An Iowa-born racecar driver will be inducted into the International MotorSports Hall of Fame next year. Janet Guthrie was born in Iowa City in 1938 and went on to become the first woman to qualify and compete in BOTH the Indy-500 and a NASCAR SuperSpeedway stock car race. Guthrie will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in April, along with Dale Earnhart and other racing greats. Guthrie says it’s funny, as Dale Earnhart’s “at the head of the class,” and in her very first stock-car race, the second time she’d ever raced on an oval track, she qualified right behind Dale Earnhart at the Charlotte World 600 of 1977. Guthrie says that was the first race promoted by “Humpy” Wheeler. He’ll also be inducted into the hall of fame this time around, along with Jack Roush and Harry Gant. While she was born in Iowa City, Guthrie’s family moved to Miami when she was three. She often came back to Iowa while growing up, to spend time on her paternal grandparents’ farm near the southern Iowa town of Pulaski. She says it was a classic farm. They raised wheat, corn, cattle, pigs and had a substantial dairy operation, “the kind of family farm that I guess is vanishing now.” Guthrie says the farm was successful at a time when many other businesses were failing, not just in Iowa, but nationwide. All four kids were sent to college during the height of the Depression, thanks to the farm. Her dad went to Cornell College in Mount Vernon, though he took a cow with him to college and sold its milk. She writes about her farm visits in her biography, “Janet Guthrie: a Life at Full Throttle.”
