Patty Moise

Born in Jacksonville, Florida on the 29th of December 1960 Patricia Moise-Sawyer was brought up in a racing family. Her father, Milton Moise, was a road race car driver in the International Motor Sports Association Series (IMSA) but Patti wasn’t really interested in the sport until she obtained her licence at the age of sixteen and then it all changed. She went out of control!

"I guess I didn't really ever think about racing until I got a street car, a '75 Camaro," Moise began. "Dad helped me fix it up. It had headers, mag wheels and big, fat tires. I didn't jack it up, though. So there was some class involved. It had a custom pin striping job on it. I went berserk, crazy, racing and chasing, just stupid high-school stuff. I was really lucky not to get killed. Played chicken ... every bad thing you don't want your kid to do in a car that was me. I really got in a lot of trouble, got a lot of tickets, had a few wrecks."

To channel her driving into something more positive her father persuaded her to take up racing so Patty made her debut in the IMSA Series in 1981 after graduating from university. She also drove in the Kelly American Challenge Series, running in some twelve races a year from Florida to California. Eventually, she entered the Busch Series, making her debut at Road Atlanta, driving the #47 Citgo/Red Roof Inns Buick Regal for Randy Hope. She qualified in 3rd place and finished, after engine problems in the first lap, at 30th. She remembers it well, being the only female to enter the race.

"The very first Busch race I ran was actually on a road course, at Road Atlanta," Moise said. "I can remember when I showed up at that racetrack, I was the only female driver entered. You would've thought I was an alien that had showed up and landed. Now, a woman comes in the sport, she will not be made to feel quite like that, so I'm guessing that might be a change."

In 1987 she had her own team, the #37 Red Roof Inns Buick, making twelve starts with two Top 10’s and six DNF’s, finishing at 31st in the point standings. This season she made her NASCAR Nationwide Series Cup debut at Watkins Glen where she finished 33rd after a crash, she drove in the #89 Butter=flavoured Crisco Chevrolet owned by Marc Reno and Ernie Irvan. 1988 she ran in two more Cup races for Randy Hope, the Pepsi 400 and at Watkins Glen, giving her best finish at 26th. She changed cars in 1989 to the #45 Buick with sponsorship from Amway/Freedom Fuels Additive, posting two 16th positions and 35th in the point standings.

She sold her team in 1990 and made twenty four starts, the most in her career, finishing a career best of 22nd in points. Patty also married her husband, Elton Sawyer, this year and joined him as a team-mate with Dilliard Racing in 1991 when she finished at 15th at Dover International Speedway. 1994 saw her racing for Doug Taylor who signed her to drive for the next season where she had a 7th place run at Talladega Superspeedway, finishing the season at 37th in the point standings. She was released at the end of the season and her husband started a team for her. She raced in eighteen races in her #14 and finished at 37th. Her team was sold in 1998 to Michael Waltrip Racing and she was signed to race the #14 but although she had a top-ten at Bristol Motorspeedway she was finding it difficult to make races and finished at 37th in the point standings.

She made her last Busch Series start at Atlanta Motor Speedway in November 1998. She decided to go back to her other horse-power love, the four legged kind, "eventing" two of them by performing dressage, cross country and show jumping in competition.

"My mom was watching the Olympics one time, and they came up with the stat that [horse eventing] is six times more dangerous than auto racing," Moise said. "She was just so thrilled. It fulfils that side of my personality. It's a real teamwork with the horse. It takes a very talented horse and a very athletic horse to do that, and a very brave horse."It also takes a really good communication and partnership between you and the horse. There's a real trust factor there, because the horse doesn't see any of the jumps ahead of time. ... You jump in and out of water. He really doesn't know if it's over his head or not, other than you've never, ever asked him to jump into anything that wasn't safe for him."

One of the First Ladies of NASCAR, Patty has several "firsts" under her belt. At Road Atlanta, in her first NASCAR Busch Series attempt in 1986, she became the first woman to lead a Busch Series race. This came shortly after she won a qualifying race, another female first in NASCAR. In 1988 she qualified on pole for a Busch race, the first woman to do so. Two years later she broke the lap record there, with a brilliant 217.488 mph run. She also broke the qualifying record at Atlanta in 1995. She took part in 133 Busch Series races during her twelve years of NASCAR competition, 24 of which were in 1990.

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