Welcome to the Marshall Pruitt podcast and our Getting to Know series this time around,

get to talk with a friend of mine, someone that I was fortunate to work for in two occasions

in the Indy Racing League, 1999 and again in 2001, Leanne Patterson, she and her former

husband Larry Nash running programs there that, yes, silly enough to have me involved on the engineering

side but truly came to appreciate Leanne being one of very few women in IndyCar racing at the

time her skills varied from marketing promotions sales sponsorship you name it you're going to

learn a lot more about her while we are spending a lot of time

recognizing the women involved in motor racing. I don't know if I've heard her name spoken enough.

So that's why I said, hey, let's sit down and capture a podcast. So we did a little over an hour

find out that she's done so many things talking about running a racing series to her debut,

her very first Indy 500 in 1996.

Then the next major affiliation was with Sam Schmidt, young upstart driver that she knew

from that series she used to run.

Sam in the formative days of his IndyCar career, get into the formation of Sam Schmidt

Motorsports in 2001 after Sam's accident.

That team now, known as Air McLaren SP, celebrating a fairly significant anniversary here in 2021.

Then we start to wind down just a little bit.

Talking about the women who have inspired Leanne, Anita Milliken being one of them.

Leanne told me about her I was just

completely ignorant a few years ago. Just really impressive to hear about how one person can inspire

another. So much of that is happening today with folks who haven't been heavily represented

in a variety of motor racing formats. And yet here we learn once more,

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