(Photo: Chris Owens / INDYCAR)
By Aaron Bearden
The motorsports world has long been filled with a diverse set of disciplines, racing series and cars. Whether you want to be a rally star in Monte Carlo or NASCAR’s latest legend in Daytona Beach, auto racing has historically been ripe with options to live out your dreams.
That is, if you’re a straight, white male.
Like many sports’ historical records, the tales of most auto racing tours focus primarily on the same basic group of people – white, straight (or at least not outwardly LGBTQ+) and typically male. Unlike many stick-and-ball sports, those barriers have largely remained in the auto racing world to this day.
That’s not to say there haven’t been exceptions to that rule.
The NHRA has had prominent African-American champions in Antron Brown and J.R. Todd, along with female title winners the likes of Shirley Muldowney and Brittany Force. NASCAR’s first Black race winner saw the checkered flag nearly six decades ago when Wendell Scott claimed a win at Florida’s Speedway Park.
Janet Guthrie’s first Indy 500 run came back in 1977, paving the way for others like Sarah Fisher, Pippa Mann and Danica Patrick to lead laps and, in Patrick’s case, even win a race at Twin Ring Motego. Willy T. Ribbs’ trailblazing open wheel story has been the source of a Netflix documentary. From Bill Lester and Shawna Robinson to Erin Crocker and Jennifer Jo Cobb, numerous drivers from all walks have made starts in the upper levels of NASCAR and elsewhere.
International and sports car tours have been filled with people from diverse backgrounds as well, albeit with limited options for women or people of color.
There have always been glimpses of diversity in paddocks across the world. But in recent years those intermittent prospects appear to be blossoming into a legitimate movement.
This has been illustrated nowhere better than in the world’s most popular racing series – Formula 1. Traditionally a playground for white drivers competing for rich owners, F1 has been dominated by Sir Lewis Hamilton to the tune of seven championships and 95 wins over the past 14 years, earning the Black Briton both a knighthood and his own place atop the record books ahead of Michael Schumacher.
While Hamilton rolls along with Mercedes, across the pond in the states another Black driver has risen to prominence – Darrell Wallace, Jr. A six-time winner in the Camping World Truck Series, the driver known as ‘Bubba’ has made the steady ascent to Cup and finished as high as second in the Daytona 500.
He finds himself in a decent position to better that moving forward, having made a step over to the newly-formed 23XI Racing team with Toyota that’s co-owned by NBA great Michael Jordan and Joe Gibbs Racing competitor Denny Hamlin. Jordan is the second African American team owner to come from the NBA ranks, joining JTG-Daugherty Racing’s Brad Daugherty.
Jordan’s entry to the series comes at the same time that Latino rapper, singer and songwriter Pitbull (real name Armando Perez) is stepping into the ownership game alongside former driver Justin Marks at Trackhouse Racing. The team’s driver? Daniel Suarez, the lone Mexican competitor to claim a title in one of NASCAR’s three national series. He earned the Xfinity Series championship in 2016, winning three races along the way for Joe Gibbs Racing.
Wallace and Suarez are the leading figures in a movement for more diversity in American stock car racing, shepherding the path for hopeful young drivers like Rajah Caruth and Nick Sanchez.
Rising up along with the aforementioned young stars is a group of women determined to secure their place in the sport’s ranks. Led by incoming Truck Series rookie Hailie Deegan and ARCA Menards Series West winner Gracie Trotter is a cluster of females including Julia Landauer, Natalie Decker and Holley Hollan. Other prospects like rising dirt competitor Kaylee Bryson, whose potential was enough to elicit a column from longtime scribe Robin Miller in November, are waiting for their moment in the spotlight.
The open wheel world has continued to have appearances from female competitors like Mann, whose yearly quest to make the Indianapolis 500 has brought the highs (skipping Bump Day altogether in 2019) and lows (missing the race in 2018) over the past decade. It’s also seen some major recent progress toward more consistent integration of diversity, led by this week’s announcement of the female-owned Paretta Autosport, which will bring back former IndyCar ace Simona de Silvestro for another go at the ‘Greatest Spectacle in Racing’ in May (or whenever the race is held this year).
Across the pond in Europe lies an entire series devoted to female drivers – the W Series. Launched in 2019, the tour is a unique piece of the Formula 1 ladder system which only allows women to compete. It’s proven controversial among some who find it to be more symbolic than helpful, but it’s also provided an outlet for women like inaugural champion Jamie Chadwick and Beitske Visser to compete and work toward their futures.
Visser’s name can now be seen on the Richard Mille Racing Team, which is making a leap from the European Le Mans Series to the FIA World Endurance Championship this season. She’ll be joined on the squad by fellow fast females Tatiana Calderon and Sophia Floersch, who was once known for her devastating crash in the Macau Grand Prix but has recovered and continued rising up the racing ladder with starts including an all-female LMP2 entry at Le Mans.
The trio aren’t the first all-female group in sports cars. IMSA’s Rolex 24 at Daytona has kicked the past two years off with an all-female driver lineup among the entries. In 2019 it was De Silvestro, Katherine Legge, Bia Figueiredo and Christina Nielsen. Last year saw Legge and Nielsen return with Calderon and Rahel Frey.
