afraid to dream big.
• 51:55
  It doesn't matter what you dream.
• 51:56
  As long as you're passionate about it, and you're excited about
• 51:59
  it, and it comes from the heart.
• 52:01
  All the really good things come from within.
• 52:03
  If you try to do something just to prove a woman can, you will fail miserably.
• 52:08
  But if you decide you want to go racing because you're a driver, or you have
• 52:12
  a perfectionist attitude toward a car prep, or you love sponsorship because
• 52:16
  you're a dork like me, then as long as you're passionate about it, and you
• 52:21
  want to just dream big and go for it, but it has to come from your heart.
• 52:25
  It doesn't matter what it is, but it has to come from the heart.
• 52:27
  So with ground effects marketing, what's next?
• 52:30
  If this is successful, if it catches on, I do have a way to expand the
• 52:34
  series so that I can bring in other different jobs and different types
• 52:39
  of racing that trouble can get into and we can introduce other different
• 52:44
  types of jobs because gosh, we need people in all different kinds of jobs.
• 52:47
  We just don't need drivers.
• 52:49
  We need mechanics.
• 52:50
  We need engineers.
• 52:51
  We need PR people.
• 52:52
  We need marketing people.
• 52:53
  We need people that just.
• 52:54
  Love the sport showcasing all the different jobs.
• 52:57
  Like, you know, I'd love to bring in a little Eloisa character.
• 53:00
  I'd love to have different characters to that are all centered off.
• 53:03
  Somebody very likely that, you know, really did something kind of cool that
• 53:07
  maybe somebody hasn't heard about and bring in the different types of jobs.
• 53:11
  So we'll see if it takes off so far.
• 53:14
  All the feedback has been great.
• 53:15
  And a lot of kids have already sent me videos of themselves reading
• 53:19
  it, and it was a great story.
• 53:21
  There was one mom who bought the book for her daughter who was sitting
• 53:23
  right there, and she showed her the book and she studied the cover.
• 53:26
  And the minute she found trouble on the cover, she went, Oh,
• 53:29
  and she got super excited.
• 53:31
  And another lady told me that her daughter loved it so much that
• 53:33
  she had to go buy a stuffed skunk.
• 53:36
  By the way, we will have a plush trouble available in about 35 days online.
• 53:41
  So you got to have a stuffed skunk, right?
• 53:42
  And he's adorable and he looks like trouble and quality's really nice.
• 53:46
  My designer was Alex Guiadas of Castaway Design.
• 53:49
  He's been my partner in design crime for 30 years in racing.
• 53:52
  He was the first to actually do an autograph card.
• 53:55
  Happened for the longest time.
• 53:56
  Photographers sold pictures.
• 53:58
  They printed off the black and white pictures, and then they
• 54:00
  would sell their pictures.
• 54:02
  Alex is like, well, why don't we put information on them and print them?
• 54:07
  It really hurt the photographers because they stopped selling
• 54:10
  photographs, but that's where the autograph card evolved from.
• 54:13
  So he did the design work on the book and really brought things to life, just really
• 54:18
  made Rogers again, leap off the page.
• 54:20
  And it's been a wonderful, wonderful project to work on.
• 54:23
  Talking about the future and what's next for Leanne and things like that.
• 54:27
  You know, we talk a lot about diversifying the paddock, and we mentioned some
• 54:30
  of that throughout this episode, but Leanne, if you were queen for a day,
• 54:34
  and you could change one thing about motorsport right now, what would that be?
• 54:38
  You know, I think the biggest in my world, the thing that I found that I could change
• 54:43
  and make the most impact and difference with is helping the parents understand
• 54:47
  what it takes to get your kid there.
• 54:49
  If we can help the parents understand that you're going to put your kid in
• 54:52
  a quarter midget at age 5, and what it's going to take to get him all
• 54:57
  the way there, and to be honest with you, explain the darn business model.
• 55:01
  I can't tell you how many parents call up and say, hey, can you just
• 55:04
  kind of give me some pointers?
• 55:06
  I'm like, great, hit play on the recorder, and an hour later I explain
• 55:09
  how sponsorship works and I'm like, oh, can you just do it for me?
• 55:13
  Probably the most difficult job in the garage area outside of battling 33
• 55:18
  guys into turn one at the Indy 500, in finding the money, because so many people
• 55:22
  actually don't understand how the ROI works, how you actually fund it, and
• 55:27
  now you have managers that change every year and a half, and the average lead
• 55:30
  time of sponsorship is 9 to 18 months.
• 55:33
  So you have to be racing to find sponsorship.
• 55:36
  And you have to be looking for your sponsorship in the spring for the
• 55:39
  following year, you've got to have so much lead time and you got to
• 55:43
  make sense when you do it and you have to take care of your sponsor.
• 55:46
  It's a service.
