All she ever wanted to be was a racer. The fact she was a woman was secondary. She wanted to be judged on her own merits behind the wheel, driven by goals to be not just the best woman racer out there, but to be the best racer, period.

	Janet Guthrie was the first woman race car driver to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 and Daytona 500.

There are many words to describe the motorsports legacy of Janet Guthrie: pioneer, mentor, inspiration.

But 25 years after she became the first woman to qualify for and race in the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500, Guthrie has two more: Not enough.

"I didn't accomplish what had seemed clear to me that I was going to be able to accomplish, and I find it very painful to be around (the track)," she said. "I'll watch it on TV, but only when a woman is driving."

Still, regardless of what form of motorsports they are involved in, female racers today -- such as NASCAR's Shawna Robinson, the Indy Racing League's Sarah Fisher, and the National Hot Rod Association's Angelle Savoie -- all invariably point to Guthrie as one of their key inspirations to become racers and as arguably the most significant person that helped pave the road and open competitive doors for them.

Even now, at the age of 64, Guthrie is still the most visible female racer who ever was. And while her competitive days are long over, her accomplishments and memories of things she experienced and endured to make her mark will live on for many, many years to come -- even if she can't bear to watch.

A racer from the beginning
Janet Guthrie is the most well-known and successful female driver ever to grace Indy Car and NASCAR racing. Unfortunately, due to lack of sponsorship -- and lack of foresight by potential sponsors who feared they'd be ostracized by supporting a woman racer -- Guthrie's racing career was cut short not by ability or opportunity, but dollars, plain and simple.

"It was a passion and obsession for years," said Guthrie. "I loved it more than I could possibly tell you. It was what I really was born to do."

Today, Guthrie lives in Colorado. She recently completed an untitled autobiography that is currently making the rounds of book publishers, detailing what she went through and how motorsports -- particularly NASCAR racing -- have changed so very little in its attitudes about women in the last quarter-century.

"It drives me nuts," admits Guthrie, who adds that she doesn't attend NASCAR races in person any longer because it's too painful. "I didn't quit willingly."

Yet, writing her book, which she began in bits and pieces in 1983 before completing it in the past year, proved to be a catharsis and therapeutic for Guthrie.

"I'm trying to set out the passion and complexity of this sport," she said. "Many people think it's a dumb activity: stand on the gas and turn left. In fact, it's probably one of the most complex sports in existence."

Guthrie's first foray into NASCAR racing was in 1976 after being unable to qualify A.J. Foyt's backup car for that year's Indianapolis 500. A few days later, Guthrie qualified and became the first woman to ever compete in a NASCAR race on a superspeedway at the Charlotte World 600.

"I qualified right behind Bill Elliott and Dale Earnhardt and finished 15th (out of 40 starters)," Guthrie recalled with pride.

	Janet Guthrie was the rookie of the year in her first Daytona 500.

Not bad for a first effort and without having very much prior seat time for practice or time to get acquainted with the car. Basically, Guthrie hopped out of an Indy car and into a stock car, prepared to stomp on the gas and turn left at the end of the straightaway.

While Guthrie has received more recognition and attention for her exploits of racing in the Indianapolis 500 (in 1977 and 1978, when she finished ninth), it was in NASCAR where she felt she would make the most significant mark. And for a while, she was well on her way to doing so.

After her one-race stint at Charlotte the year before, Guthrie came back to NASCAR in 1977 as part of a female-owned (Lynda Ferreri), female-driven (Guthrie) and female-sponsored (Kelly Girl temporary services agency) team.

The reaction she received was expected. The good old boys of NASCAR didn't want a female invading their turf.

"It was just like it had been in Indy car, that 'She'll never make the field,'" Guthrie said. "We are, after all, talking about the 70's. In fact, one of the drivers, Ed Negre, said, 'If she outqualifies me, I'm putting my car on my trailer and going home. I don't believe there's a woman in the world that can run faster than I can.' The poor fellow had to suffer the rest of the week from offers to put his car on his trailer and go home."

That was just the start. In 1977, Guthrie would go on to not only win top rookie honors at Daytona (plus four other races that season), she'd qualify for all 19 Winston Cup races that she entered in the 30-race campaign (including three qualifying efforts in the top-10), and finished four races in the top-10 and six others in the top-12.

She even led five laps of the season-ending Los Angeles Times 500 at Ontario, Calif., only to fall victim to mechanical failure that forced her to settle for a second-rate finish. Right after that race, Kelly Girls decided not to renew its sponsorship for 1978 and Guthrie's budding NASCAR career came to a screeching halt.

"That was how it was at the end of 1977, but you can't continue if your sponsorship is cut by 75 percent," she said. "We were done."

But perhaps her most rewarding outing was at the Talladega 500 in August of that year, when she qualified ninth, starting ahead of such legendary drivers as Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bill Elliott, Ricky Rudd, Bobby Allison, Neil Bonnett and Johnny Rutherford.

"I would say outqualifying Richard Petty at the Talladega 500 in August 1977 is pretty high on my list, because he, unhappily, was one that never gave up being negative (about Guthrie's racing exploits)," she said. "So, to start that race with him in my mirror, because he qualified two spots behind, was an extremely choice sensation. Unfortunately, in the first turn of the first lap, another driver's driveshaft came through my windshield, so I had to go in and have the windshield replaced, and later the engine blew. But nevertheless, that qualifying was a real highpoint."

Things with the macho boys of NASCAR got a bit easier for Guthrie as time went on. "It took about a year before I could feel comfortable walking through the garage area. One of the biggest pleasures I had was seeing the change in the drivers as they realized that what I did on the racetrack was just like what they did on the racetrack. I said it then and I've said it a thousand times, being a woman was completely irrelevant. And, gradually, the guys came to see that that was, in fact, true.

