XPost: rec.autos.sport.indycar, rec.autos.sport.cart
On 5/20/23 16:50, a425couple wrote:
OT - Katherine Legge qualified and will start 30th in the Indy 500.
This will be the 42 year old's 3rd Indy 500, and this year she is the
only female.
In 2013, the second time and last year Katherine Legge entered the Indy
500 she finished 26th, 7 laps down. There were 4 female drivers that
year. Ana Beatriz finished 15th, Simona de Silvestro was 17th, and
Pippa Mann finished 30th.
More on that race is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Indianapolis_500
The wiki on Katherine Legge is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Legge
https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/breaking/ct-indianapolis-500-women-20230526-yxo7ask3lvgczc6ooku7rxznke-story.html
Only 9 women have raced in the Indianapolis 500 — and the push for more
has stalled
By Dave Skretta
Associated Press
•
May 26, 2023 at 10:23 am
INDIANAPOLIS — Katherine Legge remembers returning to the Indianapolis
500 for the second time a decade ago and the unmistakable feeling of satisfaction she experienced walking through Gasoline Alley and knowing
she was not alone.
For the third time in four years, a record-tying four women were in the
33-car field that day.
“That was the era of Sarah Fisher and then Danica Patrick came along and
then there’s me and Simona de Silvestro, and I just thought it would
kind of snowball and grow,” Legge recalled before pausing for a moment. “But it hasn’t.”
Instead, Legge is the only female driver who will start “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” on Sunday.
The women’s movement that began when Janet Guthrie qualified for the
first time in 1977, gained traction with Lyn St. James in the 1980s and
hit its stride with the arrival of Patrick in the early 2000s has
stalled out. By 2020, not only was there no female driver in the field
for the first time since 1999, but none even tried for the first time
since 1991.
De Silvestro started the 2021 race for an all-women team, Paretta
Autosport, but there were no women again last year, and Legge struggled
to qualify this year before wrecking in practice. The 42-year-old Briton
will start in the penultimate row in the 107th running of the race that
has seen only nine women on the grid over more than a century.
“It’s really bad, isn’t it?” Legge asked. “Because I thought there was
going to be more. I mean, there’s only been nine of us that have run the
Indy 500. I hope one year there’s nine of us on the grid, you know?”
It doesn’t appear that will happen anytime soon.
Katherine Legge looks at her phone before practice for the Indianapolis
500 on May 25, 2023.
Katherine Legge looks at her phone before practice for the Indianapolis
500 on May 25, 2023. (Darron Cummings/AP)
Jamie Chadwick is the only woman this season in Indy NXT, the top rung
in IndyCar’s feeder system, and she has struggled for Andretti Autosport after arriving from the now-inactive, all-women W Series, which had
aimed to provide female drivers more racing opportunities.
Lindsay Brewer is likewise alone a step down at the USF Pro 2000 level,
and few young women occupy the highest levels of European karting, which
is often the first step for drivers with Formula One aspirations.
So why did the slowly building momentum for women at Indianapolis Motor Speedway come to such a crashing halt?
At the entry level, where drivers are sometimes no older than 6 and
girls are vastly outnumbered by boys, they are often subjected to
intense bullying. More than once, Legge recalled, it was so bad that she
nearly quit.
“The desire has to be so high to go through all the hardships that you
have to go through to do it,” she said, “that I think a lot of them,
it’s just too much. But the ones who do make it through, I think that
lesson helps them down the line in racing.”
At the highest levels, drivers often must secure their own sponsorship
to help offset the immense funding required of an IndyCar program. That
can be difficult for women in the male-dominated sport.
“Men are getting sponsorship and women can’t. That sounds unfair but who cares about unfair?” Guthrie told The Los Angeles Times in 1987, and there’s little evidence that anything has changed in a sweeping way. “A successful woman driver will get 10 times the attention that a man will
get. So now, what really is important? It keeps coming back to the good
ol’ boy network.”
Katherine Legge pulls into the pits during practice for the Indianapolis
500 on May 25, 2023.
Katherine Legge pulls into the pits during practice for the Indianapolis
500 on May 25, 2023. (Darron Cummings/AP)
Andretti Autosport is at the forefront of driver development, both men
and women, and has qualified more women for the Indy 500 than any team:
Patrick on four occasions and de Silvestro and Ana Beatriz once apiece.
“I think it’s important for the sport,” team owner Michael Andretti
said. “Yeah, we’re still searching for that next Danica. And I will say that there’s no reason why we can’t have a competitive woman now.”
Andretti acknowledged it’s harder for them to succeed, though, and
brought up an entirely different reason. The car itself these days is physically demanding to drive, and young women in particular sometimes
struggle to muscle it around the track.
But give a woman a fast enough car and she can be every bit as good as
the men.
“My time in IndyCar felt like I got a really great shake at it and I
drove for a lot of great teams,” Patrick said. “But it’s kind of like a stock market: It goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down. It, trajectory-wise, tends to be going in an upward fashion, but there will
always be these lulls. We can go from five women in the field to none,
or one this year.”
Fisher has more Indy 500 starts than any other woman with nine, and for
many years she owned her own team.
“If you have good people with good opportunities, that’s great,” Fisher said, “but you can’t force it because there’s too high a risk in this sport.”
That was evident in practice Monday, when Legge was unable to slow as
others did in front of her. She hit the rear of Stefan Wilson’s car,
sending both into the fence. Legge walked away and her team repaired her
car for Friday’s final practice, but Wilson was left hospitalized with a fractured vertebra; Graham Rahal has replaced him in his car.
That hasn’t dampered the expectations of Legge, whose entire Rahal
Letterman Lanigan team has struggled this week. After all, she knows
that women will be watching how she does on Sunday.
“It’s really cool to be back here,” Legge said. “I forgot how crazy busy
it is with so many demands on your time, and I forgot how little time
that you get in the car. But it’s amazing.
“I just am obsessed with making the most of the opportunity so I can
come next year. I really want to do as well as that car will allow.”
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