Gentlemen, start your ingenuousness.

Rev up that sexist humor. Don't just let her rip. Rip her, her and her.

Jay Leno would join in, but he wants to come back to drive the Indianapolis 500 pace car someday. Heck, if David Letterman hadn't invested in the team that until this year featured Danica Patrick, one of the unprecedented three ladies in the race today, you know his writers would breathe voice into a list: Top Ten Things Male Chauvinists Mutter Under Their Breath About The Women Drivers Around Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

10. Welcome to the Cindy 500.

9. The Brickyard? More like The Chickyard.

8. Can't wait until the first crash, when somebody will really get broad-sided.

7. They want to change the name from "Speedway" to "Safeway," like the grocery store.

6. They figure if they pass the Target team cars, they earn 25 percent off their next visit.

5. No way they can drive without a rear-view mirror to check their hair and makeup.

4. Has a driver ever dropped out of the 500 with a broken nail?

3. "Let's paint the walls pink."

2. It's so hard to talk on your cell through that helmet.

And the No. 1 Thing Male Chauvinists Mutter About The Women Drivers Around Indy:

1. "Do I look fat in this flame-retardant material?"

Caution flag such thoughts and speed post-haste into the 21st Century instead. For in open-wheel racing, you've come a long way, baby. Today, there are as many women drivers as Andrettis in the Indy 500.

Patrick, 25, of FHM and Letterman fame, is the only woman to ever lead at Indy and the front-runner of the Ladies Day pack today in the eighth spot and the middle of the third row on the 33-car grid.

Milka Duno, 35, the Venezuelan import who boasts four master's degrees, makes her Speedway debut -- in only her second Indy Car race -- in the 29th spot and the middle of the second-to-last row.

And Sarah Fisher, the bespectacled, respected and less publicized of this troika, qualified 21st and on the outside of the seventh row.

It's no small step for racing's womankind, praise be Janet Guthrie, that this moment in history remained something of a whisper through today. There has been no hullabaloo about sexism or minorities, no ESPN specials, no audible teeth-gnashing across the sports landscape. Maybe it's because open-wheel racing only catches America's passing glance once a year. Maybe it's because, in this mad, mad, marketing world, Patrick and Duno cast such dashing figures that the sole male muttering focuses on them being concealed by too much flame-retardant material. Can't wait for that Girls of Indy calendar, can ya, boys?

If nothing else, root for Fisher and her car No. 5, her age when she started racing.

Now 26, she is their grande dame, far more deserving of track worship and overall admiration than the made-for-TV-hype given Patrick and Duno, who is, notice the marketing potential, Milka in the race for the milk.

Fisher first started at Indy in 2000, when a male rookie forced the 19-year-old's car into Lyn St. James'. In 2001, she wrecked again. In 2003, an early engine problem sent her into the Turn 3 wall. In 2002 and 2004, she finished 24th and 21st. Here, she is making a quiet comeback, with fiancee Andy O'Gara, 23, as her crew chief -- a story that may get her a gatefold in ... Brides magazine.

Oh, and she possesses the better racing resume. Fisher is the fastest woman qualifier ever at Indy, clocking a 229.439 five years ago. She is the first woman to earn an Indy Racing League pole, at Kentucky that same 2002. She is a former World of Outlaws sprint-car champion and NASCAR Grand National driver, rungs missing from the hasty ascensions of her fellow Indy femmes. In a game of sponsorship and spin, Patrick and Duno get the fortunate rides and the fortunes. Which explains how Patrick's fourth-place finish at Indy in 2005 helped her leap-frog from Rahal Letterman Racing to the Andrettis, how it helped her get a guest co-host spot on "The View," an appearance in a Jay-Z music video, a Super Bowl commercial and more.

The Ohio-born Fisher, meanwhile, seems so regular, so Middle America. She lives in Indy. She works out at a gym. She is loyal, returning this year to the same Dreyer & Reinbold with whom she raced in 2002-03. She is into marketing only as a major in an online college. She is planning a Sept. 15 wedding to her crew chief/roomie, whom she started dating four years ago after nearly running over him in pit row. That's love.

You go girl.