Today there are several women competitors in the sport of racing, but few that are making their way to the upper ranks of NASCAR. Hailie Deegan is making waves winning and working her way through the NASCAR K&N Pro Series with Bill McAnally Racing and in the ARCA Menards Series with Venturini Motorsports. And although she faces resistance in the midst of her success, many feel she is the future of the sport and destined to stardom. For her path to the upper ranks, Deegan has chosen teams that are trailblazers with a lot of success in their respective areas. What stands apart though is Cathy Venturini with Venturini Motorsports, who in the 80s made her own waves to pave the way for women looking to break into a male-dominated sport while also facing resistance to success and her presence. Some may not even know her story and the important role she’s played not only within the family-owned team but how she’s opened the door for other women to take part and find success in the sport.

The story for Cathy Venturini begins with her marriage to Bill Venturini Sr in July of 1973. They had two weeks for their honeymoon and took ten days. Upon returning home they wasted no time in buying a hobby stock car and taking it racing that same weekend. They’ve been working together the last 46 years building Venturini Motorsports into a staple of success in the ARCA Menards Series.

“The following year we were racing at Rockford Speedway,” Cathy says about supporting her husband’s hobby of racing. “They did a rule change for some minor changes to our cars and upgrades. We could run for money actually instead of just the trophy. So, we took the leap and we ran Rockford for three years. We found some sponsorship, we ran some USAC races, and some ARCO, so we did a lot of that.”

ARCO is a short track series from the 80s that raced at midwest tracks including Illinois tracks, Illiana, Grundy, Waukegan, Madison, and in Wisconsin as a feeder series for drivers wanting to move up to ARCA Racing.

That led to Venturini’s leap into the ARCA Menards Series and they haven’t looked back since. Venturini raced the ARCO Series for ten years before moving up to ARCA where they are now established as a perennial leader with 36 years of experience since taking that leap.

Venturini Motorsports was created in 1982 with Bill as their driver. He kept finishing second and that’s what sparked a thought process to find that little extra to move them to the next level. Bill and Cathy Venturini were in Daytona looking for sponsorship to keep racing and that’s when they realized they needed something different to get people’s attention. They knew it wasn’t enough to just gain attention, but whatever they did, it had to be good enough to back up their attention-getting idea – and they went big with their idea.

“So, we started with the all-female pit crew and we had tryouts,” explained Cathy Venturini. “We had girls practicing. Then, we had more practice once we put the girls together.

“And about – I’m trying to think what year it was – 1985 or 86. Permatex was sponsoring ARCA at the time. We threw them the proposal to sponsor the girls and at the time they were coming out with a new silicone gasket and it was Ultra Blue. They said, ‘This would be perfect! We’ll call them the Ultra Blue Crew.’ So that’s how we got our nickname, the Ultra Blue Crew. because our sponsorship was from permatex. Venturini was always partial to the blue so that was cool too.”

Cathy was the front tire carrier on the all-female pit crew and took on a leadership role with the girls. The girls on the pit crew included family and friends and the list of the Venturini girls doing pit stops in 1986 when they made their debut is a fond memory.

“Della Velares, Carol Tortorisi – my sister, my sister-in-law Kim, my other sister-in-law Donna, I made some very good friends over the years from that crew,” says Cathy remembering the members of her pit crew. ” My best friend Mary, Mary Thornwell, Mary Lou Caputo, Laura Lee, Holly. There were a lot of girls. We had a great crew.

“We had a great year working together and developing as a team and in 1987, just one year later, we won him (Bill Venturini) his first championship. He had been running ARCA since 1983 and we had been second, second, second. We’re right there and we just needed a little bit more.”

So after running second, second, second, the Cathy Venturini led pit crew of women helped earn Venturini Motorsports their first ARCA title. Their attention-getting idea worked in a big way and they backed it up with a championship.

“We just all worked together. It was really a cool aspect,” continued Cathy.

“In 1987 we were living in Chicago. We didn’t have full-time employees, everybody was volunteers out in the garage at the back of the house.

Bill and Cathy Venturini did all the training of the Ultra Blue Crew on their own.

“We knew what it took to do pit stops and we just trained the girls. A lot of the girls that started with us had never been to races. Had never participated in racing, they really didn’t know what they wanted to do as far as a position. So, we looked at their body structure on what job would suit them better. It’s no different than what they do today. The big guys are the gas man and Jackman and so forth.”

“In ’87 my sister was the rear tire changer and my sister-in-law was dumping fuel – she’s tall. Tall girls did better dumping fuel it gave them more leverage to hold the can and get that angle they needed to load the fuel. Actually, the hippier girls were the ones that were our jack girls because they had more oomph to push it (the jack). And our tinier ones were the tire changers. And that was me, a front tire changer.”

