♪ [car engines whining] ♪ ♪ ♪ [airplane engine roaring] Excuse me, Marty.

What's your hurry?

I've got to get to the track in 15 minutes.

Oh, good luck.

Thanks very much.

[car engine whining] [whining] [whining] How's it running?

It seems to be running good.

The water temperature is running about 160.

How's that Number 1?

Oh, the RPM seems to be there.

How were her times?

She had one 1:47 and a couple 1:48s.

(Nancy) Great!

Mom, I got a great shot.

Would you like something to drink?

Yeah, please, Diet Pepsi or something.

(voice-over) Right now I have a big dream, and my dream is to go to Indianapolis.

I've got a lot more work to do.

If luck goes my way, then possibly I'll get to Indy.

That's what my goal is.

It's one of the things that every driver dreams of.

...absolutely no stress problems, so we didn't put the skirt on the top.

There's enough strength.

You need to look at the battery-- No, that's fine.

- -to see that's all encased?

Let's open up the hood.

Okay.

(voice-over) Before the race you have to have your car inspected to make sure your car is safe, not only for yourself, but your competitors.

You're gonna run this weekend, Nancy?

Yeah, in the sports racer.

I've got my sponsorship, Mr. Peanut again, so we're gonna go racing now.

This will be the last chance.

We haven't started a race yet, so we're gonna have to now.

[car engine rumbling] Honey, I hope I got the right stuff.

(Ted) I'm sure it'll be okay.

(Nancy, voice-over) Even though I've raced cars that have been owned by other people, Ted would never allow me to get into one that wasn't safe.

The car will not leave the garage unless he has checked everything on the car.

Okay, this side's about 180.

(voice-over) The car, to someone else, the first thing they see is the paint and the pretty colors.

They look inside and see the gearshift and the instruments.

They see it moving; they hear it.

But when you've taken a hundred feet of tubing and formed it into the shape you want, when you've taken chunks of aluminum and machined them to little pieces, each part assumes some character.

Somebody else will look at the whole.

You'll recognize a whole batch of little friends or enemies, depending upon how well they went together.

I still look at the car and say, "Wow!

I built that?"

It amazes me that I put the thing together, not because I didn't think I could, but just because...

I built it.

And that's the neat thing about it.

(Nancy) I have tremendous help from my family, not only from my husband, but from my kids, my in-laws, my folks.

I think a lot of times, I'm hard on myself, and it's really important to have your family around because they can be very, very helpful and supportive of you, and I don't want to go racing if I can't have them there.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Yvette) One season, we had nine flat tires.

You start getting disappointed.

When is she finally gonna get the luck back?

And then after so many blown engines, my dad fixes it up.

My mom doesn't want to disappoint my dad, not to come back and try again.

[car engines whining] (Ted) Like I said, the tires are like they were for autocrossing, real low.

Have you changed this since we were here last?

The wing has changed.

The tire pressure has changed.

The rear bar has changed.

The checkered's out.

The checkered's out?

Okay.

[car engines roaring] (Nancy, voice-over) People have an idea that racing is all fun and games.

It's neither of those.

It's hot, dusty, and uncomfortable.

It's a fireproof suit.

You have your seatbelt buckled down so tight that you can't move.

Then you put your helmet on.

It's a lot of hard work.

[car engines revving] [car engines rumbling] We have qualifying sessions, and you go out and try and go the fastest speed possible under road conditions.

They take the fastest time that you did on your qualifying session, and that determines where you start the actual championship race.

[car engines whining and roaring] Should be any second now.

Okay.

She's not going that fast.

Here she comes; see her?

Yeah.

She's got to speed up a lot more.

(Nancy) I feel a little bit leery about driving at Laguna Seca.

I have tried to race there four times.

This is the fifth time, and out of the four times that I've raced there, I have not made a race yet; something has happened.

I kind of feel it's bad luck at this track.

[car engines roaring] (Yvette) What's wrong, Mom?

I think the engine's.... [engine sputtering] (Ted, voice-over) The cars are a machine.

They assume their own little personalities.

Sometimes they're absolutely against you, and when you've completely given up on them and torn your hair out and said, "There's nothing else I can do with this crazy thing," for some inexplicable reason, they'll take off and run.

There's no way to explain it.

[car engine revving] [revving] Now as to what shut down the engine...boy.

(Nancy) What was happening is, the engine was running really, really well, the harmonics were good, and then they went down in tone.

The engine went?

No, it almost sounds like a hole in the piston.

It sounded like Riverside.

The tone went off-- The engine did not shut down.

I shut it down and put my clutch in because it sounded like Riverside.

I thought that stupid thing died again.

Everything is sound.

The thing that happened was, that exhaust pipe came up.

(male announcer) Driver's hand in the air, and the pace car pulls off.

Nancy James, who was to have started eighth, started at the back of the pack.

Up to 46 cars to get by to take the checker.

An unfortunate break for Nancy.

They're gonna get the green flag, and we have a race.

♪ ♪ At the back of the pack, it looks like Nancy James is gonna move up.

She's pushed up about six positions already, and she is scrambling to get to the front in a hurry.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ And Nancy is just flying through the pack.

She's really working her way through this pack rapidly.

♪ Nancy James has moved all the way up into fourth place in three laps of this race.

Make that third... second.

Nancy James is continuing to fly around this course with a spectacular drive.

♪ ♪ And she is happy!

