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To say Leslie Goodyear stands out in a crowd seems as much of an understatement as saying that her husband, Indy Racing League veteran Scott Goodyear, knows how to drive. Granted, many drivers' wives find it difficult to go unnoticed when they live in this racing capital of the Midwest, but Goodyear seems to have drawn her own fan club of sorts with her good looks, intelligent manner and easy personality.

Yet Goodyear has been slow to acknowledge her celebrity status. She regularly turns down radio and television interviews and in most cases prefers anonymity to magazine covers. Only recently has she conceded that she does share part of the limelight with her famous husband — and only after seeing firsthand proof of her popularity among race fans.

During a practice session before last year's VisionAire 500 IRL race in Charlotte, NC, Goodyear walked through pit row engaged in a conversation with Scott, who was dressed in street clothes. As they passed a group of racing enthusiasts, she overheard one whisper to his friends, "Look, there's Leslie Goodyear." Not one recognized Scott, who remained anonymous without his racing gear.

"Who knew that I would be the one they'd recognize — it's not in my nature to be a celebrity," says Goodyear. "I've always just felt like the girl next door who's along for the ride, so it has been somewhat surprising to realize that people do know who I am. I just don't feel any different than I have all along."

Modest Roots

To some degree, that's what makes Goodyear so intriguing: She remains refreshingly unaffected by her husband's track success. Since he began racing in 1980, Scott has built up a name for himself as an accomplished Indy-car (and formerly CART) driver. Among his claims to fame, he has netted victories at the Michigan 500 and recently the MCI WorldCom 200, in Phoenix. Twice he came within seconds of winning the Indianapolis 500; his 1992 second-place finish to victor Al Unser Jr. made the record books as the closest finish in Indianapolis Motor Speedway history.

Long before fame and fortune, however, came a simpler life — one that Goodyear says helps anchor her to reality when the whirlwind of racing threatens to sweep her away. Goodyear grew up a small-town girl in New Market, Ontario, a town of 35,000 people an hour north of Toronto. A fairly rural area, New Market offered few big-city amenities but had plenty of open fields ideal for raising horses. Like her peers, Goodyear spent many weekends and evenings riding in the countryside, not far from her family's subdivision home on the outskirts of town. "I was a normal kid pretty much like everyone else in my class," she recalls. "I was into horses, I liked spending time with friends and I had no clue what I wanted to be when I grew up."

Although in her teens Goodyear toyed with the idea of becoming a veterinarian, she changed her mind after spending a day with a local vet. "At 17, I got a pretty serious wake-up call after I watched my first surgery," she says. "I love animals, but I'm just too squeamish to do that." She turned her attention to horses and explored the possibility of becoming a full-time trainer, but she couldn't decide on a specialty. When high school graduation rolled around, she still hadn't found her calling, so she opted for a year off before pursuing college.

What started as a year stretched into an indefinite period of time away from the classroom once she fell into a lucrative job selling cars at a Porsche and Audi dealership in New Market. She had started as a bookkeeper about nine months before, but the sales manager saw potential in the pleasant young girl and offered her a sales job. Goodyear leaped at the chance, relishing the opportunity to interact with customers and prove her worth. Never an auto enthusiast, she studied diligently to learn the intricacies of different models and their various features. "I had to know my stuff front and back because people tended to quiz me more than the men to find out whether I really did know what I was talking about," she says. "But I loved the challenge of gaining a customer's trust and proving that I was a great salesperson even though I was a woman."

Goodyear did indeed have the right stuff, despite being the only female Porsche sales rep in Canada at that time. Her first year she was named top sales rep for the dealership, and the following year she placed among the top ten Porsche reps in the nation for sales volume. "I was earning a very comfortable living and was good at my job," she says. "I sort of stumbled into that career, but selling made me happy and gave me confidence in my abilities."

