I never realized until I read a 2005 story in the Newport News Daily Press that the late NASCAR promoter, Joe Carver (he of Langley Field, Nashville Fairgrounds & Darrell Waltrip fame) was responsible for pushing and promoting the best female stock car driver I ever saw.
Her name is Diane Teel . She was the first woman to win a NASCAR sanctioned race and the first woman to qualify for a race in the Busch Series. Behind Diane, I rank Shawna Robinson and Patty Moise to complete my trio of top lady stock car racers.
Long retired from racing, the York County, Virginia school bus driver today has a young granddaughter, Macy Causey , racing dirt late models at Billy Sawyer's Virginia Motor Speedway.
Here's Diane's story from the Newport News paper:
A Ride Into Racing History
June 22, 2005 By DAVID TEEL
Seaford, Virginia native and NASCAR pioneer Diane Teel "could flatfoot it with anyone."
The promoter considered her nothing more than a gimmick. Rivals feared her a dangerous intrusion.
And truth be told, Diane Teel wasn't sure all those men were wrong about her.
This was, after all, 1976. Women didn't serve as secretary of state or wear the Silver Star, and they sure didn't make a habit of swapping paint with the good ol' boys of stock car racing.
Oh, there were some novelty acts, and more than a few of those "powder-puff" events, ladies-only affairs that drew more snickers than cheers. But a woman determined to compete week in and week out?
"Oh my God," Teel thought as she fired the engine at Langley Speedway that first night. "What have I gotten myself into?"
A ride into history, that's what.
Indeed, as open-wheel racing celebrates and hypes Danica Patrick, Diane Teel lives quietly in her ancestral home along Seaford's Back Creek, surrounded by memorabilia and content with her place as a NASCAR pioneer.
"I have some records," she says, "that no one can take away."
And to think, it all began with a school-bus rodeo.
PUBLICITY STUNT
Diane was the son Harry and Hilda White never had. She disdained dolls, embraced the outdoors and followed her dad's every step -- onto his commercial fishing boat and into the bleachers at Langley Speedway.
When Donnie Teel came a-courtin' from Williamsburg, the two teens enjoyed races more than movies. Langley was their usual stop, with a few trips to Richmond. And the routine didn't change after they married in 1965.
Donnie worked for Apple Auto Parts in York County and began crewing at Langley for driver Dale Lemonds, a co-worker. Diane was the team's errand girl, trekking across Virginia and North Carolina for spare parts. When the guys washed the race car, Diane, a York County school-bus driver, air-dried it by turning laps around a local peach orchard.
Clearly, she was comfortable behind the wheel, and when she won a county school-bus rodeo (parking maneuvers, obstacle course), Teel strutted around the race team "proud as a peacock."
Little did she know.
Joe Carver was Langley Speedway's promoter, and he wasn't above a little showmanship. Why not, he thought during the 1976 season, have Teel race against the men in a non-descript Street Division race?
"We were always looking for something a little different," Carver says. "We started it off as kind of a fun (publicity) thing, but once she got in the car we learned pretty quickly she was for real. She was a good racer and knew more about how to make a car handle better than some of the men did."
Not that first night.
"With (about) four laps to go, I spun out coming down the back straightaway," Teel recalls, "and they had to call the race in order to clean up the track."
Neither Carver nor Teel was deterred, and they hatched plans for Teel to compete full-time the following year in the Limited Sportsman division.
And what did Donnie tell the fellas who ragged him about crew-chiefing for a woman?
"I can go home and go to bed with my driver. Can you?"
ROOKIE MISTAKES
They met six months before his death, but in that brief time, Raymond "Tiny" Slayton became the Teels' racing muse. He was a renowned car builder based in Baltimore, and he took a shine to the aspiring driver, gender be damned, and her hubby/crew chief.
Late in 1976, Slayton gave Teel a car for her debut season. It was a '66 Chevy, and the title retains front-page prominence in one of Teel's scrapbooks.
Slayton died of a heart attack on Dec. 22, 1976, and in his honor, Teel copied the paint scheme (red-and-white) and number (19) of cars Slayton had run at various tracks.
"My one regret," she says, "is that Tiny never saw me race."
At least in person. Teel insisted then and maintains now that Slayton spoke to her from the grave, offering encouragement, suggesting strategy and forecasting victory.
"I know it sounds silly," she says, "but it's the truth."
Believe her or not, but know this for certain: Teel, 29 at the time, debuted her Limited Sportsman car April 2, 1977, and finished eighth among 20 drivers.
Her best performances that season were a second and two thirds. But far too often, Teel lost control. Don't think her male rivals didn't notice.
"I screwed up bad," she says. "My crew went through hell with me. Three complete bodies we went through that first year."
Her most notorious wreck was with Howard Crews, an imposing, bearded gent with a fiery temper. Carver couldn't promote their clash -- the Fair Lady against the Mountain Man -- enough.
Later that season, Teel says, she and Crews shared the front row of the starting grid. They raced clean, without incident.
"It was a true shot in the arm for us," Carver says of Teel's presence. "But before long, some of the novelty wore off and she was just another competitor."
Any doubts about Teel's intent came the night she collided with Bubba Nissen and landed in Hampton General Hospital, where doctors believed she had a broken back. She'll never race again, Donnie told Diane's sister Betty.
When X-rays proved negative, Teel left the hospital. Among her first questions to Donnie: Can we get a backup car ready for next week?
THE LADY IS A CHAMP
Henry Klich bought the pizza and the beer at Anna's. It was the least the Langley Speedway owner, a man of course, could do on a woman's big night.
