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Fifty Years After Title IX: Women in Motorsports - On and Off the Track · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Brake Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
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50 years after Title IX.
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On and Off the Track, a roundtable on women in motorsports,
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moderated by Daniel J.
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Simone.
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Daniel J.
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Simone earned his PhD in history from the University of Florida.
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He then taught at Monmouth University before serving as curator at the
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NASCAR Hall of Fame from 2016 to 2021.
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Dr.
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Simone is on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame voting committee and
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delivers presentations and academic papers at universities and automotive museums
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across the United States and Canada.
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He currently serves as program assistant at the New York Historical
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Society Museum and Library, where he is co processing and researching the
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Women's Sports Foundation Collection and conducting oral histories and
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developing content for digital exhibition.
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The symposium has provided a platform for excellent in depth and thought
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provoking presentations on the successes, struggles, and contributions of
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unherald women racers and car owners across various auto racing disciplines.
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The green flag for this roundtable discussion will wave with the panelists
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integrating these prior presentations.
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into a brief discussion of women in motorsports.
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From there, the panelists will pull from their multidisciplinary backgrounds
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and markedly different professional experience and discuss why, where, and
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how they extended the boundaries of women in motorsports history scholarship.
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Finally, the audience will take the checkered flag with a challenge to
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propose new themes and topics for future conversations with an emphasis
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on the accomplishments women have made in motorsports without ever owning or
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taking the wheel behind a race car.
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Good afternoon, everyone.
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Thanks for sticking around for the final panel roundtable
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discussion this afternoon.
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Fifty years after Title IX, women in motorsports have three panelists that are
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returning up for encore presentations.
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They, all three, delivered excellent papers earlier.
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My name is Dan Simone.
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I'm currently a project assistant at the New York Historical Society.
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I'm working on the The Women's Sports Foundation Collection.
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Um, and that was one of the reasons I asked our panelists to
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participate in this panel with me.
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The United States passed Title IX in 1972, defined as the 1972 federal
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civil rights law that mandated equal resources and opportunities
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for women athletes in educational institutions receiving federal funding.
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And so it's 50 year anniversary and there's been a lot of celebrations.
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And commemorations across the country regarding Title IX.
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So, based on that and my work with the collection and with, and
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the WSF, I thought our symposium would be an excellent opportunity
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to talk about women in racing.
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On and off the track, talk about the historiography, some of the
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studies that have been done.
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some upcoming studies, what studies remain to be explored, and hopefully
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have a conversation, talk about what has been accomplished both before and
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after 1972 when Title IX was passed.
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A little trickier for motorsports because unlike traditional stick and ball sports,
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so to speak, there are motor sports programs now that we're starting to see
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emerge at colleges and universities.
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There's no Syracuse stock car racing team.
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We don't have that in racing.
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It's still an opportunity to draw parallels as far as what's
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been accomplished and where maybe more work needs to be done.
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They're 50 years after Title IX.
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While we're talking today, I know we're going to miss somebody.
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We're probably going to talk about a lot of different incredible women drivers,
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mechanics, car owners, scholars, but I'm sure we'll miss somebody along the way.
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That being said, the hope is that some new names will come
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up, which might drive scholarship down the road for future studies.
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And I think our panel, it's an eclectic mix of scholars.
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We heard from them earlier.
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Buzz grew up around NASCAR, grew up around the sport in Daytona.
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Chris is from Michigan.
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She worked with the auto industry, with car commercials, and studies
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autocross, which is a discipline.
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I think she shed a lot of light on autocross for all of us today.
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We learned a lot.
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And then Lauren comes to us.
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Initially, she was working in Hollywood, working on commercials.
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Um, and now is working down at the, the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida.
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There's a lot of excellent work being done there.
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preserving automotive history as well.
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So I think we have a different mix of opinions.
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And tied in with myself, I was curator at the Nascar Hall of Fame from 2016 to 2021.
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So before my time at the New York Historical, I was
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working at a racing museum.
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Really would like to have a lot of audience participation for this
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roundtable, which means the hope is that Bob's going to get his cardio.
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for this final roundtable.
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I'd like this to be interactive, um, and, and value audience participation because
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I think we'll have a stronger roundtable the more points of view we're able to
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get from the folks out in the crowd.
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First thing I, I want to talk about is historiography.
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We've come a long way since Mark Howells from Moonshine to
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Madison Avenue back in the 90s.
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A lot of racing scholarship has emerged.
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A lot of great work was actually discussed the last couple of days.
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Some of these papers.
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I've either already appeared in publications, or they're
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going to appear in publications.
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And so I'd like to ask my co panelists to talk a little bit about using
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their respective expertise in their types of motor sports disciplines,
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and where we at with historiography.
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What studies remain to be done, and What historical studies have
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the three of you found to be most helpful or most insightful?
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Maybe what's a must read, for instance?
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For me, Janet Guthrie's autobiography, Life at Full
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Throttle, is an absolute must read.
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I think it's a fantastic book.
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It was not ghostwritten.
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Every time I talk to Janet, she makes sure to mention that.
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Not only is it a great story about her life, she really puts
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you at Indy in the late 1970s.
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You can actually feel the culture of being at the track, and so it's a
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very well written and fantastic book.
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So for me, that's one must read.
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I'm gonna pass it over to Lauren, I guess, since she's closest to me.
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What are some books that you find useful, or studies that you have
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found useful, in What's missing, like as far as your research, what
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do you wish that might be out there that we could refer to moving on?
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I would say because I became late to motorsports and I'm not
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employed at REVS I don't represent them in any official capacity.
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I just spend my Saturdays there volunteering which has been one of the
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great pleasures of my life and introduced me to a whole community of people who
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are passionate about the preservation of as a study of history and of, they call
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it preserving the future of the past.
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It gets me excited because I think there are a lot of untapped resources, shall we
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say like papers, archives, and so forth, that just haven't been digitized yet.
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You know, they're sitting in boxes somewhere.
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But they tell the story of, so for example, I know for example, at REVS
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they have The personal papers of Maurice Philippe, who was the auto journalist
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who I quoted early on in my presentation.
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I know from other references there are letters from Lucy in there, but
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they just haven't been digitized yet.
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And because I work 9 to 5, and the library is only open 9 to 5, we need people who
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either have funding or some kind of grant.
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That allows them to go and sit there and either digitize them or coordinate
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them in such a way that it becomes a much more easily searchable resource.
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I ended up relying, for example, for my presentation, I leaned
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heavily on online resources.
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One of the best examples I found was actually the Bibliothèque Nationale de
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France has an online portal called Carica.
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They've literally taken newspapers going all the way back, all in
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public domain, and not only digitized them, they're text searchable.
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You know, it's not perfect, obviously, because the computer's trying to
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guess what this old print is saying, but it was enough to get me a start.
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So anytime I read in a book that, oh, so and so won this.
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I could actually go corroborate that in the French press at the time.
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Anytime Lucy's name pops up, who else pops up every time she pops up?
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And I could take it from there.
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But I think, to me at least, when I think about scholarship and making this
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stuff available to people and everybody kind of working together as a society
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to figure these things out, the more we can make it available online and
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searchable online, to me that's the key.
