Lyn St. James, a nearly-forgotten all-female racing series, and what ‘makes it’ in racing

Within just a few minutes of speaking with Lyn St. James, who turns 78 next week, you quickly understand why she has made it as far as she has in the motorsport world. She’s kind, sharp, and fun to talk to, with a certain fire to her persona. I, affectionately describe her as “feisty” in a text to a colleague shortly after our interview.

It’s that guile that helped her to compete wheel to wheel in a sport  dominated by testosterone. Need reasons  why many women in the sport remain inspired by her work and efforts? St. James  became the first woman to win the Indy 500 Rookie of the Year honors (1992), at the age of 45. And next weekend marks the 35th anniversary of her 12 hours of Sebring win, which she clinched for Roush Racing with Robby Gordon and Calvin Fish in a Mercury Cougar XR-7. But her “chutzpah” as she would say, is why she possesses such an impressive list of accolades, awards, and recognition to her name, long before programs like her own, Women in Motorsports North America (WIMNA), or even the F1 Academy existed. 

Her career on and off track has been in working to get women more opportunities in motorsport. Even in the tailend of her track days and punching above her weight in motorsports, St. James utilized her experience to help launch an all but forgotten all-female series that history or Google searches seemingly have a difficult time finding: The Women’s Global GT Series.

St. James, candidly, was quick to admit the series wasn’t her idea. She wasn’t entirely supportive at first of making it all-female; but first, let’s rewind a bit. The idea for the Women’s Global GT Series was the brainchild of the late Don Panoz, founder of the American Le Mans Series (ALMS). St. James had wanted to meet with Panoz for some time, and when the opportunity presented itself, it was to discuss helping to create an ALMS support series consisting of women drivers in Panoz sports cars. (Another little nugget to add is the women would all drive Esperantes — a car his son was building.)

She presented a counterargument: racing already presented a platform in which women and men could compete equally. Why race women separately?

“I tried to convince them to make it like mixed doubles in tennis. I said, ‘Why don’t we do [it] where we literally assign each car with a male driver to female drive and literally start the race with half of the cars male drivers and the other half have the females and then we have a mandatory pit stop and then they switch,’” she said. “‘It’ll really give the gals a chance to see how they fare up against the guys.’” 

But Panoz couldn’t be budged. His new series had to be all women.

“So I decided to switch off my own attitude about things,” St. James said. “He’s going to do it one way or the other, with or without me. If he does it with me, maybe we’ll make it as good as we can make it, right?”

Signed on as the series’ executive director, St. James got to work in finding the talent needed to run in it. Her search spanned worldwide to fill 18 cars. Soon, 75 women would try out at the in-person event at Road Atlanta. 30 would make the “cut.”

For drivers, there was a pay to play fee — a few thousand dollars, and the series kicked off in 1999, continuing with an all-female roster for 2000. St. James would step away somewhere in that time (she couldn’t recall why but sites probably IndyCar obligations). Eventually, the series would invite men to compete, accompanied by a name change for 2001.

“I look back on it and even while it was happening, I actually kind of did a turnaround and became, you know, really proud to be doing it, because I realized people like Cindy Lux, Sara Senske, and a number of others … those gals would have not had an opportunity to race on a regular basis — to get that kind of recognition and get that kind of experience.”

A young Milka Duno and Don Panoz during the Global GT era.

Photo by: MBD Sportscars Team

It would give veterans such as Divina Galica, who had raced Formula One in the ‘70s, a long-awaited return to the track among a sea of talented, young drivers. And sure, not every driver who raced with the program in its short lifespan came out on the other side with a plethora of opportunities, but it certainly opened the door for those who were ready to take the next step. 

“It continued a little bit, and then they decided to let guys in because there weren’t enough gals that were evidently showing up to run it, but I think it was a platform that gave a really great opportunity for a lot of gals to get some real quality seat time.

“That’s why with the W Series, decades later, and even now, the F1 Academy, as much as I am completely wanting to celebrate and promote the fact that men and women compete in motor racing equally, is that if you give people an opportunity to do something that’s a quality experience — that’s going to make a better racer. And then they go back into the mix again, against the guys and they’re going to be better. How can we say that’s not good?”

St. James continued:

“I don’t think we should change the sport and have only women’s racing at every race, at every type of race. We don’t need that. But having unique opportunities to give female drivers a quality experience, with quality teams, quality cars and fair, equal competition, and then limit how long they could be in it, which is exactly what the W Series did, and what the F1 Academy is doing. So it’s not a landing spot. It’s part of the ladder that you’re climbing trying to get experience.”

Critics may point to how not every woman driver has been able to set a successful trajectory outside of these opportunities. But there’s a number of things that factor into that.

