It’s More Than Lady Luck

John Andretti’s performance has been dismal the last few years, so team owners Kyle and Richard Petty this season looked everywhere for a magic touch.

They decided it should be a woman’s touch, making Margaret Lindhjem the first female race engineer in NASCAR Winston Cup history.

Whether the choice turns out to be magic isn’t certain, but Sunday at the Auto Club 500, Andretti put in his best weekend of the year, finishing eighth. His two best finishes in nine previous races were 14th and 18th.

“Racing hasn’t been a lot of fun for a while, but this was a lot of fun,” Andretti said. “Even though I was eighth, it feels better than an eighth-place finish.”

It was also Andretti’s best effort in seven races at California Speedway; he had never finished higher than 17th. Now, crew chief Gary Putnam’s young team -- still learning to work with each other -- is thinking it may have reached a turning point.

“Absolutely,” said Lindhjem, 26, a Virginia graduate from Richmond, Va. “We’ve been able to run well at some places, but we had the whole package this weekend, we were finally able to put it together in both qualifying and the race.”

By finishing eighth, Andretti matched his total number of top-10 finishes last season. He has had only five top-10 finishes the last three years.

Andretti benefited from the nine-car crash late in the race. He was running eighth but still needed fuel to reach the finish line and was helped by five laps run under caution. He also once ran out of gas on Pit Lane. Clearly, it wasn’t a perfect afternoon for Lindhjem, but the luck of the No. 43 may be changing.

Andretti, nephew of Mario Andretti -- he is the son of Mario’s twin brother, Aldo -- has had problems qualifying this season, but Petty Enterprises may be ready to put the cheer back in the powder blue and yellow Cheerios Dodge. It started 13th for the race. In Andretti’s first nine races, his average starting position was 29th, and average finish was 28th.

“Kyle sat us down before the season and told us our goals,” Lindhjem said. “Win a pole, win a race and finish in the top 20.”

Now Andretti, a 40-year-old driver from Mooreville, N.C., is optimistic about the future and his relationship with the new blood.

“Margaret has the right personality, the right mentality, we’re very lucky to have her,” Andretti said. “She’s very good. You give her a problem, she does it and always seems to get it right. She’s not ego-driven, so it’s not about Margaret, it’s about the team.”

It’s a step up for Andretti, who moved from 34th to 32nd in the standings. From 1998 to 2002 with Petty Enterprises, he has finished 11th, 17th, 23rd, 31st and 28th. The impression is that race engineers have been a factor, at least from Andretti’s viewpoint.

“They can’t stick their finger far enough up their nose to scratch their brain, but they sure act like they’re something special,” Andretti said. “It takes a whole race team. A driver can’t think he’s above all, and it’s no different with a crew chief, engineer or anybody else. Margaret isn’t one of those people.”

It’s Lindhjem’s third year with Petty Enterprises, but her first traveling with the team. She acknowledges feeling a bit like a pioneer. “It makes me so excited to encourage young girls to follow their dreams, that they can make it in a male-dominated world,” she said.

Although the buck stops with Putnam, there’s nothing insignificant about Lindhjem’s role in fine-tuning the car.

“I put more pressure on me than others put on me,” she said. “We’ve had some good runs but haven’t had the results. I’m past the point of trying to prove myself. I stay very focused about my job. I made a point that any job I got where I could get dirty, I would roll around and get as dirty as I can.”