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Yeah, but how about in your case?
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I've seen your collection of primary and secondary sources,
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and it's pretty incredible.
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It rivals other libraries in the size of it.
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I'd be curious, and I think the audience might like to know, some
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of the publications, periodicals, more specifically magazines,
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that you've referred to over the years in your research.
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Have any been more helpful?
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Have any publications tended to spend more time talking about Women participation
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and excellence in motorsports than others.
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Just some general thoughts on what you found the most useful
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in your research over the years.
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Sure, well one of my, uh, prime sources is the old Stock Car Racing magazine.
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And they started in May of 66.
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And as early as 1973, they had a monthly issue dedicated to women.
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Trophy queens, race drivers, car owners, all that.
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And I thought that was pretty neat.
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That was, you know, really early for that sort of thing.
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But Stock Car Racing Magazine, even today, is very timely if you
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want to go back and do research.
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Speed Sport News was another one, too.
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If you go back, it's good to see the items that are written about at the time.
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And it's not like the event is filtered down through the
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years through other writers.
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You get a hold of a Speed Sport News or a Grand National
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Scene or something like that.
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That's really important.
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A book came out about ten years ago called Driving with the Devil.
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And to me, that was the most fantastic book.
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I had the good fortune of doing the narrated version of it.
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Neil Thompson did a beautiful job.
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He wrote about stock car racing from about the mid 30s
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through the founding of NASCAR.
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And it's something that had never been written before.
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And I don't know how he did his research, but it was amazing.
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And he had all the major characters, you know, Raymond Parks and Red Byron.
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And people like that, Brett Vogt, he really delved into
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their psyche, if you will.
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A lot of his stories I used on my presentation today about the
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moonshine, and it gives you the whole history of moonshine and where
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it came from and how it developed going all the way back to the time.
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I guess the Phoenicians that came back in the old days,
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they weren't even race drivers.
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But yeah, when that came out, that was a great, great book.
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And that was the last piece of the puzzle as far as the story
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of early days of racing goes.
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And I'm still waiting for like a biography on Red Byron who was a
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disabled World War II veteran who only had the use of one leg and he
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won the first two NASCAR championships with only the use of one leg.
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It was pretty amazing.
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I'm always looking for new stuff.
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There's some new things that Joe brought that I'm really tantalized over.
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Especially the Bobby Marshman book.
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It was one of my heroes when I was a kid.
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So it's nice that they're still bringing out new stuff like
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that that hasn't been done yet.
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So I'm always looking for something else.
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Thanks, Buzz.
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And Chris, you're a pioneer as far as scholarship dealing
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with women in autocross.
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I saw your CV, and you've researched the topic a lot, and
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you've studied it a great deal.
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Are there other studies on autocross that We should keep an eye out for if
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we want to learn more about it, and then more specifically how autocross is
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applied to women, because I know going back to Janet Guthrie, she did compete in
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autocross way back in, you know, in the 1970s when she was running SCCA before
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she was moving on to IndyCar and NASCAR.
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Just talk a little bit about the scholarship as far as autocross,
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because again, I think it's safe to say some of us, we learned a lot
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from your presentation about the specifics and that type of competition.
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I haven't found a whole lot of scholarship on women in motorsports.
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I think there's a handful of articles, less than five, that talk about women
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who have participated in motorsports.
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There's one that just came out, I think, last year, where they interview women.
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It's qualitative.
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They interview women who are currently Professional race car drivers and I
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skimmed through it and they actually they reach a lot of the same conclusions
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that I do in terms of how women got into it, how they're treated, etc.
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In terms of my own scholarship, I haven't done a lot of motorsports.
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I'm just starting this, and I did a chapter in a book in which I, I
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was given the assignment of just do an article on women in motorsports.
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It's a little broad for somebody who knew nothing about it.
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So I concentrated on women only racing, sort of the history of women only
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racing, because this is how most of the women got started, whether it was
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powder puffed, whether it was women's racing teams, or women's racing series.
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The sources on that were Um, I found, you know, magazine articles, old results
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from races in the 1950s, old photographs.
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There are some people who are bloggers or who collect this kind
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of stuff, so I was able to contact them and get some information.
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There's really not a whole lot.
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In terms of there's books about individual racers, women who have
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like Janet Guthrie and Lynn St.
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James and Denise McCluggage, who achieved great things, but that's
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different than scholarship that sort of looks at women in motorsports as a
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group rather than just an individual.
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I'd like to maybe extend this question to the audience.
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We had some good examples from the panel.
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What are some other good studies or examples of historiography of women in
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racing that we should be aware of, that we should refer to, and what also can help?
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us delve deeper moving forward into putting together more studies about women
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in racing, both on and off the track.
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And I see we have a few hands.
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So Bob's gonna walk around and with the microphone.
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One resource that I've discovered of late is the SCCA magazine that comes out.
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I don't want to say it's not, it's like bi monthly, I guess.
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And it seems like there's a lot of coverage of women in.
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At least grassroots motor sports and through all levels of SCCA competition.
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There are so many different classes and divisions, but it
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seems like there's always an emphasis on women who are involved.
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And typically, it's women who are autocrossing or rallying or, you know,
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it's stories of here's how she got started and here's what she's doing.
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And that's, that's a fascinating resource because it's timely.
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But it's also, it gives you this kind of broad, diverse, really kind of a very
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wide open look at all the different ways that women can get involved in racing.
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You know, from timing and scoring at an event, which leads to
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autocross, which leads to rallying, and the stories are fascinating.
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And it's a really nice resource.
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One of those ripped from the headlines things is Kelly Earnhardt Miller
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has an autobiography out right now.
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On her growing up in the Earnhardt household and currently
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running Junior Motorsports.
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Who in two and a half hours are going to have three drivers racing
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for the Xfinity Championship.
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It's a very detailed book on, uh, her life in managing this race team
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with her, uh, brother Dale Junior.
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It's a super read and it's, it's out right now.
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I wouldn't miss it.
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So there's a few books that concentrate on woman drivers, and I don't know how
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scholarly they are, but they definitely cover a wide range of woman drivers.
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One of them is called Fast Ladies, Female Racing Drivers 1888 to 1970.
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It's a Eurocentric approach, so most of the drivers are from Europe, but
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it had some very fascinating stories about some very eclectic characters who
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were racing back then, female racers.
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Though I don't think they mentioned Shell, again going back to that idea
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that she gets, oh she is in there?
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It's been a while since I read it.
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It's written by a, a French author who, there's no way I'm going to
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attempt to pronounce that name.
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Who's on kick?
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Who's on kick?
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Yes, yes, yes.
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And then there's also a book that Todd McCarthy wrote called Fast
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Woman, Legendary Ladies, and Race In.
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And there's also the, uh, Driven by Desire, the Desiree Wilson story,
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written by her husband, Alan Wilson.
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But that I found to be a very fascinating book, because it really
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delves into her racing as a woman, what it took to race as a woman.
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She's from South Africa, initially went to Europe when she, when they realized
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she was getting good and needed to go to Europe, and the attitudes of
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how other drivers initially took her.
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As a female race driver until, but she was very aggressive driver and it got
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to the point where some of the male drivers were literally scared of her.