“It’s a tough sport. It’s a mean sport. It’s a money sport. It isn’t going to change. And so, the way I look at it, let’s just use Abbi Pulling as an example. Or Jamie Chadwick was in the W series for two seasons,” St. James explains. “She has had some success outside of the W Series. And when she came here and ran in the Indy NXT series, realized that she wasn’t physically prepared to drive those cars. But fortunately, [she] stayed the course. Then came back the second year and really was competitive. But it takes money too. 

“Let’s take her [Jamie’s] competitors in Indy NXT and there’s two guys. [Jacob] Abel and Louis Foster. Now, they’re both running an Indy car this year and they’re not setting the world on fire, but I’m impressed at how competitive they are. But they also have backing.

“You literally have to be almost some genius like a Scott Pruett, or you almost have to be a dominant talent. I’ll use Connor Zilisch as an example. That kid is so freaking talented. But I mean, if he didn’t have some opportunities where some people are obviously backing him, or putting him in a seat and finding sponsors because of his extraordinary talent, he could still be good and really good, but I can guarantee you he wouldn’t be getting the deals he’s getting if he didn’t have that extraordinary talent.”

Jamie Chadwick, Andretti Global

Photo by: Joe Skibinski

The problem, St. James notes, is that a driver can’t just be good, have no money,  and expect opportunities to fall into their lap –  for both men and women. For women though, the quality of the racing experience is key, helping to get more time in the cars. More hands-on competition experience is crucial. 

“Along the way, you’ve got to figure out how to leverage that and generate sponsorship and or investors. I mean, that’s the other [thing] I tell these drivers and nobody listens to me,” she remarks.

“You need to look for backers, investors, and be willing to convince them of your talent, and then be dedicated to developing that talent so that when you are successful and they put their money out there, that you then are going to pay it back. I don’t think young drivers today get that. And then the ones that are very, very good, but have backing, they’re gonna get the rides. I mean, it’s a money game — it’s still a money game.”

St. James would know, as she spent years putting on driver development programs, working with 230 drivers from 33 states, in six countries. Out of those 230 drivers, she says she can count on one hand the ones who could juggle everything. The sponsorship, the nutrition advice, the physical training — they took it all in and made something of it. Even Danica Patrick was one of her students, at the young age of 14. 

“It broke my heart to be honest, because it’s like you put food in front of people and they don’t eat it. …They [parents] are like ‘this is my daughter. She’s the best thing since and she’s going to go out there and win races, and the floodgates are going to open.”

And that mentality of “if I’m good, things will just come my way” wasn’t limited to just drivers in motorsport, it can be found throughout a lot of different disciplines and positions in the sport. When St. James stepped away from developing driver careers, she took her lessons and expanded the work to help grow every aspect of the paddock with WIMNA. 

“[WIMNA] is a completely different organization with different goals and we’re now all about disciplines. Now we’re not just talking race car drivers. We really, quite frankly can grow the sport and make a difference not just [with] drivers. So we’re concentrating on everybody.”

From engineering and crew members, to management and safety, there’s plenty to be learned about racing from outside of a race car. Her emphasis still focuses on many of the same lessons she was telling her drivers in her development program, and through her own course and experiences of trying to earn backing and rides.

“It’s hard work. I mean, you’ve been in it long enough since you reminded me of some of the times we’ve met, back even 10 years ago. But for sure, 20 years ago, there was a small percentage that were really people earning a living. Most of the time, people were either weekend warriors that only worked on race teams for the weekend, or they were volunteers. Where today you have race teams with hundreds of employees. These are real jobs, and that’s a real phenomena to me. The last five or 10 years, all of these teams are crying for people to work for them. But they don’t want head count. They want qualified, preferably experienced people.

“And how are you going to get that experience? Well, you got to start somewhere. So you just have to show up and volunteer, or show up and get a low level job or entry-level job, and then, if you show your stuff, you’ll work your way up.”

Work ethic is a huge part of the equation, but so is attitude, confidence… some chutzpah.

“My mom taught me this a long time ago,” St. James explains. “You got to have some chutzpah. If you want something, you’ve got to go after it. It doesn’t mean you need to be bold. It doesn’t mean you have to be rude. … You just have to have a certain level of intensity or boldness, or whatever it is, even though you may not have all of the tools or all of the right business cards or all the right contacts. 

“And I think that women tend to play by the rules. As they say, women ‘need’ to be invited. A guy will crash a party in a heartbeat until he gets kicked out. A gal, well, ‘I wasn’t invited. I don’t have the right credentials so I guess I just, I can’t go in there.’ I mean, over the years, I’ve gone many places that I wasn’t invited.”