This was June 10, 1978, and Teel had just won the 30-lap Limited Sportsman race at Langley. She was the first woman to capture a Langley feature, and most record-keepers thought her the first woman to win any NASCAR-sanctioned event.
"The men drivers work just as hard as I do," Teel said that night, "and their crews work just hard as mine."
Teel returned to Victory Lane once more that season. Perhaps most impressive, she finished among the top 10 in all 19 of her races, among the top five in all but three.
With a fourth-place finish on Sept. 9, Teel authored another first: She clinched the Limited Sportsman points championship.
A woman winning a NASCAR track title? Someone call Gloria Steinem and Richard Petty.
"I just wanted to be a racer," Teel says. "I didn't want to be a feminist or anything like that. Just leave me alone and let me drive like everyone else."
Fine, but could Teel drive faster cars against faster competition? Was she anything more than a local curiosity dominating a mid-major division at some backwater track?
You decide.
During the next four years, Teel became the first woman to win a NASCAR-sanctioned Late Model Sportsman race, the first to qualify for a Busch Series event and the first to record a top-10 finish in Busch.
That was more than enough to convince Orvil Reedy, who spent several afternoons in Teel's rearview mirror at Martinsville Speedway.
"All the ladies I had seen drive were a little skittish going into the corners and coming out the other side," Reedy says. "They weren't real competitive. I thought she was going to be in the way, which was absolutely wrong.
"She had the ability to drive the car down into the corner, and once she got it settled she could get back on the throttle. She could flatfoot it with anyone. If she got in the way, she got banged. If you got in the way, she banged you."
Case in point: Teel's historic Late Model Sportsman victory, July 28, 1979, at Langley.
A rookie in the division, Teel overcame an early spin with Larry Lawrence and passed Eddie Card for second place with 16 of 100 laps remaining. Two laps later, Teel inherited the lead when Billy Smith wrecked. She later avoided Buck Godsey's spinning car at lap 90 and remained in front until the checkered flag.
"Ninety-nine percent of (rivals) treated me just like a driver, especially in (the Busch Series)," Teel says. "I couldn't have asked to be treated any better, especially by Harry Gant, Dale Jarrett and Darrell Waltrip."
Teel never won an official Busch race, but her eighth-place effort in a 250-lapper at Langley in 1982 stood for 13 years as the best Busch finish by a woman. She added a 10th-place finish at Martinsville in 1983, where she beat the likes of Jarrett, Reedy and Phil Parsons and enjoyed her biggest Busch payday -- $1,000.
According to racingreference.com, Teel qualified for 11 Busch races from 1982-86 and earned $5,040.
"It was a thrill," Donnie Teel says of those years. "It cost a lot of money. We spent what we had and got out."
FAMILY TIES
She quit to be a better mom.
Regrets? A few pangs, sure. She was only 38, and a full-time Busch Series ride seemed within reach. But the circuit was going national back then, and Diane didn't want to leave her two children, Donnie Lee and DeAnna.
The years, not to mention four grandchildren, erased any misgivings. Just stroll around the Teels' home, the same one in which Diane was raised. The motif is equal parts family and racing, even if a few mementos washed away in 2003 when Hurricane Isabel deposited 18 inches of water inside the house.
There's a large photograph of Donnie Lee and DeAnna racing go-karts in Rockingham, N.C. There on the mantel are helmets Diane and Donnie Lee wore.
Donnie Lee and his two children live here; DeAnna, her husband and their two children live nearby and soon will build next door.
Diane is 57 now and still drives for a living.
"Thirty-two years," she says of her time in a school bus, "a lot longer than I raced."
Much as she covets her place in NASCAR's annals, Teel is surprised more women haven't followed.
The Nextel Cup, stock car's premier circuit, has yet to see a viable female, while open-wheel racing is abuzz at Patrick's fourth-place finish at the Indianapolis 500 last month and her upcoming Indy Racing League appearance Saturday at Richmond International Raceway.
Even at the regional level, women are rare. Since Teel's championship in 1978, only one woman has won a points title at Langley: Tonya Miller in Mini-Stock in 1992 and '93.
"I wish someone really would break through and do something," Teel says. "I always thought it would be my daughter because she was hell on wheels. It just didn't turn out that way."
No, Donnie Lee is the racing rat these days, crewing for Legends teams at Lowe's Motor Speedway near Charlotte, N.C. Moreover, he brought closure to his mom's NASCAR career.
Diane, you see, always yearned to race at her sport's Mecca: Daytona International Speedway. She never made it, but Donnie Lee did, in a go-kart,
"I've seen my dream come true with my child," Diane says, "and I'm fine with that."
Indeed, racing has been good to Diane Teel. Why, she and Donnie even found friendship with some of the drivers who years ago weren't sure a woman belonged in a race car.
Among them is Orvil Reedy from out Daleville way. He still frequents the races at Motor Mile Speedway in Radford, where he's seen a couple of women behind the wheel.
"They do OK," he says, "but they still don't have what Diane had." *
THE TEEL FILE
DIANE TEEL
Age: 57. (2005)
Hometown: Native and resident of Seaford, Virginia
Occupation: York County school-bus driver for 32 years.
Vocation: Stock-car racer from 1977-86.
Family: Husband, Donnie. Children DeAnna and Donnie Lee. Four grandchildren.
Photos from Macy Causey Racing web site
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"Any Day is Good for Stock Car Racing"
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:00:58PM
