Wichita oilman Wink Hartman had no involvement in auto racing and little more than a passing interest in the sport when a story caught his eye.
Hartman did some research, and he noticed that Fisher, only the third woman ever to race in the Indianapolis 500, had ventured out on her own and became the first female team owner and youngest team owner in the series.
It was obvious to him that Sarah Fisher Racing could ill afford to lose a primary sponsor. So Hartman decided to help her, sight unseen and became an associate sponsor for last year’s Indy 500.
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“We’re looking at maybe doing a couple others like Homestead,” Hartman said of the season-ending race. “Right now, I’m crying the blues like everybody else. It’s going to be a wait-and-see attitude.”
If Fisher ever was to be a threat to win, she and husband Andy O’Gara were going to do it their way.
“My husband and I wanted to work with certain people, and we wanted to do certain things a certain way,” she said. “There were areas of the car we wanted to progress, and in order to do all those things, we really can only do that by doing our own deal.
O’Gara’s responsibility is building the race car. Fisher handles the business side of accounting, finances, budgeting and public relations.
“There’s hardly enough hours in the day because I still have to train like a driver does,” she said. “It takes a lot of time. It’s time management, and right now is our most hectic time of the season getting ready
Fisher, voted the series’ most popular driver four times, admits it was disappointing when some of the powerhouse teams such as Penske, Andretti Green Racing, Target Chip Ganassi and Panther Racing did not consider her when making driver changes in previous years.
“We want to be able to finish in the top five,” said Fisher, whose career best is a second at Homestead in 2001. “We’re not a Penske, we’re not an AGR, we’re not a Target … To beat those guys is something to be proud of. I think we have a product that’s going to be competitive.”
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