Over more than 100 years, 9 women have raced the Indianapolis 500 and the push for more has stalled -
“That was the era of Sarah Fisher and then Danica Patrick came along and then, you know, there’s me and Simona de Silvestro and I just thought it would kind of snowball and grow,” Legge recalled, before pausing for a moment. “But it hasn’t.”
De Silvestro started the 2021 race for an all-woman team, Paretta Autosport, but there were no women again last year, and Legge struggled to qualify this year before wrecking in practice. The 42-year-old Briton will start in the penultimate row in the 107th running of the race that has seen only nine women on the grid over more than a century.“It’s really bad, isn’t it?” Legge asked. “Because I thought there was going to be more. I mean, there’s only been nine of us that have run the Indy 500.
“The desire has to be so high to go through all the hardships that you have to go through to do it,” she said, “that I think a lot of them, it’s just too much. But the ones who do make it through, I think that lesson helps them down the line in racing.” Andretti Autosport is at the forefront of driver development, both men and women, and has qualified more women for the Indy 500 than any team: Patrick on four occasions and de Silvestro and Ana Beatriz once apiece.
Fisher has more Indy 500 starts than any other woman with nine, and for many years she owned her own team.
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