By Bob Markus

When Danica Patrick had completed her historic ride Sunday, becoming the first woman driver ever to win an Indy Car race, she got on her radio and "all I could think of to say, was 'thank you.'" I hope that one of the people she wanted to thank was Janet Guthrie. Guthrie is to women in auto racing what Jackie Robinson was to black baseball players.

Before Guthrie no woman had ever driven in the Indianapolis 500. Not long before Guthrie, no woman had even been allowed in Gasoline Alley. Auto racing was a man's game. Period. Guthrie changed all that with one stunning run--four quick laps--around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway one Sunday afternoon in May of 1977. Her four-lap average speed of 188.403 m.p.h. was easily the fastest of the final week-end of qualifying and 17th fastest over-all in the 33-car field.

Those were different times at Indianapolis. The crowds were bigger and the media turnout smaller. O, sure, there was always a big media turnout for pole day, but after that the bigshot columnists would go home, leaving the final three qualifying days to the native Hoosiers and a small group of big city writers from the midwest. I was one of them.

The Indianapolis 500 had always been my favorite assignment and I was probably responsible for the fact that the Chicago Tribune covered the race at all. The paper's editorial viewpoint was that the race was a study in carnage and served no useful purpose. It should be discontinued. For a time it sent its automotive editor to cover the race, but when I joined the sports staff in 1960 it had been several years since The Tribune had covered one of the country's major traditions, an event held less than 200 miles from Tribune Tower.

Although I had never seen the race in person--it was not televised in those days--I listened to it on the radio every Memorial day and remember vividly leaving the office at the Moline Dispatch, where I was working at the time (1955), and hearing on the radio that Bill Vukovich, going for his third straight victory at Indy, had been killed in a crash. I ran back to the office and we were able to get a short story in the paper, an afternoon daily, that was just going to press.

I started lobbying the Tribune to send someone--preferably me--to Indianapolis, pointing out that, although we did not staff it, we always made the wire service account of the race the eight column banner the day after the race. Of course, nobody listened to me then; I was just a kid on the copy desk, but by 1968 I was a columnist and they finally relented, allowing me to cover pole day and the race. The Tribune has had at least one writer at the 500 every year since.

The 1977 race was my 10th and it was historic for two reasons: Guthrie's qualifying run and A.J. Foyt's fourth Indy 500 victory. Of c ourse, the whole world was watching Foyt making history, but there weren't that many of us watching Guthrie. In fact, after Guthrie had done a few trackside radio interviews and answered some questions from the small print media contingent, I spent an hour interviewing her--just Janet, her publicist and me--in the team's motor home.

Guthrie by then was 39 years old, a rather plain looking woman, not unattractive, but not the stunning beauty that is Danica Patrick. She was still dressed in her driving suit as she began to talk about her life in general and her life in racing in particular. She could not keep a slight edge of bitterness from her tone as she recalled all the barriers she had had to knock down "all those guys howling 'She hasn't paid her dues.' Hah, hah."

She recalled the days when she lived "in really depressing poverty," self-imposed to be sure because she is a college graduate from "a very bookish family, " who sent her to Miss Harris School for Girls in Florida "where the objective was to avoid sports at all costs. I mean I grew up in the 1950s, when ladies weren't supposed to glow. I clearly had a sheltered upbringing."

She gave that all up, gave up a job as an aerospace physicist to go auto racing full time, leaving the genteel life behind "for a $90 a month apartment behind a storefront, where you can't have your friends in for dinner." She scuffled for nearly 10 years "beating my brains out trying to get a professional ride in road racing. I can't begin to tell you the endless letters I sent out."

Finally, out of the blue came a call from Rolla Vollstedt, a longtime Indy 500 car owner who routinely got his drivers into the big show despite a limited budget. One of his drivers was Dick Simon who later would become a moderately successful car owner himself. Simon, whatever his private thoughts, treated Guthrie like any other teammate, perhaps went a little beyond that in easing her way into the heretofore exclusive male fraternity.

It wasn't all that easy. Guthrie had become a symbol and her appearance at Indianapolis was greeted with skepticism by many and with outright hostlity be a few. "If I'd failed," she said, "most people would have said, 'hah, hah, she can't race because she's a woman.' Had I blown this chance, in the minds of a lot of people, it might have been a good thing."

But she didn't blow it and the fact that she finished 26th on race day is irrelevant. What Janet Guthrie did on that Sunday in May was to open the doors for others to follow, for Lyn St. James, who qualified for six Indy 500s in the '90s, for Sarah Fisher, who has finished as high as second in an Indy Car race and is planning to campaign her own race car at Indy this year, and for Danica Patrick, who finally, in her 50th Indy Car race, drove to victory lane and glory for the first time.

Michael Andretti, her car owner, says it was the first of many and I agree. In fact, after watching her make two stunning moves in her first Indianapolis 500 while finishing fourth, I've wondered what took her so long.

When Janet Guthrie first broke the gender barrier at Indianapolis, I wrote: ""This was not Billie Jean King beating a 55-year-old Bobby Riggs. This was as if Billie Jean King had reached the men's quarter finals at Wimbledon." Danica Patrick's victory in Japan has put her into the finals. Can she do it, win the Indianapolis 500? Sure she can. If you believe in omens, consider this: The year she finished fourth in Indianapolis, she had also finished fourth in Japan. This year she finished first in Japan, so. . . .