Nancy James taking the checkered flag, first overall, first in D sports racing.

[camera shutter clicking] ♪ [shutter clicking] ♪ [shutter clicking] ♪ [shutter clicking] [laughing] (Nancy) If luck goes my way, then I'll get to Indy.

It's one of the things every driver dreams of.

[shutter clicking] ♪ Your first flag, Mother!

Our first checkered flag!

[shutter clicking] (announcer) The real story of this race, though, is Nancy James!

♪ If you waited too long, then some careers, you would need more schooling.

And after you got out of college, you might be too old.

But not real young, like junior high or high school.

I think they should think about it when they become teenagers because then you can start preparing yourself scholastically wise because if you don't, then when you get up there in college, it's gonna be tough.

(voice-over) If we hope to go to the planets and stars, we need to have a good understanding about how man and certain earthly life forms operate in a space environment.

Gosh, I'm late.

Hi, Dr. Freeman.

Hi, Steve, how are you doing?

Fine, what're you up to?

A couple of Kjeldahl nitrogen analyses.

Ready for the big day?

Yes, sir, just about.

Got my cultures ready.

Oh, good.

Your cells look healthy.

Yeah.

(Steve, voice-over) Dr. Charles Freeman, a plant physiologist, agreed to sponsor me and to supply any equipment I might need to conduct my research.

Everything's just about ready to go.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Hi, Steve, how are you?

Captain Peterson, sir.

Good to see you.

What's in the box?

My cultures.

Let me help with the briefcase.

Thank you, sir.

Where's the rest of your package?

At the university being checked.

When are you gonna put your package into the rocket?

Sunday evening I'll place the cultures in the package about 6:00.

The container will go on right before 9:00.

Before the four-hour check.

Do you know Petty Officer Thigpen?

No, sir.

He's your escort.

Nice to meet you.

Let's get started.

(Steve) Yes, sir.

♪ The project that I'm doing is the study of the effects of acceleration on the growth and reproduction patterns of green algae.

Around June I was considering alternate tests to the model rocket test.

A friend of mine recommended that I contact White Sands Missile Range and ask to be placed on the sounding rocket as a piggyback.

I sent a letter to White Sands Missile Range.

On September 1, I received a phone call saying that Dr. George Carruthers from the Naval Research Laboratory had agreed to sponsor me on a rocket flight.

♪ This is B Tower where you'll be going.

The door with the yellow markings, that's where we have access to the payload?

Right, your payload's gonna be up there in the orange door.

Everybody will be working in that enclosure.

Might get in each other's way, but they can work.

I'll get permission to have a quick look in there.

I can't see any problem with that at all.

Then let's go look at my lab space.

Okay.

This is N-200, where we'll be building Dr. Carruthers' payload and get it ready for flight.

This is the nose cone where your experiment will be placed.

On top of the beacon.

This is the attitude control system.

Dr. Carruthers' payload will be between the nose cone and the attitude control system.

And in here we have your lab set up.

That's Dr. Carruthers' payload, right?

(Thigpen) Yes.

Dr. Carruthers has his payload in the clean room being pumped down to a vacuum to keep it ready for flight.

On in here now...

Yesterday we discovered that the payload was a little bit overweight, so we're gonna have to run another spin balance test to ensure that everything's balanced properly.

We've got you set up to work.

Got your environmental chamber and a microscope and your light.

(Steve) Okay, great.

This is just what I needed.

If you need anything, let us know.

Okay, thank you.

The nose cone will take it all.

I just wasn't sure we could lift all that.

No problem at all.

(man, voice-over) We're here on a sounding rocket experiment to measure ultraviolet radiation from hot stars to learn more about the processes by which stars are formed and consume their energy.

(Peterson) Approximately a week to two weeks prior to launch, we'll start building up a rocket.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [indistinct chatter] [indistinct chatter] [indistinct chatter] [indistinct chatter] (voice-over) After I left the tower, it suddenly dawned on me what I was doing and how important it was.

[indistinct chatter] [indistinct chatter] The last ten minutes of the countdown, I was really nervous, wondering if I had done anything wrong, if I had forgotten anything, if the lid was sealed correctly, and I found myself pacing inside the blockhouse.

At my mark the time will be T-minus 6-0 seconds.

T-minus 60 seconds and running: [bell ringing] 5-5... 5-0... 4-5... 4-0.

(Steve) Closer to launch, you realize, This is it: the moment that you've been waiting for for about the last two years.

The work and preparation you've done, the planning, the dreaming, the setbacks, everything comes to this.

20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.

[rocket roaring] Lift-off, 6, 7... [aircraft noise] [aircraft noise] [rotor whining] [aircraft noise] (voice-over) To recover a payload, in the nose cone, there was a tracking beacon.

The beacon was tracked down 50 miles north of Launch Complex 35.

[rotor whirring] [rotor whirring] Our position is about 10 miles east of the pickup point.

We should be there in about two minutes.

There it is over there.

(pilot) Yes, we now have the payload in sight.

(Steve) When we landed, I was a little apprehensive because I didn't know what shape my canister was in.

However, I felt good to have it back.

I was eager to get it open and see how my tubes had survived the flight.

Dr. Carruthers and his people from the Naval Research Laboratory have been marvelous in treating me as a colleague.

In a sense, they have given me my first career opportunity.

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♪ ♪ Captioned by: CompuScripts Captioning www.compuscripts.com ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [laughter]