Legge and Nielsen are back once again this year, competing in a split team with male colleagues Earl Bamber and Rob Ferriol. Also relevant to the topic of split teams is the new electric rally series, Extreme E, which will have male and female co-drivers this year in an effort to promote equality.
Once a rarity to see in top-level motorsport, women have become more commonplace behind the wheel. That’s not all, either – some of the world’s top racing journalists and leaders of racing organizations are women. Even pit crews have begun to see women integrated, led on the NASCAR Cup side by Christmas Abbott in 2013 and continuing today through the work of people like Brehanna Daniels – NASCAR’s first Black female crew member.
The LGBTQ+ community is still largely under-represented in motorsports, but early signs of progress have arrived in recent years. The Racing Pride movement has been launched in an effort to promote LGBTQ+ inclusivity within the industry.
A pair of American race fans have launched “The Gay Racing Podcast” to talk about the sport they love. Their most recent guest was Devon Rouse, who became the first openly-gay competitor to turn laps in the ARCA Menards Series last weekend in preseason testing at Daytona.
Transgender racer Charlie Martin is working toward a dream of her own. She competed in the Nurburgring 24 Hours last year as the latest step in her stated goal of reaching Le Mans.
These stories all come at a time when society itself seems to be in a rapid transitionary period, particularly in America. Not even two decades after legendary rapper Tupac Shakur rapped that “we ain’t ready to see a black president” on the posthumous release “Changes,” Barack Obama was sworn into office as the first African American President of the United States in 2009. Wednesday’s inauguration brought the first female, first Black and first Asian-American vice-president in Kamala Harris.
Harris’ inauguration follows a year with a summer led by calls for social equality and protests after the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others at the hand of police in America. Racing wasn’t spared from this movement, with Wallace piloting a Richard Petty Motorsports entry with a ‘Black Lives Matter’ scheme at Martinsville Speedway and Lewis Hamilton wearing a shirt calling for the arrest of Taylor’s killers.
Their fellow drivers supported them in the acts, with F1 observing a moment of silence and many drivers kneeling prior to each Grand Prix in a stand against racial discrimination. NASCAR’s competitors made a video denouncing racism that aired during the season, while the sanctioning body itself banned the Confederate flag from being shown at races.
That’s not to say that everything went well for the movement. Wallace was caught up in the noose incident that drew the ire of President Donald Trump and his detractors at Talladega Superspeedway. One of Wallace’s colleagues, Kyle Larson, lost his ride and had to return to the dirt ranks full-time for a year to compete after being caught uttering the n-word on an iRacing stream. Hamilton’s efforts for uniform action and support within the F1 paddock were frequently met with tension.
But there were signs of progress. And during this same season women found a modicum of success, with Deegan finishing second at Daytona in ARCA following a trio of West wins in prior years while Trotter won a West race of her own at The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when NASCAR was in town for the playoffs. In the Champion Racing Association, 13-year-old Katie Hettinger emerged with a junior late model championship.
Progress is slow, but it is coming along. That said, there’s still far to go in the motorsports industry.
One of the biggest hurdles lies in the very way that the business of racing is structured. If you can shoot a basketball or kick a soccer ball better than your opponents, there’s a route to the top of the sport for you regardless of circumstance so long as you can avoid serious trouble or injury.
By comparison, you can be the best racer in the world but never get to show it at the top level. It takes significant funding to make it to the sport’s upper echelons – a challenge that faces all involved.
That’s been a hinderance in NASCAR and elsewhere. Even with programs like the W Series, NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity and INDYCAR’s ‘Race for Equality & Change’ providing opportunities for minority competitors to rise, there’s still a significant hurdle to leap in order to compete full-time.
“Even if you go through the diversity program, once you bounce out of that in today’s world, it’s difficult if you can’t write a check,” Daugherty told The Charlotte Observer back in August, noting that the primary barrier to diversity it “green.”
That barrier will continue to be a stopping point for many hopeful racers of all walks at the top levels of racing. But a glance through the racing world shows that the lower levels are filled with a more diverse cast than may have traditionally been seen in racing’s past.
There have been minority competitors that succeeded in the past, from Scott to Patrick. A select group are also achieving success now, ranging from NHRA stars like Leah Pruett to Suarez, whose Trackhouse Racing team could surprise people in NASCAR this season.
With continued efforts and a pinch of luck, the increasing diversity might just make its way through all walks of the racing world and make diverse paddocks commonplace in future generations.
That’s the end goal, right?
For the industry to run out of those “firsts,” and for people of all walks of life to be normal members of the paddock – judged not by their gender or race, but their skill on track.
After all, this is racing. The time sheets don’t concern themselves with the make up of the person hitting the gas pedal.
They just show who’s the fastest.
(Sources: Netflix.com, Toyota Racing, NASCAR.com, Robin Miller / RACER, IndyCar.com, ESPN, RACER, James Elson / Motor Sport Magazine, Autoweek, Extreme-E.com, CNN / YouTube, Joanne Kimberlin / The Virginian-Pilot, Racing Pride, “The Gay Racing Podcast” / Apple Podcasts, Elizabeth Blackstock / Jalopnik, Mike Pryson / Autoweek, BBC News, James Galloway / Sky Sports, Juliet Macur / New York Times, Scott Neuman / NPR, Todd Haislop / ARCARacing.com, Alex Andrejev / Charlotte Observer)
