WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH PART 2: CELEBRATING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY MARCH 8

Motorsports has been an international sport for decades. I’ve been blessed to have been able to race around the globe during my career, but while doing so realized how few women had been able to do that. Later, I was able to serve on the FIA Women in Motorsports Commission (WIMC) for a few years representing North America and learned so much about how diverse and far-reaching motorsports truly is beyond what we know about in North America, such as karting, rally racing and of course, Formula 1. Just about every country in the world has one or more form of motorsports happening, and women are competing and in leadership positions everywhere!

Here are a few examples:

• Turkey – Rallying is very popular and Burcu Cetinkaya, who is a rally champion, is the new President of the FIA Women in Motorsports Commission.
• GBR/Ireland: Jamie Chadwick created her Jamie Chadwick Jr. karting program; Susie Wolff, Managing Director of the F1 Academy and who created a youth karting ladder; Motorsport UK includes the British Touring Car Championship, MotoGP, EuroNASCAR, Hill Climbs, Drag Racing, WRC Rallying, and there’s a Women in Motorsports Ireland.
• The F1 Academy, led by Susie Wolff, have numerous women working on their leadership team as well holding responsible position on their race teams.
• There are successful women engineers on race teams all over the world, including Angela Ashmore who was 2022 Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson’s engineer at Chip Ganassi Racing.
• The Iron Dames all-female race team, founded by Deborah Mayer, has been setting records, winning races and creating a global following with their amazing campaigns “Breaking Barriers” and “Every Dream Matters”. Besides auto racing they have teams competing in equestrian and are creating junior competition programs.

While celebrating International Women’s Day is a natural thing for me to do, it disappoints me when I see so much exposure for the traditional women sports stories, but women in motorsports, as well as sailing and equestrian, aren’t included in those stories and media coverage. While I know we’re still quite small in numbers on the scale of participation compared to women only sports, we are growing and need that recognition to help young girls and women know that our sport is there for them. When women can compete equally in a sport rather than gender-specific sport, it demonstrates what life is really like – when men and women compete with and against each other it makes the world a better place because a level playing field results in respect given and received.

I hope you all will take the time to include women in racing, equestrian and sailing competition, as well women in all areas of life, in your celebration of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day on March 8!