Weekend

What's Up For The Weekend With IndyCar Team Owner Sarah Fisher

By Theresa Manahan, Staff Writer

Published March 16, 2012

SARAH FISHER is gearing up for the start of the Izod IndyCar season next week and will spend her weekend in preparation mode. This season, the team owner will have a new addition to her traveling entourage, her six-month-old daughter, ZOEY. Coming off two tests, she will spend the next few days in her Indianapolis before she attempts to find a balance with work and family.

START YOUR ENGINES: Throughout the weekend, we’ll be at the race shop preparing to leave for St. Petersburg, Fla., on Tuesday for our first race of the year. It’d be nice to give the guys a day off in there somewhere, but because our season is just starting, it’s kind of like everyone on deck trying to make sure that we have everything covered because we have new cars.

NOT YOUR AVERAGE 9-5: My weekends during season are sort of like Monday and Tuesday because the weekends are the time when I’m working with the cars, being on track and racing events. So normally what’ll happen is we have practice on Friday, qualifying Saturday, the race will be on Sunday and then we travel home that night. So Monday is sort of like my Sunday -- regather myself, regroup. I’ll do laundry then, I’ll send off certain things that have been waiting over the weekend through whatever, UPS. Get a lot of the general office things done on Monday, whether that’s scheduling payroll or doing certain insurance documents. … Then we’ll either stay in town for another day to turn the cars around before traveling out again on Tuesday or Wednesday.

BABY ON BOARD: What’ll really get interesting for me is traveling with an infant and still managing to be a working mom on the road. ... I’ll have my mother-in-law travel with me, my mother will come to some events. We’re getting really creative because we’re not big enough yet as a company to just hire a nanny. We’re just trying to be creative and balance time and work and family.

TUNING IN TO TUNE OUT: I’m real big on “The Big Bang Theory.” That’s like my favorite show right now. I think a lot of it is because it’s just kind of one of those shows that you watch and it’s just funny and relaxing and it takes your mind off of always trying to learn and always trying to work and do better. I think a lot of people miss out on that little bit of relaxation, so if I can be selfish enough to take the 30 minutes of my brain power and dedicate it to something that is just funny and relaxing, while I’m multi-tasking. I’m either feeding Zoey or doing something else at the same time, as all working moms do.

DO IT YOURSELF: The thing about me that a lot of people may miss out on is that I’m a really big do-it-yourselfer. So if there’s random projects around the house or things that I can tackle on my own, you know change the oil in my car, those kinds of things. I’m not afraid to just dive in and figure it out. Whether or not it’s an appliance needs a little of work or whatever it is, I’m big on that. Before it was a little bit of just jumping in, but nowadays I don’t have a lot of time to get in, mess it up and then fix it. So I have to do a little bit of Googling to get myself ready to fix whatever it is.