Still inspiring other women, racing legend St. James returns to Detroit for Trans Am event

Posted by Talbot Payne on March 3, 2020

Detroit – When Lyn St. James fires up her vintage 1969 Trans Am Camaro this May at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear, her career will have come full circle.

One of Sports Illustrated’s Top 100 Female Athletes of the 20th Century, St. James is a motor sports legend. The first woman to win Rookie of the Year honors at the Indianapolis 500 (in 1992), she has won at big races all over the world, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 12 Hours of Sebring. She’s been a guest at the White House multiple times and an inspiration to female drivers such as Danica Patrick.

But behind the wheel of a Ford Mustang at the Trans Am support race for the 1988 Detroit Grand Prix, she was just another driver scrambling to make a name in the world of racing. Then, she was overshadowed by male racing legends like Brazil’s Ayrton Senna, who won the Formula One race that year.

“When I ran in the 1980s no one gave a hoot about a woman driver, much less who was going to be the next great woman driver,” said the 72-year old last weekend at Autorama in TCF Center, where she signed autographs for fans. “It was a non-issue. The whole decade of the 1980s, there were hardly any women (race drivers).”

She was a talent – a relative late-comer to auto racing at the age of 40, but with corporate backing from the Ford Racing Team. “I remember I had a top-five finish one year, and I crashed one year,” she says of her three Detroit Trans Am starts from 1988-90.

The 2.5-mile street course snaked along the waterfront and past the RenCen and was known as one of the roughest, most demanding circuits in the world. St. James enjoyed it all.

“The track was bumpy, but there was a flow about it that worked. I enjoyed coming under the tunnel – it was just cool. Detroit is the Motor City, and I was a Ford driver, and to be part of a culture where racing is totally embraced” was a thrill, said the Cleveland native. “To see the support here – the signage all over track – it was like coming to Mecca.”

St. James returns to Detroit May 29-31 on Detroit’s Belle Isle street course, where the Detroit Grand Prix moved in 1992. Retired from motor racing, St. James will appropriately race a retired Camaro famously sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh in the early 1970s.

She’ll race in the Historic Trans Am series, one of three support races this year for IndyCar’s Detroit Grand Prix. Current Trans Am and the IMSA Weathertech sports car race round out the other support series.

St. James’ Camaro has special meaning to her – not just as a reminder of her Trans Am roots – but because another legend, Detroit’s own Roger Penske, had a hand in preparing the car for the student-crewed, University if Pittsburgh team that ran the No. 19 car in its heyday.

“I remember meeting Roger back in the 1980s at Mid-Ohio (race track). I said I wanted to talk to him about how to win,” said St. James. “I’ll remember it as long as I live – because even back then he was like God in our sport. His advice was, ‘You look like you’re doing a lot of things right.’ And he said, ‘My suggestion is you keep doing what you’re doing and it’ll come around.’ That was 1983 – and I had my first win in 1985. He really made me feel good.”

After moving through the Ford racing program in the late 1980s, St. James got her historic shot at the Indy 500 in 1992 and made the most of it – not only finishing 11th and winning rookie of the year, but becoming the oldest driver at 45 to earn the honor.

She would race seven more times at the Brickyard, her last in 2000 when she was the oldest driver in the field while her female protégé, Sarah Fisher, was the youngest.

By that time, St. James had become an icon in the sport, mentoring young drivers like Fisher – one of eight more women drivers that have followed St. James on Indy’s 200-mph bankings.

“I had experiences meeting Billie Jean King and working with the Women’s Sports Foundation. I got so much fan mail that I realized I needed to become proactive about the driver feeder system and see who is out there … that has serious aspirations,” said St. James. “I created a driver development program. I was really trying to help that next wave of drivers.”

At Autorama, St. James spent time with 10-year-old Karley Phillips Dryden, who races quarter midgets.

“She says half of the quarter racers are female,” smiled St. James, who now lives in Phoenix. “It’s changing, it’s happening. We just need more women to show up.”

St. James will show up at Belle Isle as part of the inaugural Historic Trans Am race to compete on the Belle Isle GP weekend.

She has become a regular on the vintage car racing circuit as a guest pilot in racers as diverse as a 1979 Chevron B39 Atlantic car and pre-war 1929 Bugatti. Not long ago she won a vintage race at Indy in a 2007-era Dallara IndyCar – fulfilling her dream to enter the Brickyard winner’s circle.

“I actually got on the podium at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and got to drink milk! Oh my God, I know it’s not the 500 – but I still got to drink milk on the podium,” she said.

She hopes to add the Historic Trans-Am Series race to her win column. She’ll race the Belle Isle course for the first time against other vintage muscle cars including Mustangs, Barracudas, and Javelins.

“This is my gravy,” said St. James. “To come back and be able to race at all as part of this group in Mecca it’s an honor. I’m living the dream.”

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