• 55:47
  It's a job.
• 55:48
  First and foremost, parents of younger drivers need to understand that and
• 55:52
  younger drivers need to understand that.
• 55:54
  And until you understand that, I don't care how fast you are.
• 55:58
  You're not going racing.
• 55:59
  Not today's world, you're just not.
• 56:01
  And so Queen for the Day says, you got to help these people get educated,
• 56:05
  and you got to help even the sponsors.
• 56:08
  Companies today who do sponsorship, a lot of them just chunk it off and
• 56:12
  say, okay, go get that social media.
• 56:14
  I remember when social media started, and we had girls doing
• 56:17
  social media, and they didn't even know where the media center was.
• 56:20
  And at that time, the Atlanta General Constitution still had a million people.
• 56:24
  So there were still more people in the media center to reach than
• 56:27
  just your driver who's got 10, 000.
• 56:29
  So now you got some drivers that are at 400, you know, like the Chase Elliott's
• 56:34
  of the world and Coase Junior's got a million and the Atlanta Journal
• 56:38
  Constitution only has 300, 000 readers.
• 56:40
  So technically Chase Elliott is more powerful than the
• 56:42
  Atlanta Journal Constitution.
• 56:44
  And so you got to keep up with those numbers and you got to keep up with
• 56:47
  that and how you make that happen.
• 56:49
  But.
• 56:49
  I think that's probably the biggest fault we have in the whole system
• 56:52
  right now is most people generally don't understand how sponsorship works.
• 56:56
  Well, with that, Leanne, I always like to invite our guests to share any
• 57:01
  shout outs, promotions, or anything else we haven't covered thus far.
• 57:04
  In the back of my book, I have a dedication and in it, I thank
• 57:08
  Roger Warwick for his fabulous and inspired illustrations.
• 57:12
  My designer, Alex Boyadis, who owns Castle White Design, he's my
• 57:15
  longtime business partner and it's intelligent work is always amazing.
• 57:19
  I also want to send a personal note of thanks and gratitude, not only to
• 57:22
  Anita Milliken, but to Eloisa Garza.
• 57:25
  Linda Connie, Marty Humphrey, Alexis Liras, Linda Mansfield,
• 57:29
  and Vicki O'Connor, because these are the shoulders that I stand on.
• 57:32
  These women, a handful of others, truly open up the garage gates for all the women
• 57:36
  that are enjoying career racing today.
• 57:38
  And while it's always hard being the first, it doesn't mean it isn't great.
• 57:43
  Leanne Patterson's expertise includes designing and building turnkey programs,
• 57:47
  Developing visionary business networking strategies, designing results oriented
• 57:52
  marketing programs, and coordinating activation with measurable results,
• 57:57
  including good cause marketing elements.
• 58:00
  The Trouble with Howard, Leanne's first children's book, a book created by
• 58:04
  racers, about racers, and for racers.
• 58:06
  is now available for sale, and you can pick up a copy at troublewithhoward.
• 58:11
  com.
• 58:12
  To learn more about Leanne, be sure to follow her on Instagram
• 58:15
  and Facebook at leannepatterson.
• 58:18
  author, or you can follow her on LinkedIn, or reach out via
• 58:22
  email Leanne at BgroundEffects.
• 58:25
  com Leanne, I can't thank you enough for coming on BreakFix and sharing your
• 58:30
  road to success story with all of us.
• 58:33
  And I have to say you are a prime example of the type of individual in motor
• 58:39
  sports that when you see you walking down the paddock, stop, say hello.
• 58:45
  And ask, what do you do here?
• 58:47
  Because there's so many folks that make this autosphere
• 58:50
  turn and you're one of them.
• 58:52
  And not only that, an agent of change that I think we get lost in the moment
• 58:56
  and we need to learn these stories.
• 58:58
  And your story is super important and an inspiration to other women out there that
• 59:02
  might be going, how do I do what she does?
• 59:04
  So thank you for what you're doing and continue to do for motorsports.
• 59:08
  Oh, thank you.
• 59:09
  We really delved in deep on a lot of fun subjects.
• 59:12
  You put me on my soapbox a couple of times, so that was great fun
• 59:16
  to do because you don't really get to do that quite a bit.
• 59:19
  Again, it's a passion.
• 59:20
  It's my sport, too, and I've loved it and it's been very, very, very good to me.
• 59:25
  So I'm happy to help any woman or anybody that wants to actually get
• 59:30
  involved in the sport because it's a good ride and it's good people.
• 59:33
  Fact is, people in racing are really good people.
• 59:40
  We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Brake Fix Podcast, brought
• 59:45
  to you by Grand Touring Motorsports.
• 59:47
  If you'd like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure
• 59:49
  to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports.
• 59:54
  And if you'd like to learn more about the content of this episode,
• 59:57
  be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.
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