Lyn St. James, McCall's magazine "Woman of the Year", 1986, was born in Willoughby, Ohio and began her automobile racing career in 1976 and won the SCCA Florida Regional Showroom Stock A championship in 1976 and 1977 and was named top woman driver for all three of the years in which she competed in the IMSA Kelly American Challenge series (1979-1981). In 1984, Lyn was named "Rookie of the Year" in the IMSA Camel GT series by Autoweek magazine. Lyn experienced many "firsts". In 1985, she became the first woman to exceed 200 miles per hour (204.233) on November 26th in a Ford Mustang Probe prototype at Talladega Alabama Superspeedway, first woman to win an IMSA GTO race (teaming with John Jones at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin), the first woman to win a road race "solo" at Watkins Glen, New York; and Lyn co-drove with John Jones to a season-closing victory at Daytona and was named Norelco Cup "GTO Driver of the Year".

In 1987, Lyn teamed with Tom Gloy, Bill Elliott and Scott Pruett to win the GTO division of 24 Hours of Daytona; and, in 1988, on October 11th, Lyn broke her own women's national closed-course speed record with a lap of 212.577 in an Elliott-prepared Ford Thunderbird Super Coupe at Talladega, Alabama and broke five existing records, three of her own and two of Mickey Thompson's, and established 16 new national and international speed records; and was the only driver to score championship points in every SCCA Trans Am event.

In 1992 (on May 6th), Lyn became the second woman and the oldest rookie ever to qualify for the Indy 500 at an average speed of 220.150 and drove a steady race from the 27th starting position to 11th at the finish in the first-ever Indy Car start to earn "500" Rookie of the Year honors.

Lyn has been an ESPN and Showtime commentator, consumer advisor to the Ford Motor Company, corporate spokesperson for Ford and Rolex and is the author of "Lyn St. James' Car Owner's Manual". Lyn operates a sales and marketing firm under the name of LSJ Motorsports and resides in Daytona Beach, Florida.