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If they wronged her on the racetrack or what kind of revenge she would seek on
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them, he's mentioned probably about 95 percent of the books on the historiography
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list that you can come up with.
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The problem is in motorsport in general, there's almost no historiography when you
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start drilling down into the women's side.
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Mark hit one of a few sources, that is NCCA in the last 20, 30
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years, I guess, more emphasis on women and their different roles.
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If you go back to Buzz's lane, I just did a historiography on the origin of
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stock car racing, and it could have gone on if I had just taken the whole thing.
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Probably about 500 pages and most of it's whining about why we
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don't have certain topics covered.
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But one of the topics I think that gets overlooked is women roles.
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We keep talking about everyone in the car, autocross, etc.
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USAC had a female car owner of the championship car and
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she couldn't go into the pits.
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Same thing, and this is the sort of thing.
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But if you start taking that look, historiography speaking, there is very
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little about, there is some, true, but there's not a lot about the role of women
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as track owners and track operators.
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What about all the scoring and administrative roles that go on?
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Those are just sort of assumed.
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It's one of those blinding flashes of the obvious to
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everyone that they're just there.
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a little bit without that infrastructure and there's been so little work on it.
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I kept looking and looking and looking and of course I'm too lazy to write
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about it at this point in my life.
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But the point is, there is this role of females, women, from top to bottom
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as age span, that really have played an enormous role in motor sport,
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particularly in the United States, Australia and New Zealand as well.
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Very similar situation.
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You're kind of a mixed bag, when I started looking at it.
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But it is a wide open field to look into this other aspect.
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I don't know, I tried to count the number of biographies of Danica, and
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I think I got to somewhere around 35.
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If that, She's done a great deal.
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She's probably, if you had to do, photography sources, period.
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As far as academic sources, the word zilch, it comes easily to my list because
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when I started looking through articles, when I started going through JSTOR, all
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those other sources, it was a desert.
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And you know exactly how this is, Chris.
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You've been down that road as well.
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There simply isn't exists.
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Even the books that you mentioned, there's no, there's no bibliography, so you don't
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know where he got his information from.
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They're all named Fast Women, but I'm using these books, but I'm thinking, how
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do I know that what he's saying is true?
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Because he had no proof.
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That's exactly the point that I think gets lost, is the fact that
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you and I understand the idea of where does this come from?
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Where are the sources?
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All these books, Fast Women, Fast Ladies.
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are nice stories, but we're the footnotes.
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I will take transcripts, et cetera, but you take those with
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a grain of salt after a point.
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Not to say that Motorsport has a bad reputation on this for exaggeration.
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I know Buzz knows that everything he's been told is true over the years.
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Out fail.
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Same thing with Dan.
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But really, it is a good question that we don't have a good answer for.
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As far as that goes, as far as I'm concerned.
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I know Buzz has got an enormous resource of, uh, material and I think if you went
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back through it, it would be very spotty.
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I would say you, you're right about Stock Car Racing Magazine.
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There was a couple of issues, but that didn't last long, if I recall.
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Yeah.
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It, it came out in 66 and last until about, I don't know, probably 2010 maybe.
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Yeah.
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It, it kind of changed hands a couple times.
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Yeah.
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And, and, and in the editorial content.
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changed as well.
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That's exactly what I found is I'm somewhat new to the research looking
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at Lucy specifically and really I was looking at these books that focus on women
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as drivers and they focus on these hero stories which are great in terms of the
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filmmaker, great, I can focus on that.
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But as you were saying, a lot of the books I found either had no citations
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at all or were really kind of a collection that was almost personal.
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Which are great resources, but then when you're trying to figure out,
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okay, but where was she on that date?
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But where did she actually go?
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What did, you know, who was actually there at that race that day?
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And specifically, Lucy's work as a team owner in principle,
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I mean, was unprecedented.
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But there were a lot of women around, but how do we find out?
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Where they were at every level, not just the hero stories, but
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taking a look at, say, like, what percentage of entrants were women.
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I couldn't find that.
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I didn't know.
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I mean, I could kind of guess just from looking at all the names.
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I found that either I was looking at books that were stories about women without a
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lot of citation, or I was looking at books about Delahaye that just left Lucy out.
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I don't know why they did.
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I truly don't.
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Or they wrongly accredited Lori as the owner of the team.
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Some of that I think they were repeating received wisdom.
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Which I don't think that's exclusive to motor sports, so that happens,
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you know, I worked in Hollywood.
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It also has a problem with received wisdom being set in concrete
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sometimes, and you gotta go in with a jackhammer and break it.
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And I think that's what great scholarship can do.
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But I wanted to emphasize that, of course, there are actually, you know,
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lots of books I can recommend about that time period, but to bring up
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current resources for women in driving, I was um, Emailing with Cindy Sisson
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produced an amazing documentary on Betty Skelton, and that was terrific.
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And she also just was running the Women With Drives Summit that they
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just had outside of Atlanta, and she sent me some numbers on it.
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The 2022 summit was sold out with 330 attendees.
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87 percent female, 13 percent male, some of the biggest
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names in motorsports industry.
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350 media impressions, not counting social media.
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35 sponsors.
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27 female drivers and 16 female driven cars.
22:27
Wanted to remind you that, uh, 2023 will be happening in Phoenix,
22:31
November 7th and 8th, 2023.
22:34
But both events like Women With Drives Summit are ways that women,
22:38
contemporarily, are trying to connect with each other and put each
22:42
other at every level of the sport.
22:44
You know, it's important to have people on the pit wall.
22:47
in the boardroom, you know, across the board.
22:49
And there's also recently a summit on women in motorsports at the, uh,
22:54
yeah, yeah, Automotive Hall of Fame.
22:55
Thank you, Okay, okay, you were there.
22:57
I was there online.
22:58
And that's where we watched the movie.
23:00
But they talk about womeninmotorsportsna.
23:03
org which stands for Women in Motorsports North America which is,
23:06
they're trying to make this portable where any young woman interested in
23:09
motorsports goes there to learn about what kind of jobs are, are available.
23:13
Like, what should I be looking to do if this is something that interests me?
23:16
Like, internships, other examples of women in leadership, from, right
23:21
now, contemporary in motor sports.
23:23
Things like that, you know, sisters doing it for themselves, you know what I mean?
23:26
I, I, that's happening, and that's out there, and it's something, you know,
23:30
I'd like to talk more about and hear more about, but in terms of, there's
23:33
that prong, and then the history prong of like, An actual scholarly
23:37
look at how women were participating.
23:39
I'm just finding those, those kind of hero stories.
23:41
I'm not finding a lot of.
23:44
Let's do one more from the audience and then we'll move on.
23:46
I'd just like to say, well, two comments.
23:48
One, lack of proper documentation of women in motorsports certainly
23:54
is in American oval racing.
23:56
The reality is that there have been many women.
23:58
who have entered cars.
24:00
One, of course, the most prominent was, uh, she was the chairman of the
24:04
Indianapolis Motor Speedway board.
24:07
Mary Holman George.
24:08
Yes, Mary Holman George owned and ran a car for many, many years.
24:13
So there is that whole history.
24:15
And there were a lot of women.
