Women Racers from Auto Aficionado

DENISE McCLUGGAGE discovers liberté, égalité, fraternité is only offered to boys TOM BURNSIDE had discovered Denise on film

Briggs Cunningham asked me to drive one of his Corvettes at Le Mans. I'd raced a number of Briggs' cars: a Fiat-Abarth double bubble in my first Sebring (1957); a Porsche 550 RS; OSCAs of several dimensions; Formula Juniors by BMC and Stanguellini. I'd driven them at places like Watkins Glen, Daytona, Cumberland, Lime Rock, Elkhart Lake, Nassau and Montgomery, an upstate New York airport course. Airport courses were the norm then. Indeed, I'd driven nearly every thing Briggs had in his racing assemblage. Even his D-type. Though that memorable Jaguar had slipped from my mind because I had not actually raced it, just driven it. Years later the now deceased Gordon Martin, a writer about cars for the San Francisco Chronicle reminded me. He said I had given him one of the most memorable rides of his life in that D-type at Thompson. I didn't ask what made it memorable preferring to assume I had dazzled him with my skill and insouciance. I was excited at the prospect of driving a Corvette in the 24 Heures du Mans and had no doubt I could do it. Apparently Briggs thought so too or he wouldn't have put my name on the entry list. Years later someone gave me a copy of that entry that he had found at a swap meet, but I can't find it now. The entry was for 1960. The team was finally composed of Briggs, John Fitch, Dickie Thompson, Bill Kimberly, Fred Windridge and Bob Grossman. Zora Arkus-Duntov was down as a reserve driver. Zora never drove that year but then neither did I. Some 40 years later in jest I accused Bob Grossman of stealing "my" ride. We'd bumped into each at the New York Auto Show and spent a fine few hours recalling our racing days. Bob and I had shared Bill Harrah's Ferrari GTB in a race at Elkhart Lake and he had bought my Ferrari Berlinetta after my forced awareness that an owner-driven race car was a fool's carriage. Bob was so profusely apologetic about taking my Le Mans seat that I hastily reassured him I was only kidding. "Maybe it was Bill Kimberly who did it," I said, kidding about that, too. I knew what had happened. I did not race a Corvette at Le Mans for Briggs just as I had not raced an OSCA for Luigi Chinetti (though he kept nominating me for his North American Racing Team – NART). Nor did I drive at Le Mans for the Porsche factory team, though invited by Huschke von Hanstein, the team manager, to do so. The reason in each case was the same, summed up in a report from Luigi Chinetti after he had championed my cause with Monsieur Accat, the dour head of the Automobile Club de l'Ouest. That club had organized racing at Le Mans since its inaugural there in 1906. Luigi had particular clout at Le Mans. At that time he was the only three-time winner of the race, once having driven all but some 15 minutes of the 24 hours himself. That in 1949. Luigi's influence with the Le Mans organizers went for naught. I remember that moment. It was outdoors, I think near scrutineering. A general hubbub of people moving about. I watched Luigi some 30 feet away locked in gesture-filled conversation with a squat, imperious man I knew to be the gran fromage. Luigi walked back to where I was rooted and shrugged his signature shrug. "Monsieur Accat said, ‘This is an invitational race and we do not choose to invite women.' " Another shrug, this with his mouth, too. I matched his shrug. Of course I was disappointed. I was disappointed every time I was denied a drive or entry or access because women were not chosen to be invited. But I had a secret superstition that mitigated the blow. Maybe, my thinking went, my exclusion was a life-saver in disguise. What if I crashed full bore into a tree or skidded off a cliff? Heel-hand to forehead: "Cheeze, I didn't have to be here!" Hey, it made it easier to accept rejection. My non-drives at Le Mans had started earlier. I think the first one was with Porsche. Porsche's entries then were not the race-dominating bolides of later years, but 1500 cc cars that through efficiency, reliability and nimbleness often proved to be lion tamers. Baron Huschke von Hanstein was a colorful displaced east German whose victory in the last prewar Mille Miglia was freshest on his resume. He, like Luigi Chinetti, believed in the abilities of women drivers and had championed a number in races and rallies before the war and after. He had lent me a factory Porsche Carrera for a three-hour race the day after Sebring in March. The invitation to race at Le Mans followed from that. Denise shares a laugh with pal Phil Hill over the Cunningham team Abarth 750 GT. At Venezuela again Denise shared another Porsche 550 with Ruth Levy to finish 13th in the main event where the Maserati team destroyed itself.