Then her life changed with one visit to the racetrack. Her dealership sponsored a Porsche race car driven by a fairly well-known Canadian racer named Scott Goodyear. When her sales manager urged her to attend the local 1988 Rothmans Porsche Turbo Cup Series race to support the team, Goodyear agreed to at least make an appearance, even though she had never been the least bit interested in racing.

She was introduced to Scott before the race, and he asked her out shortly afterward during one of his visits to her dealership. She consented, although with a good deal of skepticism because she suspected that drivers dated a lot of women. "I didn't want to be one of those women in every town that I thought went with the territory," she says. "And racing seemed to be a pretty unstable life to me." Fortunately, she gave him a chance — and was pleasantly surprised. "When it comes to relationships, Scott is actually really old-fashioned," she says. "He's not into building up an image or pretending to be someone he's not. In fact, he liked that I wasn't a race fan because the relationship was more comfortable."

The two dated for about a year, carving out time for each other despite Scott's hectic travel schedule. Goodyear tried to travel with the team as much as possible but found it difficult to strike a balance between attending the races and nurturing her sales career. When Scott proposed in June 1989 after a race in Le Mans, France, she accepted and quit her job shortly thereafter to join him on the road. "That was really hard because I was giving up my career for a man," she says. "I almost felt that I was losing part of who I was. But I had the choice of making the relationship work or pursuing my career — and I loved him, so I opted for the relationship."

Six months later they were married in New Market; she was 22 and he was 29. For the next three years they traveled through Canada, the United States and Europe as Scott continued to add racing honors to his list. During slow periods they returned home (first to Toronto and later to Carmel, where they moved in March 1994), but they spent most of the time on the go in various parts of the world. "That was a terrific time, seeing so many sights that a 22-year-old from Canada wouldn't have had the chance to see otherwise," she says. "I counted myself lucky to be so well-traveled for my age."

A Risky Business

Not everything about being married to a race car driver was pleasant, though. Every time Scott drove onto the track, his wife knew there was a possibility that he might not come back. "I had to learn not to think about the risk involved, simply for my emotional sake," she says. "If I were to dwell on all the dangers, I'd only make myself crazy. His safety is out of my control, so I just hope for the best."

That got harder once they had children, though. As parents to three — Christopher, 7; Michael, 3; and Hayley, 2 — both Goodyears realize that the risk of racing proves more nerve-wracking than when they were newly married. "He's not only my husband, but he's also their father," says Goodyear. "Almost constantly I wish he was anything but a race car driver because it's such a dangerous profession."

For the most part, Scott has escaped with few injuries. Only once has he been involved in a serious accident, but the memory of that day remains fresh in his wife's mind. During a practice lap for the 1996 Brazilian Grand Prix in Rio de Janeiro, something went wrong with his car and Scott smashed into a wall. Experts feared the worst because the car stayed intact: When a car breaks apart, it dispels the shock of the accident; in Scott's case, however, his body took most of the impact. When the medics arrived, he learned that he had broken his back.

The timing couldn't have been worse. Goodyear had stayed in Carmel to care for Michael, who was just six weeks old at the time, and had to learn of the accident by telephone. "That's the phone call we all dread," she says. "You never think it will happen to your husband — until it does."

Commercial airlines refused to transport Scott home because he was a high-risk passenger, so he worked out an arrangement with Federal Express and was flown to Indianapolis in a back brace. ("I got him before 10 a.m. that day," Goodyear jokes.) He then spent eight weeks in his back brace; Goodyear divided her time among a 4-year-old, an infant and an injured husband. "He couldn't even touch his toes, so I was bathing and feeding everyone in the house," she says.

These days Goodyear travels to all 12 of Scott's IRL races, flying out on Friday and returning Sunday to minimize her time away from the children. Christopher often joins her during the summer so he can see new sights and learn about different parts of the country. The other two children stay with the couple's nanny, who helps ease Goodyear's duties as a frequent single parent. "Racing is 90 percent prep work and 10 percent on the track, which means that Scott is almost constantly busy," Goodyear says. "But he's an active father when he is home, so it's tough to fault him for traveling so much."