24:16
Who had a role in American oval track racing, but to change the subject a
24:20
little, I think one of the issues and the problems that arises with motor
24:26
sports is that now, particularly, but in the past as well, the ladder system
24:32
that is the system in which people move up through in the competitive world.
24:38
is a tough one.
24:39
I think that if a young woman came to me and said, I want to be a race
24:43
car driver, I think the first thing I'd tell her is get into carts.
24:47
If she's young to learn how to drive a go cart, get in there and
24:51
there's excellent competition.
24:53
It's relatively safe.
24:55
It can be very fast.
24:56
It's one way, a step to, to move up another aspect, which
25:01
has not been covered, but.
25:03
Again, is, is there and I mean, I know several really well accomplished
25:08
women who are in vintage racing, who own and drive vintage racing
25:12
cars and who drive them very well.
25:15
Mrs.
25:16
McNeil, who owned a GTO, very well known, she raced that car as though,
25:21
I mean, they're 50 million cars.
25:23
She races as though it was a 10, 000 car.
25:26
She drove the wheels off that thing and a very good driver.
25:30
I think that it would be kind of interesting to do an article on, on her
25:33
and, and several other women that I know who've done very well in vintage racing.
25:37
So those things are not only the opportunities in vintage racing,
25:41
but also there is a history, as I say, in American oval racing.
25:46
Much more in terms of entry and ownership, uh, in opportunity, in
25:50
go karts, and in vintage racing.
25:52
Those are the comments I'd have for both young women and scholars, uh, relative
25:58
to searching for the participation and the importance of women in motorsport.
26:02
Thanks to everyone.
26:03
And this is exactly why I hesitated to put together pages and pages upon
26:08
pages of notes of potential topics.
26:11
Because just now I came up with seven different directions we can take
26:14
this conversation, and I'm sure there are more, so thanks to everyone.
26:18
We have, uh, online participation as well.
26:21
Darren says, just to note, that on Tuesday, Latasha Kazi was named
26:26
track president of Phoenix Raceway and is the first ever female African
26:29
American track president in NASCAR history and the second woman to hold
26:33
the position at Phoenix Raceway.
26:35
So thanks, thanks to our, uh, online participant for
26:38
bringing up that important.
26:40
Uh, monumental tidbit of information.
26:42
I'd like to ask my panel, but maybe ask the audience this as well.
26:47
We were talking about sources.
26:49
One is, is, in many instances, when these hero books, pioneer type
26:53
books are written, they're fantastic stories, they're inspiring stories,
26:57
but often they're autobiographical in nature, and so they're not cited.
27:01
They're not, there really aren't any footnotes associated with these
27:04
personal stories that are being told.
27:06
One way Alternate way of getting that type of information is through oral histories.
27:11
There's been, I think, a greater movement.
27:13
as of late to compile oral histories on, on all different
27:17
types of topics and subjects.
27:18
And, and it's critical, of course, to get these stories before it's too late.
27:23
So I'm asking the audience and the panel as well, is, is there a automotive
27:27
library or a collection or a museum or a hall of fame or even an individual
27:32
that has conducted an extensive number of oral histories with some of
27:35
these well known and maybe close to forgotten women participants in all
27:40
different types of motor sports because those we can use as primary sources.
27:45
If those oral histories haven't been conducted yet, I think that could be
27:49
some of the work ahead for all of us because it's critical that we document
27:53
and we talk to these people and we capture their voices on tape now before
27:57
we no longer have the opportunity.
27:59
So does anybody have any directions we can go into or is anybody aware of
28:03
where there might be a repository of women in racing and oral histories?
28:07
It might be some at the Benson Ford in Dearborn.
28:09
They have a lot of oral histories, uh, women in automotive.
28:13
I don't know specifically if there are any about women in motorsports, so
28:16
that might be a good place to start.
28:18
Okay.
28:19
Anywhere else?
28:20
So, thank you for that, Chris.
28:21
That's one place.
28:22
And about how many do you know approximately?
28:24
We're talking dozens or hundreds, or?
28:26
Is it just automotive in nature, or is it automotive racing, automobile racing?
28:34
Automotive.
28:35
Okay.
28:59
Anybody in the audience have any other suggestions besides that?
29:03
I've got a possibility and Buzz, I don't know, you live right down by there, but
29:07
the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, there are a lot of women who've been
29:11
inducted in there in all disciplines.
29:15
I mean, aviation and motorcycles and drag racing and everything.
29:19
And I'm not sure, but I'm thinking there might be a chance Some oral history
29:25
there because I think George Levy is one of those guys who tries to collect
29:30
anything and everything and I think that's Possibility as a place to go and
29:35
find some primary source material Yeah, I think if not, I think George would be
29:39
the type of person that would want to pursue such a project There's no question
29:43
about it I'll check into that, Mark.
29:45
What about here at the center?
29:46
Have there been some that have been conducted over the years with some
29:49
of the guest speakers that have spoken here at the research center?
29:53
Have any of them been recorded by any chance?
29:56
So I'm just asking some of the, some of the staff that are in the audience.
29:59
Or even Lynn St.
30:00
James was honored last year was, perhaps, was her speech captured?
30:04
That's
30:22
She was interviewed at the Automotive Hall of Fame event.
30:25
She was zoomed in, but she was talking.
30:27
So that's recorded somewhere.
30:35
I think, uh, thank you.
30:37
And with Lynn, I guess her autobiography, from a racing
30:41
standpoint Correct me if I'm wrong.
30:43
I think it came out almost 20 years ago.
30:45
Is that about right?
30:46
Just the nod from the audience.
30:47
I think there's a, there's a whole second volume now that she's going to need to
30:51
put together regarding the work that she's done since she, she hung up her helmet.
30:54
It's just really been incredible.
30:56
And it's, and it's ongoing as recently as the event that took
30:59
place just a couple of weeks ago.
31:01
In Lynn's case, you have that biographical story that's already
31:04
been published where we can look at racing in the eighties and nineties
31:08
through that lens, through her lens.
31:10
If she decides to, or if she continues to give interviews, we can now look at,
31:13
historiography wise, you know, what she's been able to accomplish off the track,
31:17
ever since she retired as a, as a racer.
31:20
Yeah, just to go back to the original question of where are some
31:23
of the repositories and such just thinking about one of yesterday's
31:28
Presentations podcast it came to mind.
31:30
So just a cursory search online of Women in motorsport podcasts a
31:35
number of different ones come up one on Spotify females and motorsport
31:39
There's one on Amazon that has over 50 some odd episodes called Women
31:44
Shifting Gears with Amanda Busek.
31:47
There's also on Audible, Women in Jag Wire motor sports, so they're out there.
31:53
I think just need to get a little bit more creative on how we try and
31:57
get these Firsthand accounts, but the technology that we have now is
32:02
allowing us to conduct them a lot more Frequently and easily and more accessible
32:06
as you'd mentioned with podcasts.
32:08
They don't had not have to be transcribed And that was, you know, that's always
32:12
been one of the big challenges.
32:13
It's great to capture the voices on tape, uh, but it's, it's tedious
32:16
to go back and listen and it's even more tedious to transcribe.
32:19
And so it's a good example of how that information now is more readily
32:23
available because of podcasts.
