IndyCar: Get ready to hear these women roar at Road America
Sunday’s Sonsio Grand Prix at Road America will feature something IndyCar has not seen since 2015 - two female drivers competing in the same race.
Tatiana Calderon will make her sixth start this season in the No. 11 Chevrolet for A.J. Foyt Racing, while Simona de Silvestro will make her 2022 debut in the No. 16 Paretta Autosport Chevy with technical assistance from Ed Carpenter Racing.
The last time IndyCar had two females in a race was in the 2015 Indy 500, where de Silvestro competed alongside Pippa Mann. De Silvestro’s last IndyCar start came in last year’s 500. She performed admirably until a crash with 31 laps remaining left her with a disappointing 31st-place finish.
Last year's 500 also marked the debut of Paretta Autosport, which was formed by former automotive executive Beth Paretta, and has a goal of creating a majority-female race team. Several members of de Silvestro’s pit crew in last year’s 500 were female.
However, at Road America and the team’s other two scheduled races at Mid-Ohio and Nashville later this summer, the majority of the team’s staff will be on loan from Carpenter’s team. Many members of Paretta’s pit crew last year have since found new positions in IndyCar as well as other racing series.
“There's a few that are coming back,” de Silvestro said during a media teleconference. “Three of them left and got different opportunities, which I think is really positive.
"But I think what Beth really is going to try to do is really find more girls that can kind of train, train with Carpenter, kind of build them in. Just actually giving them their, let's say, first step into it.
"Hopefully they will grow enough within the team that we can start really running with those girls and kind of they can really do the changing tire and all that, really be pointed out to be left front or something like that.
“But that will take a little bit of time now, especially with our new association with Carpenter. This is all kind of a work in progress. But hopefully with this year and having even more races next year or something like that, this is really kind of the first steps towards that goal.”
Examples of Paretta alumni who have moved on to new opportunities include Caitlyn Brown, who changed the inside right tire during de Silvestro's pit stops in last year's 500. She now works for Team Penske as a junior mechanic for Scott McLaughlin’s car. Her former teammate Laura Sullivan also joined her at Penske as a coordinator.
Meanwhile, Madison Conrad changed the inside right tires on de Silvestro’s car and now works in NASCAR.
“I think what Beth (Paretta) has put together last year, just doing the Indy 500 with these women, seeing three of them really kind of taking off and doing some really important jobs on some other teams, it just really gives a lot of credit to her,” de Silvestro said. “I think if she wouldn't have put this program together, I don't think these women would be in those positions now. I think that's something really special. I think it's something that Beth can really be proud of.
“She's an amazing person. I wouldn't be here without her from that point of view. I think all of the women involved, me, myself, the other ones, I think we're pretty grateful for her really fighting for this and getting it going.”
Tatiana Calderon is looking forward to racing with fellow female driver Simona De Silvestro in Sunday's IndyCar race at Road America. Photo: IndyCar / Joe Skibinski.
While de Silvestro will only be competing in three races this season, the team hopes to add more races next year, and Calderon is happy to race against her.
“I'm super happy to see another female driver joining the grid, [and] to see women in motorsport,” Calderon said. "I think it's great for the series, great for the sport. It’s another very competitive driver joining the grid that is already quite competitive. Yeah, looking forward to see Simona and compete against her this weekend and in the next couple of rounds.”
However, de Silvestro has not raced at Road America in quite some time, and she admitted that she has realistic expectations heading into Sunday’s race.
“I think the last time I was at Road America was 2009,” de Silvestro said. “It's been quite a while, but I don't know. For me, the expectation, I think at the end of the day, you want to do the best job you can. We have not tested. It's the middle of the season, all these guys and girls have been running half the season already. We need to see where we kind of stack up.
“For me in a sense, I'm really looking forward to getting back in an Indy car. So from that point of view, I think I'll push quite hard to get up to speed as quickly as I can.
"If we do our job correctly, I think we can be on the competitive side for sure. I don't think we can win the race or be a podium. I don't think. I think that's really unrealistic. Even if we see Will [Power] qualifying 16th [at Belle Island last weekend] and stuff like that, I think the field is super deep. We just need to do our job correctly and just kind of, yeah, keep chipping away at it, finishing the race. I think if we do everything correctly, I think the race could be all right.”
A decade ago, it was much more common to see multiple female drivers competing full-time in IndyCar. The most female drivers to ever compete in a single IndyCar race is five, which happened at Chicagoland Speedway in 2010.
Both drivers are incredibly happy to be competing in IndyCar and hope the series sees more female competitors in the future.
But for both de Silvestro and Calderon, they admit that they view themselves as race car drivers who happen to be female as opposed to being a female race car driver.
“I think for me throughout my whole career I've always just been a driver. You know what I mean?” de Silvestro said. “I think for sure as the years went on, I realized I definitely can have an impact as well because I just kind of went my way. I didn't care that I was a girl, I just wanted to be a racing driver, I wanted to win races. That's how I went about it.
“In the sense I think racing is a great platform to show that you can compete against the guys. I think I've shown that in the past. I think that's a really important message. Also I think in business and all that, if somebody is good enough, they should get the opportunity.”