Will Chrissy Wallace Be NASCAR’s Card To Break Its Sexist Image?
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Sep 21, 2008
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Nascar Craftsman Truck Series race at Gateway International Raceway outside St. Louis featured Chrissy Wallace, a 20-year-old driver who many believe will be the first female Nascar superstar. Like many of today’s Nascar drivers, Ms. Wallace started competing at a very young age—10. She has worked her way up through the ranks and won a number of races and championships in a variety of minor-league racing series. She was the first woman to win a race at Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway, a small oval an hour west of Charlotte that produced many of Nascar’s early stars, including father-son champions Ned and Dale Jarrett.
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This year, Ms. Wallace will compete in six races in the truck series, the Nascar equivalent of baseball’s double-A farm system. So far, she’s competed in four races and has finished about 20th each time out of 30 or so drivers. Not bad for a rookie driver.
In terms of moving up, Ms. Wallace has a lot of things working in her favor. She comes from a Nascar family. Her dad, Mike Wallace, has raced for 20 years, and her uncle is former Nascar champion Rusty Wallace. She grew up in the Nascar garage, so many of the car owners and drivers know her. Many believe she has real talent, including Nascar champion Tony Stewart, who has taken her under his wing.
“I think she’s a viable marketing and branding tool,” Mike Wallace said. “The key is finding the right company to build a program around her, much the way DuPont has done with Jeff Gordon.”
Of course, Ms. Wallace isn’t the first female driver to come up through the Nascar ranks. In the 1970s, Janet Guthrie became the first woman to compete in the Daytona 500 and the Indy 500. Patty Moise and Shawna Robinson both dabbled in Nascar, but struggled. Some say they simply weren’t good enough; others say it was sexism.
Ms. Wallace, who’s heard it all before, is quick to dismiss any concerns about her ability to go toe-to-toe with the boys. “When people doubt you, it just makes you try harder,” she said before finishing 19th out of 35 trucks at Gateway.
Despite these successes, it’s still a long way to Nascar’s premier Sprint Cup Series. And with Danica Patrick already getting into shoving matches on the IndyCar circuit, and Ashley Force picking up where her dad left off in drag racing, Nascar appears to be behind the curve in terms of diversity. Its marketing staff would like nothing more than to see Ms. Wallace and other female drivers do well and move up.