The children don't seem to mind, either. Scott helps with Christopher's youth hockey team and drives Michael around the neighborhood in his test cars. Both boys seem eager to follow in their father's footsteps: Michael gets excited when Scott brings home a new car, and Christopher wants a go-cart so he can start racing. All that hits a little too close to home for their parents. "It's still up for discussion because we're just not sure if this is the right direction for them," says Goodyear. "It's one thing to see your husband racing around the track, but it's quite another to see your son doing that." Scott seems even more nervous because he knows firsthand the risk involved: "I think he'd rather have the kids take up golf or something equally safe," she says. "Of course, that would be just fine with me as well."

Personal Goals

Even with her frenzied schedule of traveling to races and attending the children's hockey matches, swim meets and gymnastics lessons, Goodyear has managed to reserve some time for personal pursuits. She serves on the board for Kid's Campaign, a volunteer organization that provides a traveling day care for children of drivers, mechanics and sponsors. The program offers a supervised play area but also teaches the children about each city or part of the country they visit.

She also remains an active horsewoman and keeps her riding skills fresh by working with a local instructor and her long-time coach in Canada. In her youth, Goodyear jumped horses at Canadian competitions and routinely placed in hunters and jumpers championships. On weekends she worked with polo ponies through the Toronto Polo Club and also helped train race horses. As her experience grew, she explored full-time training and entertained the idea of becoming a serious competitor.

Then she watched the 1986 equestrian World Games on TV and discovered dressage, a technical method of riding that demands precise foot movements from the horses. Acquiring the skills for dressage can take several years, not only for the owners to master the skills, but also for the horses to pick up on the slight cues that guide their steps. As Goodyear points out, it's not too far removed from the art of racing. "Dressage is an extremely technical sport that depends on balance and changing certain movements very slightly," she says. "It's a lot like fine-tuning an engine or listening to the mechanics of a car."

She currently rides five days a week and has been training heavily this past year to get her body accustomed to horseback after two years out of the saddle. She also has a lofty goal to conquer: to make the Olympic equestrian team at some point, whether for the United States or Canada. To qualify for the team, a rider must have a horse at the Grand Prix level, a high skill level that horses usually acquire after intense training over several years. Riders then must compete at certified shows across the country to advance to international-level championships. Goodyear is pinning her hopes on MacGyver, a 5-year-old Dutch warmblood she purchased two years ago in Holland. The animal currently is being trained in Canada by Goodyear's riding coach, but she hopes to show him in the Midwest this summer. Unfortunately, she must limit her competitions to those that don't interfere with the race circuit because she says her family comes first. "Right now this is just a hobby, but hopefully it will be more serious down the road," she says. "I have plenty of time to get myself in shape until then."

At the least, she'd like to become a dressage instructor but hopes her future will hold more serious competition. She might not have long to wait, either: Scott turns 40 this year and has told her he'll likely retire sometime around age 50. If all goes according to plan, she just might get her chance soon. "I've held his helmet for all these years, so hopefully he'll be able to hold mine when it's my turn to compete," she says.

She's not entirely sure what the rest of the future holds. Scott talks about opening a local car dealership after he retires from racing, which seems an ideal possibility given her background in selling. She also might investigate other business opportunities to utilize her financial skills: She currently handles the taxes, accounting and business aspects for the household from their home computer.

In the end, however, it all boils down to teamwork — and no one knows better than the Goodyears about the intricacies of that concept. "We have to be able to count on each other just like the members of the pit crew have to count on each other," she says. "After the racing ends and the children grow up, there will only be the two of us. We know we have to focus on ourselves as a couple to keep that part strong."

How refreshing to find that underneath the glittering sponsor parties and the celebrity spotlight lies a woman grounded in everyday life. Then again, that's just part of Goodyear's ability to identify what's truly important. "In this business, one weekend you're on top and the next you're not," she says. "Racing can't be the only thing that keeps you going — and there's so much more to life than that."