32:25
Familiar with, with a little bit of what Mike had mentioned, but go back
32:28
to what Don had said about sources.
32:31
What are the nature of the podcasts?
32:33
Are these how one finished at such and such race, for instance, or, you
32:37
know, what was The finishing order or how they became involved in, in
32:41
racing and in their sponsorship, but are there deeper historical questions
32:45
being asked by the interviewers, you know, different questions, uh, looking
32:49
at the women in racing through social lenses, through cultural lenses, some
32:53
of the other factors that might've been involved and, and are they limited
32:57
just a racers to and to car owners?
32:59
Don mentioned spotters.
33:00
I believe it was done to mention spotters a little while ago.
33:04
I'm not, I'm sorry, not spotters.
33:06
Timers, scoring and timing.
33:08
Buzz, and this is one of the ideas that I jotted down.
33:11
In the early days of NASCAR, racing wives, the NASCAR wives were keeping
33:16
score in many instances, weren't they?
33:18
Yeah, Lee Petty's wife especially, Elizabeth.
33:21
And there's always been speculation that she might have got a
33:23
little creative with her pencil.
33:25
It's hard to say.
33:26
I don't know if that's ever been substantiated or not.
33:28
Anyway, it was a whole different system back in those days.
33:31
It was kind of loosey goosey.
33:33
See, right there, that's loaded.
33:35
What you just mentioned.
33:36
There's no way to substantiate it, but the fact that you mentioned it
33:39
has to make us think a little bit more deeply about some of the race wins.
33:43
Before it's computer timing and scoring, if spouses are doing the
33:47
scoring, there's no real policing going on in the early days.
33:51
It's something that we might not be able to ever answer, but
33:54
it's something to think about.
33:55
Oh yeah, it's definitely something to think about.
33:57
Have you thought about considering some advertising,
34:00
like soliciting for um, input?
34:02
Like in, you know, a national publication like Hagerty, for instance,
34:06
or Hemings Home Motor News, or The S.
34:09
C.
34:09
C.
34:10
A.
34:10
Magazine.
34:12
Just a thought.
34:13
If I was or if one was to pursue an extensive project, those would definitely
34:19
be publications worth reaching out to.
34:21
Of course, funding drives motor sports both On the track and off the track.
34:26
And so of course, that's a factor too, if there's a company or a corporation
34:31
or an individual that's looking to fund or donate towards a project such as a
34:36
women's women in racing, oral history project, that would be fantastic.
34:39
Something I would certainly be interested in pursuing.
34:42
And I think I wouldn't be the only one in this room that would be interested
34:46
in if they had the opportunity and the resources in the time to compile an
34:50
extensive oral history project with women and maybe using some of those publications
34:53
as potential resources or even arenas for publication, that would be terrific.
34:58
Something to keep in mind.
34:59
Talking about scores.
35:01
Don't forget Judy Stropas, who's well known here and who is very famous.
35:06
as a score by hand for endurance racing.
35:10
Judy was just selected to the, um, Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.
35:13
She went in last year.
35:14
What about Darrell Walsh's wife, Stevie?
35:16
Yeah, that's, that's a really neat deal.
35:18
She was considered the car owner.
35:19
She was always the scorer, too.
35:21
But, you know, up until about the mid 70s, women were not allowed in the pits.
35:25
She's the one who really went to bat and said, Wait a minute, I'm the car owner.
35:29
I should be involved in the pits.
35:31
And she's one who really broke that gender barrier.
35:33
So you gotta give her a lot of credit.
35:34
There's also the question of just how deeply we should dive, but how
35:38
broad can we extend our research?
35:40
How far beyond, on and off the track, we can extend our studies, and who do we
35:45
need to speak with, or who has stories that do fit into what we're trying to
35:50
learn as we try to learn more about racing, more about racing history.
35:53
I was talking to a colleague about this roundtable a couple days ago, and
35:58
the colleague mentioned Linda Vaughn.
36:01
I said, yeah, I think by all means, Linda Vaughn, she has been involved with motor
36:06
sports for decades and rather recently gives me an opportunity again to refer
36:11
to Buzz about a Linda Vaughn story from not too long ago on your radio show.
36:16
I believe it was her down in Daytona, just how well known she is and how well
36:20
connected she is with motor sports and how far back her association with racing goes.
36:27
She goes back to about 1960, 61, she was just a mere child.
36:31
She was Miss Pontiac and Miss Firebird and Miss Hurst Goldenshifter
36:34
and all that sort of thing.
36:35
She's got a whale of a biography out, came out a couple of years ago and it's
36:38
really, really good and it's amazing to see the breadth of her career and the
36:42
people that she was associated with.
36:44
She's almost your one stop shop as far as coming up with information
36:49
about females in sports and in the racing aspect of things.
36:52
I would advise you get that book.
36:54
It is really good.
36:55
I'd ask my other two co panelists.
36:58
Are there any examples of women not maybe involved in racing or engineering
37:03
or ownership, but still have a story to tell that we might learn racing
37:08
history through their stories?
37:09
Are you asking about women in other disciplines, or just women
37:13
who weren't in any official role in racing, but maybe because they
37:16
were somebody's spouse or daughter?
37:18
Is that what you mean?
37:19
Yeah, and I was getting towards that too.
37:20
I've found in my research over the years, and I'm curious if it's applied
37:25
to my co panelists and to the crowd too, that in many instances, it's spouses
37:30
that are the keepers of the history.
37:31
Scrapbooks.
37:32
In many instances, it's the spouses that kept the scrapbooks over the years.
37:36
When Buzz and I were working at the National Hall of Fame, and it
37:38
was time to select artifacts for, um, the induction exhibits, in many
37:43
cases, it was not the inductee that we met with, it was the spouse.
37:47
It was the wife who helped us select the artifacts.
37:50
So that's one example.
37:51
We've been able to gain a lot of knowledge.
37:53
We've been able to learn a lot from hearing the stories
37:57
from lives of competitors.
37:59
Not just racers, but engineers.
38:01
Because they've often been keepers of the histories, and they're the ones
38:04
that have kept those primary sources.
38:07
A great example is Francis Flock kept an incredible collection of newspaper
38:12
clippings from the 40s and 50s.
38:15
Not only did she amass an incredible collection for just the size of
38:18
it, it was preserved very well.
38:20
And so, you know, she passed away a couple years ago, but now, those early
38:24
days of NASCAR and those pre NASCAR days that Buzz alluded to a little
38:28
while ago, where they're really It's not a great deal of information, uh,
38:33
nevermind a lot of cited information.
38:35
Frances Flock is one of those racing wives who really did us a great service
38:40
by keeping such a great record of not just her husband's career, but
38:44
also what was going on in NASCAR and in motorsports in those early days.
38:48
Uh, when I was doing the research for the book chapter, I came across, there
38:53
were some columns in a magazine, I don't know if it was Open Wheel or another
38:56
one, but it was Tales from Racing Wives, and they had a regular feature where
39:03
women would tell what it was like to be married to a guy who raced cars, so
39:08
that might be a source for something.
39:10
That's an interesting aspect, because the, the wives.
39:13
to hear their stories, especially the wives of the fifties.
