Barber Dodge: Sara Senske threads the concrete needle at Detroit
14 June 2000
- Lynx Racing driver Sara Senske is the fastest-rising female star in open
wheel racing
- She drives for Lynx Racing, the only championship-winning racing team and
driver development program owned by women
- Lynx alumni include CART FedEx drivers Patrick Carpentier, Alex Barron
and Memo Gidley
- Senske will also participate in an autograph session with all the CART
drivers at 4:45 pm Saturday, June 17 and toss up the tip-off ball at the
Detroit Shock WNBA game Sunday evening and have a special autograph session
at half time
Lynx Racing driver Sara Senske, 21, of Kennewick, Washington is a
rising star on open-wheel racing, and this weekend she'll be trying to
'thread the concrete needle' at 100+ mph as she takes to the track for the
Barber Dodge Pro Series support race at the 19th annual Tenneco Automotive
Grand Prix of Detroit on Belle Isle.
Not only is this the first street circuit race of her long (she
won her first kart race at age 8) and varied (she won the Portland round of
last year's Women's Global GT Series from the pole), but she'll participate
in an autograph session with all the CART drivers at 4:45 Saturday
afternoon and cap it all off by tossing up the tip-off ball at the Detroit
Shock WNBA game Sunday evening between 5:50 -- 6:00 pm -- followed by a
special half-time autograph session.
"It's part of a racer's life to develop a mental switch you can
throw that allows you to enjoy all these sorts of outside activities but
then be totally focused as soon as you step into the car," says Senske, who
was chosen for CART's 'Women in Racing' program and tested with the PPI
Atlantic team. "And focus is the name of the game this weekend. It takes
a ferocious amount of focus to get just close enough to the walls to go
fast without going that extra inch that instantly transforms speed into a
mistake. Lynx Atlantic driver David Rutledge and I were at the kart track
a while back and I asked him what racing on a street course was like and he
said that for the first few laps it was '...like threading a concrete
needle' but after that the walls just fade into the background and you
treat it like any other race."
On-track activities for the Barber Dodge Pro Series begin with a
practice session at 8:45 am Friday, June 16, with preliminary qualifying at
4:45 pm that afternoon. Final qualifying takes place at 12:20 pm on
Saturday, June 17, and the 40-minute race takes the green flag at 3:45 pm
Sunday, June 18. ESPN2 will air the race at 6:00 pm (EDT) Thursday, July
6, with a repeat at 5:00 am, Friday, July 7.
While Senske is racing in Detroit, her Lynx Racing teammates David
Rutledge and Mike Conte will be competing in the fifth round of the CART
Toyota Atlantic series at the Air Canada Grand Prix on the Circuit
Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal. This will be the 19th anniversary of an
Atlantic support race at the Montreal round of the world Formula One
Championship. Lynx graduate Patrick Carpentier, who will drive the #32
Player's/Forsythe Reynard-Ford in Detroit won the Montreal Atlantic race in
1996, and Lynx drivers have finished on the podium every year since.
2000 marks the 10th anniversary of Lynx Racing, one of the most
unique organizations in auto racing today. Created and owned by two women,
Peggy Haas and Jackie Doty, Lynx is both a championship-winning racing team
and a uniquely successful driver development program that focuses on a
driver's spiritual and psychological growth in addition to their on-track
skills.
The Lynx mission is to seek out young drivers with the desire and
potential to become champions at the highest levels of the sport and
provide them with the funding, equipment and training to take the last step
toward realizing that potential, a process the team calls 'destiny by
design.' Lynx alumni include CART FedEx drivers Patrick Carpentier, Alex
Barron and Memo Gidley.
Senske Biography
Senske, whose father was the 1989 SCCA Production Class rally
champion, began racing karts at age 7 and won her first race at 8. Early
in her racing career, Senske won three karting Grandnational events, and
finished in the top five seven times. She won the International Karting
Federation Region 6 Gold Cup Championship in 1988 and again in 1989, and
was the regional champion three years in a row, 1990-1993 in the Junior II
4-cycle class.
After signing with Lynx in 1997, Senske ran the final six Star
Formula Mazda races of the season -- and won the pole in her first-ever
oval track race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Senske had her first full
season in 1998, scoring four top-5 and six top-10 finishes during the 13
race season, and finishing 8th in the championship points battle.
In 1999, she ran a total of 20 races in both the Star Mazda
(open-wheel) and Women's Global GT (sports cars) series. She finished 6th
in the Mazda series, and 4th in the WGGT series, completing every lap of
every race in both series. She won the Portland round of the WGGT from the
pole, led every lap and set the fastest lap of the race on her way to a
27-sec. margin of victory over the second-place finisher. In the 20 races,
she scored one win, one pole, three fastest race laps, three podiums as
well as six top-5 and six top-10 finishes.
Senske's hobbies include ice skating, rollerblading, skiing, hiking
and writing poetry. She is also a music fan, including contemporary
Christian, jazz and classical. Her favorite foods are Thai, Italian and
Mexican, and her favorite TV show is "I Love Lucy." She lists among her
talents the ability juggle, and if she couldn't be a racing driver, she'd
like to be a player on the Olympic Women's Ice Hockey team.
Barber Dodge Pro Series
The Barber Dodge Pro Series in which Senske will be competing this
year features identically-prepared open-wheel race cars powered by 250 hp
V-6 Dodge engines. Like cars in the CART FedEx series, the Barber Dodge
cars have carbon-fiber chassis and 'sequential' 6-speed transmissions. The
races are all one-hour 'sprint' events with no scheduled pit stops. Eight
of the races on the 12-event schedule will be held in conjunction with CART
FedEx races during the 2000 season.
Barber Dodge alumni include about 25% of the current CART FedEx field,
including 1999 CART champion Juan Montoya. Senske will spend at least two
years in the Barber Dodge series before moving up to the Lynx Racing CART
Toyota Atlantic team, the final step on the ladder to the CART Fed Ex
series.