'Fastest woman in racing' dies at 101
Another interesting niche of Detroit history from today's Free Press.
Some snippets...
"When Vicki Wood walked away from racing in 1963, the boys had had enough.
"The Detroit native, whose more than 150mph speed record on the sand at Daytona Beach still stands 60 years later, recalled in an interview a few years ago she was told to put herself in their shoes.
Imagine hearing that you let “that woman run rings around you.” “The boys said that if I keep on racing with them they're going out on strike,” she said in the interview posted on YouTube. That exchange summed up some of the challenges facing a pioneer in the sport of motor racing decades before Danica Patrick climbed into a race car.
"Wood died June 5 at Beaumont Hospital, Troy, of heart-related causes at the age of 101."
.....
"The New York Times noted that Wood “broke the gender barrier in 1957 in Michigan and in 1959 at the Daytona International Speedway, which had just opened that year.”
"NASCAR founder Bill France gave Wood the OK in 1959 to race at Daytona, but when she got there, she was told women were not allowed in the pit area, which set France off, the Times reported.
“Vicki Wood is not a woman. She's a driver, and she's allowed in the pits,” he said when he found out, according to the paper.
"Although she broke gender barriers, Wood was also a top driver. She won 48 titles during her decade-long racing career, and she holds “the all-time fastest record for a stock-bodied automobile on the beach at Daytona with a speed of 150.375 mph,” which she set in 1960, according to her biography. Beach racing is, however, a thing of the past.
...
