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Women in Motorsports North America Helps Women (and Men) Get on Career Fast Track
January 29, 2025I loved reading the article in RACER.com about how the gap in lap times between the women and male drivers competing in the Extreme E Series has continued to get closer by over 70 percent over the three seasons it ran. It supports how opportunity, experience, equal engineering support and equipment are so important for women drivers to be not only equal to, but potentially better than, their male competitors. All the drivers competing in the Extreme E Series were top-flight racers. Andretti driver Catie Munnings was the first fastest driver overall in Season 1. “Extreme E’s mixed-gender format is a game-changer, and this data proves just how powerful equal opportunity can be,” said former F1 champion driver Jenson Button.
It brings back my memory of trying to convince Don Panoz, then owner of Road Atlanta and the American LeMans Series, who hired me to help launch the Women’s Global GT Series in 1999. I tried to convince Don to make it a mixed-doubles type format, teaming one woman driver and one male driver who were competing in the ALMS series, but he insisted on making it only for women drivers. It did give many women racers (over 75 drivers tried out for the series) an opportunity to race in equally-prepared race cars on great racetracks as a support race for many of the American LeMans Series races. I also remember hearing many comments like “they won’t be able to finish the race”, “it will be a crashfest”, “they’ll be all over the place”. I have to say it delivered some very competitive races, it helped some drivers show what they were capable of, and helped advance some careers. Cindi Lux won the first championship and continues to compete in Trans Am today, Sara Senske went on to some success in the Star Mazda and Formula Dodge Series, Amy Ruman went on to win the TransAm Series, it helped Divina Galica get more well known in the U.S. and became a great driver coach.
Today there are so many more women competing in all forms of motorsports, and many of them are demonstrating great results, but I believe the majority of them are still competing against male drivers who have more experience over a longer period of time. It’s hard to be able to be at the top of your game and compete against drivers who just have more experience.
While I don’t believe we need to have women-only racing series, I do believe having the F1 Academy does provide some necessary elements: experience in quality equipment with quality teams, being able to race at incredible legendary racetracks around the world on the F1 stage, and top-level engineering, marketing, and media exposure and experience. But with the success of how the women racers in Extreme E did it’s beyond me why more mixed-gender types of racing series.
Wake up sanctioning bodies, OEM’s, and track promoters.