"A funny incident occurred once at Nashville when Richard Childress drove my car in relief. He remarked that nobody moved over for the green car, it was a night race at Nashville, he wore goggles like mine, so nobody could tell the difference."

Guthrie's last major Winston Cup race was the 1980 season-opening Daytona 500, when she drove a Texaco-sponsored Osterland car and finished an impressive 11th. That was the one time in her career that Guthrie felt she should have ended up higher.

"In NASCAR, about the only time I had a really competitive car was at Daytona in 1980 in a one-race deal. I really had high hopes for that. And in the 125-mile qualifying race, I ran fourth, drafting Richard Petty. I finished on the lead lap, three spots ahead of Bill Elliott. I'd qualified 10th, and by comparison, Dale Earnhardt in the other Osterland car qualified third.

"But, the problem was that the crew chief assigned to my car was really insulted about having to work for a woman. He thought he should be working on Earnhardt's car. And, it affected his thinking so much that he perceived me as a physically tiny person, when actually I stand 5-feet, 9-inches tall. He set the seat so close to the steering wheel that my knees came up on either side of it. That's how much his perception of me as a woman affected what he did as a mechanic.

"With that kind of mindset, he succeeded in bollixing the car up so badly that I finished 11th at the Daytona 500, which was definitely not what I had in mind. I reckon that was the biggest tragedy of my Winston Cup career. I don't even remember his name anymore, but he was 23 years old going on five."

Those who have followed
Today, Guthrie doesn't attend many races or watch much NASCAR on television -- that is, unless Robinson is driving and attempting to make her mark in Winston Cup just like Guthrie did 25 years ago. The circumstances Robinson has had to endure have been made a bit easier by what Guthrie went through, but ostracism and prejudice remain, if not in the attitudes of other drivers' attitudes, than in the lack of opportunity and performance afforded Robinson.

	“	It may be speculation on my part, but for the most, all the executives will tell you is that while their budget is committed through the year 2050, they'd be delighted to entertain a proposal from a woman driver at that time.”
		—Guthrie

"Shawna has obviously been catching it in the neck lately; she has not been doing well," Guthrie said. "And that is a problem. I think that she does not deserve at all to have these rocks thrown at her. She's obviously a very capable driver; her ARCA record proves that. What we have in Winston Cup now is a situation where the field from front to back is very, very close to each other. And like Willy T. Ribbs said when he dropped out of Craftsmen Trucks, which is two levels down from Winston Cup, 'two clicks on the rear shock absorbers and you're out of the field.' "

Guthrie gets even more riled when the subject turns to the role Dodge has played in allowing Robinson to continue spinning her wheels.

"I'm not close to Shawna, nor have I spoken with her, but from what I gather, she has been totally excluded from the gazillion dollars worth of data that Dodge has gathered. That makes a difference. In the case of Shawna and her Dodge, she's not getting the benefit of all the aerodynamic work they've done. As far as I can tell, she's not in the ballpark, like when she spun out all by herself at Fontana a couple weeks ago. That looked to me like a terminally loose car, and yet everybody is saying Shawna ran out of ability.

"That's outrageous. People seem to blaming her as a driver, when in point of fact, they should direct their remarks toward Dodge."

A team source confirmed that Robinson's team does not carry any Dodge factory support, but was hopeful that will change in the future.

Guthrie admits that if Robinson fails in her bid to become a regular on the Winston Cup circuit through no fault of her own, it will hinder further attraction of female drivers into the series.

"If Shawna's team can't get her car going faster, that will be a setback," Guthrie said. "And let me emphasize again I do not lay the blame on Shawna. Let's compare her with Sarah Fisher (in the IRL). She had a second- and third-place finish in IRL racing -- and by the way, it was 21 years after I had my best, and any woman's best, finish in Indy car racing, which was a fifth-place finish in 1979.

"Sarah did well the first part of last year, but in the second half of last year, she was in the same position as Shawna is now, she was running around at the back of the pack. She even parked the car once. Now, if Sarah Fisher's career had ended at the end of last year, she would have spent the rest of her life being cited as proof that women just can't hack it as race car drivers, where the actual problem was the team and her interaction with it and the absence of sponsorship.

"Her rebound last month at Pennsylvania in Robbie Buhl's car was a miracle. It was not a miracle she did it, because she's obviously talented. It was a miracle that she got the opportunity. And she defeated Helio Castroneves, last year's Indy 500 winner and who's driving for the best team in the business owned by Roger Penske. And yet, when practice opened this year at Indianapolis, Sarah Fisher had no ride and no sponsor? You explain it to me."

While NASCAR marketing and publicity officials like to trumpet the fact that approximately 40 percent of today's Winston Cup fans are female, you wouldn't know it by the continuing lack of opportunities for female drivers, team owners, crew chiefs, etc. For as much as NASCAR has changed and become more successful in the last 25 years, the fact remains that it's still a 99.9 percent all-male sport.

"It may be speculation on my part," Guthrie said, "but for the most, all the executives will tell you is that while their budget is committed through the year 2050, they'd be delighted to entertain a proposal from a woman driver at that time." Guthrie said.

As she looks back on a career rich in memories but short on accomplishments due to the prejudice and obstacles she was faced with, Guthrie remains optimistic and confident that the road she blazed for women will one day bear fruit of the sweetest type: a major victory by someone other than a good old boy.

"With the right car, yes, it will happen," Guthrie said. "I've said for 25 years that what we need is a woman with all the stuff it takes (to win), and her own fortune as well.

"There was one guy who once said, 'Well, you know, if we ever had a woman who could qualify and run in the top-10, it would be the biggest thing in history, and sponsors would just come running.'"

"Well, I hate to say it, but I did that."

Jerry Bonkowski covers NASCAR for ESPN.com.