39:16
Marshall Teague's wife, Mitzi, told us the story.
39:18
Marshall ran Indianapolis twice.
39:20
He was later killed at Daytona testing an IndyCar.
39:23
But she said that every May all the women, all the wives would sit down
39:26
in the first turn a separate little section and they drink every day because
39:30
they knew that one of them was going to come home a widow and they didn't
39:33
know whose turn it was going to be.
39:34
This is back in the mid fifties.
39:36
She said that was just the nature of the sport.
39:38
And they were killing guys left and right back in those days.
39:40
It was really unfortunate.
39:41
Fireball Robert's wife told the story about how one time they went duck
39:46
hunting and uh, Fireball's retriever was sick so she had to be the retriever.
39:51
She went out and went duck hunting with them and she was going to have
39:54
to go out and bring the ducks back in.
39:56
So some of these women would do anything for their husbands.
40:00
I'll just mention here that because I was really focused on the interwar
40:03
period, most of the people who experienced it first hand are dead.
40:07
But I will say that I know that Lucy Shell had, there was Harry, and
40:11
then there was another son, Philip.
40:12
And Philip kind of functioned as a historian for a while.
40:15
I know he was a source for some information for some of these
40:19
books that had no citations.
40:21
But I haven't been able to find any.
40:23
Personal papers or writings he may have had.
40:25
So if anyone finds them, I'll give you my card please and send it
40:29
along because I'd like to see it.
40:31
How about in the audience, if Mark has his hand up?
40:33
I have a question that kind of cycles back around to when we
40:36
were talking about Linda Vaughn.
40:38
Linda has a career in motorsports, a lot of connections.
40:41
But she was primarily known as Miss Hershifter, you know, Miss Firebird.
40:47
I'm wondering about that aspect of women in motor sports, you know, the, the
40:51
trophy queen kind of a model, you know, the, the, uh, union 76 race stoppers,
40:57
miss Winston, miss sprint cup, you know, all of that whole lineage who worked as
41:03
corporate spokespeople and sort of a, a trophy queen, you know, I remember miss
41:09
Winston going around working on teams and she'd come to the hauler with a big duffel
41:14
bag full of, Winston products and she'd stop and she'd say, what do you want?
41:19
I didn't smoke or anything, but the guys on the team would say, I need a
41:22
sleeve of chew, you know, or snuff.
41:24
And I need a pack of cigarettes.
41:26
So they were, they were marketing the product, but then they would also stop
41:29
and they'd talk and they'd ask questions about how's the team, you know, anything,
41:33
any newsworthy material that, you know, that you want us to know about.
41:37
But then on Sunday, they'd stand there and smile and, you know, hug the driver and,
41:41
and there's that kind of liminal space.
41:43
of that Trophy Queen, Beauty Queen, whatever you want to call them.
41:47
But then they also have that corporate connection.
41:49
And I'm just wondering if like, if Unocal would have records?
41:53
If Winston has records?
41:55
Or R.
41:56
J.
41:56
Reynolds?
41:56
You know, if you could go back and look at that, in terms of that
42:00
aspect of women in motorsports.
42:02
It's not competition, but it is still marketing and
42:06
publicity and media relations.
42:08
Which is, um, that's what keeps the wheels turning.
42:11
You know, so.
42:11
That's right.
42:12
Just a thought.
42:13
So, to dovetail off your point, it's very important, there's a lot of women,
42:16
let's say, behind the scenes in the motorsport world, and as a matter of
42:19
fact, this week, we released an episode with Wendy Charlier, who's basically
42:23
runs the show at Porterfield Brakes, she took over for SCCA Hall of Famer
42:27
Andy Porterfield, she's been running the show since he passed away in 2012,
42:30
and she's an extremely astute technical resource when it comes to braking, braking
42:35
technology, all that kind of stuff, and she really is Not so much the forward face
42:39
of Porterfield, but she's the person you get on the phone and gives you that one
42:42
to one relationship with that company.
42:44
And she's absolutely fantastic, and we got to go behind the scenes
42:47
with her and talk about all that.
42:48
So again, there's a lot of people in the industry that aren't the
42:51
forward facing celebrity folks that are also interesting to talk to and
42:55
capture their oral histories as well.
42:57
So I just wanted to point that out.
42:58
Thank you.
42:59
Mark kind of stole some of what I was going to say.
43:02
But basically, to answer your question, one of the things that I would suggest,
43:06
you almost have to do a mind sweep.
43:08
You basically have to go back to zero.
43:10
If you want to really find out the role of women in motorsport,
43:15
autocross, and drag racing seem to be the two they've really excelled at.
43:19
Sylvia Wilkinson's book.
43:21
Start looking at authors, Elizabeth Hayworth, and on and on and on.
43:24
I would suggest, if I had a grad student who had, uh, and I had the
43:28
funding, would basically clear the deck.
43:31
Go back to zero and start looking at these various components and then set up
43:37
these categories, the off track, on track.
43:40
Mark hit one that I think has been well overlooked and
43:44
ignored, is that corporate piece, particularly with that relationship.
43:49
Start looking at those things.
43:51
It's too much for a person.
43:53
But until you start breaking down the various categories in which to
43:58
begin your research, maybe combine a few of them, but it's there.
44:03
I know finding about somebody like Lucy O'Reilly Schell is not so different than
44:10
So and so and so and so and so and so.
44:12
And as Buzz points out, there's resources that we don't know about in some
44:16
cases because nobody ever looks there.
44:18
Appalachian State University built a library.
44:21
It's got Suzanne Wise's collection of stuff.
44:25
All kinds, not just stock car racing, I've found out.
44:28
A lot of stuff.
44:29
You got REVS, you got the Research Center here.
44:32
But unless you start doing categories, the authors, we haven't even talked
44:36
about really authors that much.
44:38
is a separate category.
44:40
There's a whole list of those people.
44:42
And not just fact, what about all this fiction?
44:45
Most of it seems to be written by females, or using a female name, for some reason.
44:51
So there's a lot of places, I mean this is a, it's almost
44:55
overwhelming, to be perfectly honest, when you start digging it back.
44:58
And here it is 50 years later, and we still are asking all these basic research
45:02
questions about where it's coming from.
45:07
But that's true in anything that has to do with women in automobiles.
45:11
There has been basically nothing written.
45:14
You know, there are a couple of historians that have approached it.
45:17
I've tried to look at the cultural aspect of women's involvement in
45:20
car culture in various locations.
45:22
It's such a wide open topic.
45:24
There's so many routes you can take.
45:26
There just aren't enough people interested in writing it.
45:29
I'm trying to do my best, but I'm not getting any younger.
45:32
It's just not motorsports.
45:34
It's women in automotive history in total.
45:36
When I'm doing my research on the early years of motor sport, you have
45:41
to understand automobile and I see all this periphery material rabbit holes
45:46
where their women are involved in.
45:48
It's really hard, you know, uh, not to want to go down those holes because
45:52
you've got enough problems as it is.
45:53
But yeah, this is an area that really, I think, Dan, I think is this panel.
45:59
He's pointing out there's a lot of work here, and a lot of it is just knitting.