“I see these guns they use now for lugnuts and we didn’t have anything like this. We were at one of the races this year and I picked up the gun and I was like Oh God, I loved changing tires! That was my passion!”

In addition to the tire changers the Ultra Blue Crew had tire carriers but they handled the tires very differently compared to today.

“We had carriers but they didn’t index tires like they do today. My gosh, we’ve been good…(laughter) I wish I had someone to index my tires. All they would do is get it next to me and then I pulled it up to stick it on the hub. So, it was different than what they do today.

“Indexing the tires? I had to do all that! I would take the tire off, throw it on the side. My husband always yelled at me because – especially the short track tires they were so much lighter than the speedways – and I would take them off and I would more or less toss it over my shoulder. I was only 120 lbs and I just had the strength.”

Cathy had the two kids by then and they watched their mom and dad at the race track on weekends throughout their childhood.

“They thought we were crazy,” says Cathy laughing and remembering those years.

When son, Billy Venturini was 12 years-old he spotted for his dad Bill at the race track. At 16 years of age, he was finally old enough to get into the pits and he wanted to change tires. When he asked his dad for the job, he was told the job was already filled as his mom was one of two tire changers for the team. Cathy changed tires over the course of ten years – three years with the girls and another seven years with the guys. It didn’t take long for Billy to ask his mom about giving up her job as a front tire changer.

” You really want to change tires?” Cathy asked her son. “And he said yeah. So I said alright I’ll give you my tire. so I stepped back, but my passion was changing tires.”

That was in 1992 and Billy drove a car for Venturini Motorsports from 1993 to 2007. That’s when they started their driver development program and Billy was the driving force in the new direction for the family team.

“We just financially couldn’t afford it anymore it was getting so expensive,” says Cathy. “Billy was the one that said we can do this for somebody. There are kids that want to drive they have backing but they have no place to go and don’t know where to go and what to do. We can train these kids.

“We’ve had a lot of kids go through our program.”

Some of those drivers are now NASCAR champions, Joey Logano and Christopher Bell along with Justin Allgaier and Kyle Benjamin.

What’s so amazing about the Venturini’s is not only the success of their ARCA team from humble beginnings with trailblazing ideas but the success within their family as well. Billy and Wendy Venturini grew up with racing as a major part of their household.

“Our lot was 60×120 it had our garage and our semi was there,” explains Cathy. “My son grew up and if he wanted to play basketball at our driveway, he had to move a race car in order to do it. (laughter) It was very tight quarters. There were lots of times that Bill and I would be out in the garage working and it was fun getting things ready.”

“Now they’re both in racing and following in our footsteps so that’s cool. We definitely influenced them with that.”

Billy is now the general manager, crew chief, and partner of Venturini Motorsports while daughter Wendy is now calling races on MRN radio on weekends.

In late June it was the anniversary of an accident at Sonoma last year. While Wendy was jogging her routine route she was hit by a driver that resulted in injuries. She went to Sonoma Raceway just one week before the Chicagoland race this year – one year after that accident – and ran the same route she ran last year. Afterward, she felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

“I tapped it, I can do it.” Wendy told her mother Cathy. “I’ve crossed that off my list. I accomplished it and I’m fine.”

“It was scary,” said Cathy. “The little things that give you hope. She’s very lucky, it could have been so much worse especially even with the injuries that she had. It could have turned at any point differently than it did. I told her the heavens were flooded with prayers, God knew he couldn’t let anything happen to you. She did TV for 15 years and now it’s the radio.”

This season is a good one for Venturini Motorsports with driver Michael Self leading the series point standings and their driver development program still going strong. Cathy says…

“Michael Self is such a smart driver. He understands the whole aspect of driving and not just going fast. That takes a lot of self-control as a driver versus going all out.”

Over the years the Venturini’s have supported many drivers including female drivers Leilani Munter, Johanna Long, Toni Breidinger, Natalie Decker, and Hailie Deegan as some of the more recent women in racing. And just like Cathy Venturini, they’re making waves and facing some of the same resistance when it comes to females in a male-dominated sport. But Cathy Venturini says females really upped the competition with the male pit crews when the Ultra Blue Crew came on the scene. None of the guys wanted the girls to do better than they were doing – none of them wanted to be beaten by a girl.

Cathy Venturini’s story proves that women can find success in the sport of racing with lots of hard work and just like all competitors going that extra mile pushes them to be better. Women actually drive their competitors to improve their team and individual performance. So truly, embracing the female presence in racing helps everyone win in a meaningful way!