Monday, July 14, 2008

Indy Girl

Barack Obama has apparently given up on sponsoring a NASCAR entry, but Cindy McCain sounds like she'd like to drive one:
Cindy McCain’s been a racing fan since she was 14 years old. Her father invested in a racecar and brought her along to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to check out the car. But in those days, women weren’t allowed in the pits, so young Cindy was left fuming outside the gate.

“Gasoline alley, the pits, no way. They wouldn’t let girls in,” she recalled in an interview with The Tennessean. Even so, she was hooked.

....McCain’s eye for the track comes from years of racing herself. In 2004, she and her oldest son, Jack, rebuilt a drift car themselves and began racing as the only mother-and-son team on the circuit. Drift racers deliberately skid their rear tires around turns until the car begins drifting sideways.

“It is hilariously fun to do. It’s just a barrel of fun,” said McCain, who is also a licensed pilot. Mother and son ride tandem in the car and so far, she said, “we’ve done OK,” in their races together. They came in first one time, then again, they’ve also had a bumper fall off their car in the middle of a race.

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