Can Leilani Münter combine green living with driving in the
Firestone Indy Lights? Can a Munter "Eco-Dream-Team" attract green sponsors to the Indy Lights series?
Allan BREWER for SZ
Indy Lights driver Leilani Münter lives by this credo: Life is short. Race hard. Live green.
Leilani, a beautiful woman of Polynesian descent hailing from Rochester, MN., who was a photo-double for actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, left the allure of Hollywood to don a sweaty fire suit and gather grease and rubber bits under her fingernails in 2001.
Münter (pronounced MOON-ter) is not your typical driver. Few in any race car circuit can recite to you the hazards of tungsten-filament light bulbs, the finer nuances of carbon-footprint offset or discuss how cellulostic-based ethanol can change our lives.
She is green, in a sport that has not been well known for its tree-hugging inclinations.
She raced stock cars before making the move to open wheel and earned her Indy Lights Series racing license in 2007. Within a few laps, Leilani was circulating the one-mile oval of Kentucky Speedway at speeds approaching race pace.
She went on to compete twice in the Indy Car Series’ junior league, Indy Lights, impressing veteran open-wheel racing coaches Jaques Lazier and four-time Indy 500 winner Rick Mears with her quickness and smarts.
Marrying auto racing and environmentalism into one harmonious whole may have put her on a collision course..
