Everett, Wash.
Published: Thursday, August 7, 2008

Fisher prepping for return to IndyCar racing at Kentucky

By Will Graves
Associated Press

 There are five offices at the home of Sarah Fisher Racing in Indianapolis. Yet you won't find the company's founder, office manager, accountant, marketing head and star in a massive wood-paneled room with a dutiful assistant parked outside the door.

Instead, the only female owner-driver in the IndyCar Series decided to take a small room overlooking the team's garage.

"I want to see the shop, see what's going on," Fisher said with a laugh.

She always does, one of the main reasons Fisher will be back in her "other" office this week at the Indy 300 at Kentucky Speedway.

Saturday's race marks her first start since a disastrous month of May, when two title sponsors backed out and she and husband Andy O'Gara poured their life savings into helping the team make the field for the Indy 500.

Fisher qualified 22nd, but her hopes of impressing future sponsors ended when Tony Kanaan spun into her halfway through the race. She finished 30th and was in tears while riding to the medical center, knowing her season may be over.

"It's very character-building," she said. "I could write a book on the month of May alone."

Rather than give up, Fisher simply went back to work. While her team reassembled the car, she worked the phones trying to find a sponsor for two more races.

Enter Dollar General CEO Rick Dreiling, a racing fan who was moved by Fisher's story. The company has signed on to help sponsor Fisher this week and in the season-ending event at Chicago in September. Dollar General could stay involved in 2009 if Fisher can recapture the form that made her one of the series' most popular drivers earlier in the decade.

"He's looking at 2009, he's asking questions and that's a start," she said. "But you can't just expect them to jump on board and expect them to sign up because we had a good race."

Finding a way to be competitive at the 1.5-mile Kentucky oval, though, won't hurt. Fortunately for Fisher the track's notoriously bumpy corners are laced with good memories. She became the first woman to capture an IndyCar pole when she set a track record qualifying time in 2002. She ran third at Kentucky in 2000 and launched her last comeback bid with a 12th-place finish in 2006 while working for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing.

That partnership ended after last season, and rather than try to find a job on someone else's team, Fisher decided to be her own boss, a job that's proven to be equal parts liberating and frustrating.

"At the beginning of the year, I didn't realize how deep and how organized that I needed to be," she said. "I run all of the financial side of it. If they need something, they come to me, whether it's accounting, managing, payroll, everything a young businessperson goes through."

Most young entrepreneurs, however, don't conduct their business at 200 mph. Her business obligations have limited her time in the cockpit, though Fisher was encouraged by her car's performance during a recent test at Kentucky. Fisher believes she can be competitive this weekend and knows a poor showing will make finding a sponsor for next year more difficult.

"The pressure is undeniable," she said. "I don't think it's totally from our ontrack performance, but who we are, how we represent ourselves on and off the track. It's not just going around in circles. There's pressure as a team owner to make sure all the ducks are in a row."

Simply getting on the track, however, is a victory for Fisher. When she slides into the cockpit for qualifying on Friday, all the pressure from the office will melt away and it'll just be her and the car, just the way she likes it.

"It's so easy to tune it all out when I put that suit on," she said. "When we rolled into Kentucky for the test, I didn't even take the computer with me. It's easy to separate (business and racing). Racing is the funnest part of the job."

There will come a time when Fisher sees herself moving to the front office full-time, but the checkered flag on her racing career isn't yet in sight. She knows her name — and her ardent fan following — is her team's hottest commodity. Though she hopes to gain enough sponsorship to run all at every IndyCar race on an oval next year, a lifetime in racing has taught her plenty of lessons about looking too far ahead.

Maybe this weekend will work out, maybe it won't. Either way, she'll still be back in the office next week, watching the garage and working the phones.

"I have a goal in mind and this is what I want to do with my life, my family and my team," she said. "It's a full-time job and it's hard, but I love it."
© 2009The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA