![\"Girl](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2021\/04\/05\/PDTN\/332a7406-145e-4698-8752-7bb547e688f6-rocket_indycar.jpg?width=660&height=360&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp\")
<\/p>\n“The cool thing about racing at a pro level is you can actually have men and women competing on the same team, competing against each other.\u00a0It’s genuinely\u00a0co-ed,” said Paretta in an interview. “And racing’s more more than just a driver;\u00a0there\u00a0are so many other roles on a team that people can aspire to be part of.”<\/p>\n
The announcement comes as motorsport seeks to accelerate access for women and minority drivers. Female racers lost their most prominent ambassador, Danica Patrick, to retirement in 2018. Patrick is the only woman to have ever won an IndyCar race or qualified for a NASCAR pole. Paretta Autosport is a byproduct of the IndyCar series\u2019 Race for Equality and Change initiative begun last year to broaden racing opportunities.<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s been a lull” after Patrick’s retirement, said Paretta. “There are great women with talent, but they need sponsorship money. If our team gets a few more people to watch racing that might not otherwise have watched, that helps the sport in its entirety. If we get viewership up because we\u2019re telling the racing story a little differently, then that helps (all teams and drivers) in paddock by finding sponsors that see value in it.”<\/p>\n
Beyond IndyCar, Katherine Legge and Christina Nielsen have been signed as an all-female team at the helm of a Porsche 911 in IMSA\u2019s GTD class. And rules for off-road Extreme E electric-vehicle racing series require one male and one female driver \u2014 sharing driver and co-driver duties \u2014 \u201cto promote gender equality and a level playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paretta Autosport\u2019s principals bring a wealth of experience to the track.<\/p>\n Currently a factory driver for Porsche in Europe, De Silvestro, 32, has raced in everything from sports cars to Formula One. Her IndyCar career dates to 2010, when she was Rookie of the Year at the Indy 500, finishing 14th. In 2011, she survived a horrific crash to quality for the 500 \u2014 a race in which she\u2019s competed five times. She finished second in the 2013 Grand Prix of Houston, becoming only the third female IndyCar podium finisher after Patrick and Sarah Fisher.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s a very good race driver,\u201d said veteran Autoweek racing writer Stephen Cole Smith. \u201cAnd she\u2019s one of the top three female drivers in the world along with Katherine Legge and Pippa Mann.\u201d<\/p>\n Team owner Paretta climbed the corporate automobile\u00a0ladder to become the industry’s\u00a0first female director of a performance brand and motorsport as operations chief\u00a0for Fiat Chrysler\u2019s SRT division. Under her watch, Team Penske\u00a0took Dodge to the NASCAR championship in 2012, the last\u00a0year the brand\u00a0raced the stock car series’ high-banked ovals.<\/p>\n “Having the technical\u00a0alliance with Penske\u00a0is really a wonderful opportunity,” said Paretta. “We spent a lot of NASCAR race weekends sitting on timing stand together. I’ve worked with him in so many different capacities.”<\/p>\n She and Penske will team up again at Indy\u2019s legendary Brickyard. De Silvestro will get her first laps in the Chevy-powered car Thursday and Friday\u00a0as\u00a0IndyCar race teams head out on Indy’s banking for an open test.<\/p>\n Team Penske, which will field four drivers under its own racing banner in the quest for its 19th Indy 500 win, will provide crucial technical experience to Paretta\u2019s team.<\/p>\n Since 2015, Paretta has run Grace Autosport, an organization with an eye on promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education for women\u00a0through racing.<\/p>\n An Indy 500 entry doesn\u2019t come cheap. Paying the bills as chief sponsor will be Rocket Pro TPO, a division of Detroit-based Rocket Mortgage \u2014 the country\u2019s largest mortgage lender \u2014 that works with independent mortgage brokers. Online banker MoneyLion is a co-sponsor.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving Rocket Pro TPO come on board as our primary sponsor is a perfect partnership,\u201d said Paretta. \u201cWe are both huge proponents of highlighting the power of women, while also using technology and speed to be the best at what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n With their IndyCar wrapped in bright\u00a0red and with livery, Paretta and Rocket hope to bring attention\u00a0to the potential for women in the racing and mortgage lending industries.<\/p>\n In 1977, Janet Guthrie became the first woman to drive in the Indy 500. She’s been followed by nine more women, with\u00a0Patrick\u00a0scoring the\u00a0best result with a third-place finish in 2009. Patrick was the last female\u00a0entry\u00a0in the race, in 2018.<\/p>\n Paretta follows in the footsteps of racer Sarah Fisher (Indy 500 starts as a driver: nine), who formed Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing in 2011. That team since merged with Ed Carpenter Racing.<\/p>\n \u201cBeth (Paretta) called me a few months ago and told me about this opportunity, and I think literally an hour later, I was on a Zoom call with Roger Penske and (Penske Corp. president)\u00a0Bud Denker,\u201d driver Simona De Silvestro told Racer magazine. \u201cFor me to really come back to the Speedway with a constellation like this, with the association with Team Penske, it\u2019s really \u2014 to be honest, as a driver \u2014 a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the first time the Indianapolis\u00a0500 will feature a woman-driven, woman-owned race entry. And it will get a lot of horsepower from Metro Detroit. Veteran Swiss ace Simona De Silvestro will pilot the Rocket Pro TPO-sponsored, #16, Chevy-powered\u00a0Paretta Autosport IndyCar owned by Beth Paretta, a Detroit-based businesswoman with NASCAR and IMSA racing experience. The team […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27148,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27147\/revisions\/27148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Beth](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2021\/04\/06\/PDTN\/8623d2a9-c05b-489a-ac53-f25bbfa3d027-rocket_paretta-penske.jpg?width=660&height=441&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp\")
<\/p>\n![\"Beth](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2021\/04\/06\/PDTN\/6cad41cc-47bc-40c8-b833-aa74befad998-rocket_paretta-indy.jpg?width=660&height=440&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp\")
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