| By Erin Crocker, Special to NASCAR.COM
May 24, 2006
11:21 AM EDT (15:21 GMT)
As I drove up to the Charlotte Knights' minor league baseball stadium on Tuesday for an appearance my public relations person, Toni McCray, yelled out the car window. "I've got a driver in here," she said. The guard was like, "Is she really a driver?" I don't think she believed her at first. I get that all the time. It doesn't bother me. In all of NASCAR there are like 148 male drivers and two women drivers, so yeah, I probably would assume the same thing. Hopefully, one day that will change. We made some progress with my Truck team last weekend at Lowe's Motor Speedway, qualifying second and finishing 18th. We had a better car than where we finished, but we have to take one step at a time. Everybody was pretty happy. Qualifying that high was a real big boost. Things have been going better the past few weeks since we hired Patrick Donahue as the team director and Scott McDougall as the engineer. Going to Charlotte, they had a really good truck prepared. It was comfortable from the first laps I made. I liked the new surface at Lowe's. Kasey Kahne shook down the truck for us in a practice test and he told me it drove really good, so I knew we would be good. Since I didn't have any experience on the old surface I didn't go out there with any expectations like a lot of drivers. I felt comfortable the whole time. My mom and I took a helicopter ride to the track. In the Charlotte races, the team flies the drivers in and out to help avoid traffic. Mom never had been on a helicopter. It's neat she's getting to experience these things because of what I do. And she loved it. She's come a long ways from the days when she was nervous getting on a plane by herself. I'm really happy for her. My father passed away eight years ago, and she really depended on him. But over the last five or six years she's gotten independent and she's not afraid to get her own rental car and come to my races. CNBC followed me around most of Friday for a story. I had NASCAR 24/7 follow me last year, so I'm used to it. They want you to do your own thing so they can get some candid shots. It's awesome to have coverage like that. It's good for General Mills, Betty Crocker and my team to have national TV coverage. Not just a sports show, but a news show. Obviously, some of the attention I get is because I'm a woman driver. But it's more exciting and more fun to me to feel that I've earned it than to feel that it's just because I'm a woman. One thing that helps at Evernham Motorsports is they have media training that all of our drivers are required to attend. It's something we began before the season. We had a follow-up last week and we'll do more as the season goes on. Kathleen Hessert, a certified professional speaker trainer, comes in. She helps a lot of drivers, college football coaches and athletes in pro classes. This past week we reviewed some of our interviews. No one wants to sit there and watch their own interviews, but it's a good opportunity for me, Kasey Kahne, Jeremy Mayfield and Scott Riggs to laugh at ourselves. We can do that and still learn what we're doing wrong and what we need to work on. Not having run as well as I would have liked to this year, a lot of times I looked really serious. That's not really my personality. I'm usually more bubbly and laughing and show more excitement about things. That's one thing I need to work on. It was hard to be excited early in the year. You're not running well and you want to explain things and it's hard to be smiling about it. That's what I tried to tell Kathleen. The fans don't necessarily know how frustrating it can be. Kathleen says it's all about how you come across, that you can still tell the truth and be serious, but you can also show some happiness. We all got to watch each other's critiques. As mine came up they would say, "Oh, you can fast-forward it.'' It's neat that we have this training. It's important to make sure you come across well and give your sponsors and team the credit they deserve. Most people don't realize how media-intense our jobs are. Most fans only get to see us getting in or out of our truck or car. It's usually at a time when you're not showing your true personality because you're focused on something. Sometimes you think you're being yourself, but you're really not. We don't get a cooling-off period like athletes in other sports. But that's one of the reasons fans like this sport, because they feel like they're so close to the people involved. | 
