Former Busch Series driver Patty Moise gained the acceptance and respect of her male competitors, starting 133 Busch races in her career, Moise sits in Chesapeake, Va., today in premature retirement from driving.
She's still surrounded by plenty of horsepower, but in a different fashion: instead of four wheels, Moise's preferred form of transportation these days has four hooves. She has traded her seat inside a stock car for a saddle and horse, becoming quite the horsewoman. At least she doesn't need to worry about sponsorships with a horse -- it's happy with oats, brushing and some plain old TLC.
At 41, Moise should still be racing. She wasn't just a good female racer, she was a good racer first and foremost, regardless of gender. But when her Busch sponsorship dried up following the 1998 season, one in which she drove the No. 14 Rhodes Ford entry owned by eventual 2001 Daytona 500 winner and Winston Cup veteran Michael Waltrip, Moise was forced off the track and into retirement -- permanently in both cases.
With the success she had enjoyed, she easily had another five to 10 years of competition left in her. But when it came time for sponsorship money to talk, silence was all Moise heard as corporate doors were slammed in her face, one after another.
It's no wonder the Jacksonville, Fla., native has spent much of the time since she was forced into stock car racing exile turning down almost all media requests for interviews. She'd rather tell reporters to talk with husband Elton Sawyer -- whose own Busch and Winston Cup career is on hold after last season, when he lost his full-time ride -- than talk about herself.
I can understand that. It has to be excruciatingly painful for Moise to recall the good times in her career without thinking about what might have been if she was able to find some company in corporate America to help her continue her racing exploits and efforts. Instead of Robinson, perhaps people would be talking about Moise in Winston Cup today if things had worked out differently.
It's not like Moise was not a good representative. In fact, she was an outstanding pitchwoman. Some of her greatest notoriety came in the early-to-mid '90s when she drove a race car that carried the attention-grabbing theme of Xena, The Warrior Princess.
In fact, that paint scheme still is in huge demand on the collectibles circuit, particularly die cast replicas of some of the cars Moise drove in her career.
Moise also had an affinity at times in her career for eye-catching pink vehicles, much like the first lady of drag racing, Shirley Muldowney. But while color was the initial lure, it was Moise's and Muldowney's driving ability that showed they weren't just women's lib-ers trying to make a political or gender statement.
The fact Moise was around the Busch Series for so long made it easier for her to be considered one of the boys, no pun intended. When her fellow competitors saw her, they were looking at another racer who wanted to beat them to the checkered flag, not just a female.
"I've been around so long, I don't know if (being a female driver) has a huge impact anymore," Moise said in an interview six years ago.
While other people would invariably make an issue of it, like many of her other female racing peers, Moise never paid much attention to her gender on the racetrack. She was a racer first; being female was nothing more than an afterthought.
"I never really looked at it from that point of view since I always see myself as a race-car driver, not as a woman driving a car," she said several years ago. "(The Busch Series) is so competitive that my concerns (were) more about how my car is working as opposed to if I am the only woman competing."
One of the most under-recognized and under-publicized accomplishments of Moise's career -- yet perhaps one of the greatest feats ever achieved in motorsports -- is something that not one current or former male Winston Cup driver can lay claim to.
When fans, reporters and drivers think about the fastest lap ever turned in NASCAR history, most are likely to say Bill Elliott's blistering 212.809 mph effort at Talladega Superspeedway in 1987, a speed that hastened the introduction of speed- and horsepower-robbing restrictor plates into Winston Cup racing.
But Awesome Bill from Dawsonville's mark isn't the be-all and end-all of speeds. While Elliott perhaps may not like to admit it, he begrudgingly will likely forever play second fiddle to another driver -- a female driver, no less, when it comes to being the fastest of the fast. Yes, Patty Moise holds the all-time speed mark on any level of NASCAR racing when she shattered Elliott's mark 2½-years later by nearly 5 mph with a solo single lap clocking of 217.498 mph around the 2.66-mile Talladega layout on Jan. 23, 1990.
However, Elliott's speed still is listed as "official" in Winston Cup annals because it came during qualifying for the Talladega 500, whereas Moise's blast was on a closed course, without any other drivers around. To this day, the hot pink machine that she made history in remains proudly on display at the Talladega Superspeedway Museum.
As one of only six women to ever race on the Busch Series, and being the most successful and holding the longest tenure, Moise had other noteworthy achievements in her career, including being the first woman to lead a Busch event (Road Atlanta, 1987), the first woman to win a Busch qualifying race (Talladega, 1988), and the best Busch finish for a woman (seventh at Talladega, 1995). She also earned two consecutive pole positions in ARCA races at Daytona in 1989 and 1990.
And, prior to Robinson coming upon the scene last season, Moise was the last woman to compete in a Winston Cup race (Talladega, July 1989), as well as being the last woman to finish an entire Cup race (Watkins Glen, 1988).
But all that was then, and this is now. After more than 15 years as a race- car driver, lack of sponsorship not only brought her career to a premature close, it left Moise to become virtually nothing more than a "Where are they now?" question in racing annals.
In a sense, Moise forecast her Busch Series departure in a newspaper story shortly before the end of the 1998 season, her last as a driver.
"Until there are more of us, I think sponsors still look at us as something different," Moise said. "And you have to realize that it's just more than driving a car. With these companies, you better understand how to accomplish what their marketing needs are.
"I've only been me. In any other workplace dominated by men, whether you're a driver or a vice president in a corporation, there are always going to be some men who cause you problems. The more women that enter this sport, the better -- so we don't live life under the magnifying glass."
Yet, despite the abrupt end to her career, Moise had her humorous side to the whole gender and equality issue. Ever since she made her debut on the Busch circuit in 1986, Moise was constantly barraged by the same question: "How does it feel to be a female racer?"
She grew so tired that she came up with a response that usually stopped the quote-hungry scribes -- mostly male, for that matter -- in their tracks.
"I gave up trying to figure that one out, but I've got a stock answer for it. I say, 'As opposed to when I used to be a man?' " Moise said.
The not so funny thing about that, however, is Patty Moise probably would still be racing today if, indeed, she was a man. That's perhaps the saddest statement of all, because this was a woman who proved she could beat any man at his own game.