46:04
You know, it's just the grunt work of digging and digging some
46:07
of the stuff on the surface.
46:08
I think we have a fairly decent handle on somebody didn't just come out of the blue.
46:12
So, there's that, and then there's also, we don't do literature searches
46:17
now, Mike, we do what, media searches?
46:19
So that opens up that whole world of research that we probably have not
46:24
tapped into at all to any extent.
46:27
That's my story and I'm sticking to it, Dan, so.
46:30
I want to just go back to what Mark had mentioned.
46:34
Yes, Reynolds and Unocal had numerous publicity photos of their women
46:40
marketing their models and such.
46:42
But unfortunately, there's many instances, there's no name.
46:45
Right?
46:46
There's just pictures.
46:47
In other instances, there is just the name.
46:49
But these pictures now are 40, 50 years old.
46:51
These photos, where are they?
46:53
Many have probably passed on.
46:55
And, uh, it's just another reminder, I guess, of how Don likes to mention that
46:59
we all have a lot of work to do, and that's one reason why we're all here.
47:02
There's a few reasons why we're all here, and that's one is we're
47:05
doing that work, and we're talking about our work, and we're looking
47:09
forward to new work down the line.
47:11
It's also that concern of losing history, but there's an
47:13
example of where we have photos.
47:15
Publicity photos, but we don't really know anything about these ladies.
47:18
Where did they wind up, you know, what did they go on to do after
47:21
they moved on from working for R.
47:23
J.
47:24
Reynolds or working at the racetrack?
47:25
And it's an observation that in 50 years since Title IX,
47:30
race queen ology has declined.
47:32
It's safe to say it's not as it once was.
47:35
I'm gonna say it was about 10 years ago now when F1 did away with the grid girls.
47:39
You know, that's something that the next generation, I think, there's
47:43
going to be even significantly less of, of race queen culture.
47:47
And, and so, scholars down the road, the next generation, they're gonna have that
47:51
task of, well, this is how races, this is what happened after somebody won a race.
47:56
Wendell Scott in 1963 in Jacksonville, what happened?
47:59
The race queen wouldn't be willing to kiss Wendell Scott.
48:02
Was that correct?
48:03
I'd Yeah, that's right, because the race was determined later on,
48:11
but I remember that being one of the concerns was the publicity.
48:15
Now Jacksonville is the deep south of.
48:18
The racing queen kissing Wendell Scott in 1963 after claiming victory in the race.
48:24
So these are bigger than winning and losing on the track.
48:27
These are bigger historical questions.
48:29
We're talking about questions of race.
48:30
We're talking about cultural questions, geographic and regional questions.
48:34
And so it's little examples of how we can take.
48:37
Some deeper dives.
48:39
Yeah, I was just going to say I seen, you know, there's a picture
48:42
of Cara Hendrick, a midget back there, and she was killed in 91.
48:46
And, but this year has been a historical year for female drivers, actually, because
48:51
Jade Avedesian is a midget driver, and she won two midget races for the new
48:56
World Outlaw Extreme Series, which is the first time probably females won.
49:01
A national series, you know, and also Kaylee Bryson has was on the pole or not
49:06
on the pole, but she was on the front row of the Springfield mild dirt race
49:10
and she had some engine problems, but she led a good portion of race and she
49:13
ran the high side of a mild dirt track.
49:16
If you went to Syracuse or a mile, usually people run the bottom, but
49:19
the people were amazed how brave she was running the high side.
49:22
And then she led for a while and then she had a problem with getting fifth
49:26
and there's another Taylor Ferns, a lady that's been around for a while.
49:29
I'll be.
49:30
She finished on the podium for 2U SAC Silver Crown pavement race,
49:34
I think, at Winchester and IRP.
49:36
And there's another, Taylor Reimer, who won a race this year at Millbridge.
49:40
She was actually finished second, but the guy got disqualified, so she won.
49:43
So, you've had two women win, you know, national series races this year
49:48
in the midgets, and start on the front row of a Silver Crown race and finish.
49:53
and on the podium, a couple of them and stuff like that.
49:55
And Kelly Bryson also qualified for the aiming for the chili ball this year.
50:00
First female to do that.
50:01
And Taylor Reimer Bryson also started on front row, the turkey
50:05
night Grand Prix last year for the midgets big race for that.
50:08
So we've had a lot of, you know, pretty famous big races and things with the
50:12
short track, with the sprint cars.
50:14
And all that and midgets or what the midgets actually the silver crown cars
50:17
and a lot of them are pretty young.
50:20
So, you know, it might have a potential to move up.
50:22
I mean, uh, you know, Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon, Christopher
50:26
Bell and Kyle Larson did pretty good from midgets and stuff.
50:29
And so did AJ Foyt and Mario Andretti, right?
50:31
So, you know, there's a shot you're young and Look like they're pretty talented.
50:34
So in that, so this year was a pretty good year for the female drivers and
50:37
on the short tracks when I started our conversation, I knew there were gonna
50:41
be some names we were gonna forget to mention, but I also knew there were
50:43
gonna be some other names that maybe some of us have heard for the first time.
50:46
I guess a bigger question.
50:48
You mentioned Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart.
50:50
Will one or any of these young women drivers have opportunities
50:56
to climb that ladder system?
50:58
You know, I think that's one question that continues to linger.
51:01
Again, you know, money buys speed.
51:03
It's been that way since 1894.
51:05
Will significant Corporate sponsorship step up and promote and sponsor.
51:11
Maybe one of the ladies that you had just mentioned Or some of the others
51:14
that are excelling in some of the lower divisions of motorsports I think it's
51:18
safe to say women have been excelling at lower divisions of motorsports and
51:23
some higher divisions of motorsports For a long time, even before 1972.
51:27
And it's not just for women.
51:28
Of course, there are men drivers to that fail to get sponsorship
51:31
opportunities and their careers kind of, you know, they, they stall for women.
51:35
There, there really have not been a lot of instances where they've
51:38
had that full backing in the NHRA.
51:41
Maybe we've seen more of that, but other types of motor sports, other racing
51:45
disciplines, we haven't seen that.
51:47
And when is it going to change a Janet Guthrie quit racing?
51:51
Not because she wanted to stop racing, she just could not get any money.
51:55
And she said, I hated to have to stop doing it, but I couldn't
51:59
do it because nobody was willing to help me in the early 80s.
52:02
And that was a little over 40 years ago, and here we are now, we have terrific
52:05
talent in all different types of racing, and there's movements, Lynn St.
52:10
James, and some of the other initiatives that are taking place, not just in the U.
52:14
S., but across the world.
52:15
Why is it still taking?
52:17
A long time, you know, that was kind of how I wanted to wind this down as we get
52:21
closer to our limit today is just having a little bit of, there was a little bit
52:25
of a conversation in 2017 here at the symposium, which is part of the reason why
52:30
I wanted to have this conversation too, and I think Don, you might remember that
52:34
Pat Young was on stage as well, and it kind of planted that thought in my head.
52:38
What's it going to take as we move forward looking at the next 50 years for
52:42
that breakout, that big breakthrough?
52:44
We've seen it in the NHRA.
52:46
We've seen it in land speed records.
52:47
We've seen in other types of racing, but what about NASCAR?
