KATHERINE LEGGE THINKS INDYCAR NEEDS A FEMALE DRIVER
Over the years, the Indy car series in North America has been open to women and other minorities when it has come to employing them as racing drivers. Janet Guthrie became the first woman to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 and was followed by Lyn St. James and others.
In the 2000s, Sarah Fisher was a force (nearly winning an IRL race in Phoenix until Tony Kanaan realized she wasn’t a lapped car and opened a gap; she finished second), as was Simona de Silvestro, Milka Duno and, of course, the most famous of them all, Danica Patrick, who is now racing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
Pippa Mann makes an annual appearance in the Indianapolis 500, and Katherine Legge, now racing the Delta Wing Prototype in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, raced several seasons in Champ Car and has had some Indy 500 starts.
This weekend, though, the cast of the 30th anniversary Honda Indy Toronto will be an all-male one, and Legge, for one, doesn’t think that’s good.
“You could argue that there just aren’t enough good female drivers who have money,” she said. “The problem is the money (either personal money, or sponsors, to pay for the race seat).
“I judge myself against my teammates. I judge myself against Gabby (Chaves, an IndyCar driver she occasionally shares the Delta Wing with). I know I could get the job done but I don’t have the backing. IndyCar at the moment is all about the backing, and they’re not helping the personalities that are bringing the fans, and the series is suffering because of it.”
Legge said the problem is that many people in racing are too short-sighted.
“If they were looking at things from a long-term perspective, they should have a girl in the series (I put my hand up) and they should have personalities in the series. Everybody complains that the drivers are too similar, that they’re all robots. But there are some personalities in the series that they probably have to make more of. They need a more diverse entry so that fans can get behind people.
“It’s good for the sport to have women on the track. Even the little tiff between Danica and Milka (where Duno threw a balaclava at Patrick’s face) was good for the sport.”