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I will probably catch flack for this, but I don’t intend for it to be derogatory – yet I know as sure as I’m sitting here typing away, someone will find fault with my next sentence. When Roger Penske, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the NTT IndyCar Series announced their “Race for Equality and Change” initiative last summer – it never dawned on me that it was created for women too.

With all the civil unrest that last summer brought, I automatically assumed that it was created as a result of the unrest to bring more minorities into racing. After all, there have been only two black drivers and no primary black owners in our sport; and the last black driver, George Mack, drove way back in 2002 – having only one very unremarkable season.

There has not been near the dearth of female drivers. For the first time in twenty years, the 2020 Indianapolis 500 featured no female entries, but it wasn’t that long ago that there were as many as four female drivers in 2013. So forgive me for assuming this new pathway was created only for minorities. You know what happens when you assume…

So before I fan any more flames, let me get it out there that I am glad that women are included in this initiative. I was just pleasantly surprised that they were.

Now that I have stumbled clumsily through that minefield, I’ll get into what was announced yesterday at Indianapolis. Paretta Autosport will be an entry in the 2021 Indianapolis 500. The team is owned by team principal Beth Paretta, who led an effort that was announced in 2015 for an all-woman team – known as Grace Autosport, with Katherine Legge as the driver.

This time, when Paretta heard about the Race For Equality and Change initiative, she picked up the phone and called Roger Penske, whom she had known since working with him in 2012 while with Dodge and their NASCAR racing program. The two started talking, which led to Tuesday’s announcement.

What gives Paretta Autosport immediate credibility is that, unlike a start-up stand-alone team, they will be receiving technical assistance from Team Penske. They will even be set up in the same Mooresville, NC shop that prepares all of Team Penske’s cars.

What else gives this team a good chance of performing? Their driver choice. Fan favorite Simona de Silvestro has been picked to fill the cockpit of their No. 16 entry for this coming May. Simona is a five-time starter in the Indianapolis 500. Four of those starts came in sub-par equipment, including having to drag a Lotus around the track in 2012. Her last start came for Andretti Autosport in 2015, but she ran into the back of eventual race-winner Juan Montoya at the start and never fully recovered, finishing nineteenth. That was her last IndyCar start.

But de Silvestro has not been sitting idle. She drove two seasons for Michael Andretti in Formula E, as well as several seasons in Australian Supercars. In 2020, she began driving for the Porsche factory team in the GT Masters Championship in Europe. She continues to drive for Porsche, and she is doing the Month of May at Indianapolis with their blessing.

Unlike many, I am not that familiar with Beth Paretta. But after watching the replay of the press conference that took place yesterday, I came away very impressed. It seems like she has a very workable plan. Paretta Autosport has many sponsors that are interested, but not yet fully committed in January. Being aligned with Team Penske, you can be assured it will be a well prepared car.

They showed a picture of the car, but Paretta said that the car on the track most likely will not look like this, as sponsors come on board. That’s a good thing, because I am not totally in love with this computer generated livery.

Paretta hinted that they may be looking for another race or two later in the IndyCar season. It’s the same story. It depends on sponsor’s wishes. But the plan for now is to go racing full-time in 2022.

I wish this team well. I have always thought this series was better off with Simona de Silvestro in it. I’m not big on checking off boxes, just to keep certain groups happy. I’ve never been one to classify drivers into subsets and refer to someone as a good female driver. Nor do I agree with at least one person that said on social media Simona should be protected in qualifying. Seriously? If she is one of the thirty-three fastest cars, she should make the field. Period. No exemptions, no protections. She should earn it like everyone else, and I think she would agree with that as well as Bet Paretta. I don’t say the series is better off because a woman will be in the Indianapolis 500, or that I like Simona as far as female drivers go. I like Simona because I think she is a good driver.

She showed me a lot in 2011, when she got upside down inside a burning car, during Indianapolis 500 practice, early in the week and received second-degree burns on both hands. That would be enough to rattle any driver for the remainder of their career. But in Qualifying that weekend, she climbed into her aging backup car with heavily bandaged hands and put her car into the eighth row. That was in a year that eight drivers failed to qualify, including Ryan Hunter-Reay and Mike Conway. That performance got my attention and several other fans. I didn’t consider gender for that performance. It was simply a gutsy performance and I compared her to all other racers then, and I will again in May.

I’ve always thought that de Silvestro fell into the category that so many drivers fall into – lots of talent, but few good opportunities. I think she will be raising quite a lot of eyebrows this May, each time she crawls into her Penske prepared car and takes the track. This will be a very interesting story line to follow.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on January 20, 2021 at 4:03 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.