52:50
What about an IndyCar?
52:51
What about an F1?
52:52
What about on world of outlaws?
52:54
Of course, I'm going to miss.
52:55
It's an example of one.
52:57
Why isn't it happening and when will it happen?
52:59
It's been mentioned a couple times, I know Lauren mentioned it, I know
53:02
Don mentioned it, about books being written and then not being adequately
53:06
footnoted to be able to retrace the steps of the author of that book.
53:10
But I recall several years ago when Beverly Rae Kime, the author, passed
53:15
away, they were looking for some place that would accept her notes
53:19
so that that would not be lost.
53:22
And nobody wants it, and I think that's wrong, because somebody's
53:26
already done all the hard work, somebody's done the legwork,
53:29
somebody's found that obscure source that the rest of us have no idea of.
53:35
I would plead with all of you here that have written something, that
53:38
have file cabinets, or digital files these days, full of information, that
53:44
you make an accommodation for that to go somewhere upon your demise.
53:48
So that it can be preserved.
53:50
I'll just plug and say, talk to your state planning attorney, because you can
53:54
absolutely put, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm just related to a ton of lawyers.
53:58
And that's becoming more and more common as people, intellectual
54:00
property and things like that, making provisions for it in either
54:03
your will or your revocable trust.
54:05
But anyway, I, what I wanted to get back to was the, that's the
54:08
second, she's also the co author of Renee Dreyfuss autobiography.
54:12
And she's a terrific writer.
54:14
Back to your question about why things still are, I've
54:16
been thinking a lot about this.
54:18
Because I love Formula One, but I'm also willing to admit it has a lot of problems.
54:22
I come from a Hollywood background, and it's a lot of the same
54:25
problems that Hollywood has.
54:26
And I see it there.
54:27
And so when we talk about how competitive and crazy it is now, even Lewis Hamilton
54:32
says, nobody can do what he did.
54:34
which was he and his dad built a go kart and started succeeding.
54:37
Nowadays, kids need tens of thousands of dollars to get onto a karting team.
54:42
They can't just show up with one they built.
54:44
It starts professional and it starts young.
54:46
In looking at karting as one of these platforms, which then funnels up, for
54:51
example, we know that of the tens of thousands of kids who start karting,
54:55
they're gonna drop off, it's gonna get whittled down as they move up the ranks.
54:59
Well, if only 4% of the people who start are women.
55:03
Of course there's not going to be 50 percent of the success
55:07
stories that are women.
55:07
It's just a numbers game.
55:09
It has to start young.
55:10
And for me, I remember growing up, the messaging in the media,
55:13
and I'm just talking From personal experience the messaging the media
55:16
about cars was like it's not for you.
55:18
You're a girl.
55:19
You don't understand.
55:20
What's cool These are the cool things that guys like and I'm like that cars ugly.
55:24
They're like you're stupid You don't understand the way cars should look Not
55:27
thinking that it could be women might think differently about design women
55:31
might think differently about cars and thinking about women in autocross They
55:35
also might be thinking differently about The reasons they compete, they're very
55:39
different, so not saying there aren't cutthroat, thirsty women who would
55:43
love to put you in a wall on a track.
55:45
I'm probably one of them.
55:46
But if we're looking at, sort of, bigger numbers, you know, we can't expect
55:51
just a few girls showing up at 8, and then suddenly we're going to have a
55:54
50 percent equity in drivers later on.
55:57
A much better thing they're doing right now in Formula 1 is the teams doing
56:01
diversity and inclusion programs for both their factories and their pit crews.
56:06
They are doing much better there.
56:07
They're going out and they're seeking students from engineering programs,
56:11
and specifically students of color and women, and getting them in there.
56:15
And so right now, for example, the head of strategy at Red Bull Racing is
56:18
a woman about my age, Hannah Schmidt.
56:20
So those things are going better and going well.
56:23
I think the other big example we can use in Formula One is Monisha Kaltenborn, who
56:28
was F1 team principal at Sauber, which is presently operating as Alfa Romeo,
56:32
but she was team principal, I think, 2012 to 2016, 17, before it got sold.
56:38
So, clearly an example of a woman coming up in the ranks and
56:42
being a real leader in the sport.
56:44
And I think it's important to note She didn't get there
56:47
by starting as a grid girl.
56:48
She got there because she was a real professional.
56:51
And I'm so delighted Formula One got rid of grid girls because I'm against
56:55
using human beings as decoration.
56:57
And that's what they were.
56:58
And when a young girl goes to a race and sees everyone in the car is a
57:01
boy and everyone who's decoration is a girl, what does it say to
57:04
her about her potential in life?
57:06
So the question becomes, to the Goodwood grid girls, are they there
57:11
because of It's period there's an opportunity to to wrap things up.
57:15
I think that's really just a very fitting conclusion to our discussion I just
57:20
want to close with the two more points.
57:22
I hope that everyone here found this valuable and insightful I
57:26
know I did and the audience and my panel certainly didn't let me down.
57:30
This has really been terrific I think there are now As we think
57:33
about upcoming symposiums, that we have maybe some other ideas or some
57:38
other topics that we could explore.
57:40
In addition, we had two great ones this afternoon.
57:42
Two great papers that dealt with, with women in racing.
57:45
And so, hopefully this conversation was not only, uh, we enjoyed
57:49
this, but hopefully it'll be beneficial in the future.
57:51
And then, in closing, with just this idea, as we think big, big picture, as
57:56
we think about the next generation and the generation after that, as we get
58:00
older and thinking about our children and grandchildren who are now, they're gonna
58:03
be responsible for keeping the history.
58:06
And getting the younger generations involved is, is become a challenge, I
58:09
think a lot of us would agree on that.
58:11
It's nice to see a lot of younger scholars participating today.
58:14
But how does International Motor Racing Research Center and Women's Motorsports
58:20
Hall of Fame sound, say, maybe in 2042?
58:26
Maybe this would be the place that most halls of fame.
58:30
Honor both men and women, but the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in
58:34
Knoxville, Tennessee is one of the most amazing halls of fame I've ever been to.
58:37
It was incredible.
58:38
So, I think that's really, someday, if there is a stand alone women's motorsport
58:43
or international women's motorsports hall of fame, that would be pretty cool.
58:47
And so, I'm going to close with that, and I want to thank everybody
58:50
for their participation, not just for the panel, but for the entire
58:54
event, so thanks to everyone.
59:03
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the IMRRC and the SAH, thank
59:07
you for attending the symposium.
59:09
We'll see you next year.
59:16
This episode is brought to you in part by the International
59:18
Motor Racing Research Center.
59:20
Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history
59:23
of motorsports, spanning continents, eras, and race series.
59:27
The center's collection embodies the speed, drama, and camaraderie
59:30
of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.
59:33
The Center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of
59:38
race drivers, race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls and
59:42
brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events.
59:46
To learn more about the Center, visit www.
59:49
racingarchives.
59:51
org.
59:51
This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians.
59:55
They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history.
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The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers.
1:00:03
organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard,
1:00:06
as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized,
1:00:09
wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.
1:00:13
For more information about the SAH, visit www.
1:00:17
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1:00:18
org.
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