Janet Guthrie

Did You Know?

• Guthrie earned her pilot's license at 17 years old.
• Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner A. J. Foyt lent her a back-up car for a shake-down test after other drivers said her failure to qualify in 1976 was due to her sex.
• Her 2005 autobiography, 'Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle', received critical praise from Sports Illustrated.

Racing career

Guthrie began racing in 1963 on the SCCA circuit in a Jaguar XK140 and by 1972 was racing full-time. Her sportscar career included two class wins in the 12 Hours of Sebring. In the 1976 World 600, she finished fifteenth, becoming the first woman to compete in a NASCAR Winston Cup superspeedway race, and she competed in four more races that season. The following season, she finished twelfth in her first Daytona 500 after her engine lost two cylinders with ten laps remaining, earning Top Rookie honors. Over four NASCAR seasons, she competed in 33 races, with a sixth-place finish at Bristol in 1977 standing as the best finish by a woman in a top-tier NASCAR race in the modern era, later tied by Danica Patrick in 2014. Guthrie qualified for the 1977 Indianapolis 500 in a car entered by Rolla Vollstedt but finished 29th due to engine troubles. She raced in two more Indianapolis 500s, finishing ninth in 1978 while driving with a fractured wrist from a charity tennis event, which she hid from officials. Overall, she competed in 11 Indy car events with a best finish of fifth. During her unsuccessful 1976 qualifying attempt, many male drivers attributed her failure to her sex, prompting three-time winner A. J. Foyt to lend her a backup car for a shake-down test; her top practice lap would have qualified. Unable to secure corporate sponsorship, she was forced into retirement. Her helmet and race suit are in the Smithsonian Institution, and she was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame on April 27, 2006. Her 2005 autobiography, Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle, received critical praise.

Battling sexism in motorsports

In a 1987 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Guthrie discussed the lack of corporate sponsorships for female drivers. The struggle continued; when Pippa Mann lacked funding for the 2020 Indianapolis 500 despite driving the previous year, the race had no women drivers, and Guthrie said she was unlikely to watch due to disappointment. Guthrie initially hesitated to address sexism but changed her mind after qualifying for her first Indianapolis 500 in 1977, when she saw men holding little girls on their shoulders during the downtown parade, describing it as if she represented hope for the future. In 2011, she signed a petition supporting the right of women in Saudi Arabia to drive, calling on King Abdullah to sponsor a Saudi Women's Grand Prix, a project by human rights activist David Keyes. An ESPN 30 for 30 episode titled Qualified aired on May 28, 2019, in which she stated that women's history is often forgotten or denied, forcing women to reinvent the wheel. In 2019, she was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame as the fifth woman.

Personal life

Janet Guthrie was the eldest of five children born to two pilots in Iowa City, Iowa. When she was three, her father took a job with Eastern Air Lines, and the family relocated to Miami, Florida. She got her pilot’s license at seventeen. In 1989, she married charter airline pilot Warren Levine; he died of a sudden heart attack on December 30, 2006. A biographical film about Guthrie, starring Hillary Swank, was announced in 2021.