It’s a new beginning for the Paretta Autosport team.
Racing at the Indianapolis 500 last year was groundbreaking territory for the team run and staffed by a large number of females with the goal of highlighting representation in motorsport.
The image of the ladies on the team with ‘Paretta plaits’ in their hair walking down gasoline alley was incredible, a truly inspiring image.
Even more so, having a pit crew trained from no experience to servicing in the Indy 500 in a little over four months would be a spectacular achievement for any team. The fact that this one had four of the seven being female was a great image, and they reduced their stop time by over 10s in that period.
The programme has faced some difficulties since then, trying to establish its long-term future beyond the impactful first year where it had a huge amount of support from Team Penske, which has scaled back slightly as planned in 2022.
Still with Chevrolet, the team has switched to Ed Carpenter Racing for this year and it’s a new beginning in every sense with three road course races on the menu starting with this weekend, as a third entry alongside Rinus VeeKay and Conor Daly.
In many ways, the team has been a victim of its own success.
Caitlyn Brown, the inside front tyre changer last year, is now with Scott McLaughlin’s Penske car as a junior mechanic. Madison Conrad did the inside right tire. She is now following the NASCAR schedule as an engineer and assistant engineer Lauren Sullivan is now a coordinator with Team Penske.
However, rather than viewing that as a negative that Paretta has lost females and that it will have fewer on the team than it did last year, take the positive that the experience and notoriety these people got at the 500 last year has cannoned them on to bigger and better things.
Surely that’s exactly how a team aiming to inspire and give females more opportunities should work!
“I think what Beth has put together last year, just doing the Indy 500 with these women, seeing three of them really kind of taking off and doing some really important jobs on some other teams, I think it just really gives a lot of credit to her,” Paretta’s driver Simona De Silvestro said prior to this weekend’s race.
“I think if she wouldn’t have put this program together, I don’t think these women would be in those positions now. I think that’s something really special. I think it’s something that Beth can really be proud of.
“For me as well, I think the last seven years I’ve always tried to come back to IndyCar. It was really a struggle, to be honest, to get a seat or something like that. Trying really hard to do it because I think for me IndyCar is very special and I think it’s something that really suits me, where I really wanted to race.
“Putting this program together, especially now doing more races, I think it’s really important, a really big step forward actually for us as well, just to see how we’re doing, and hopefully we can really build on this and become full-time.
“I’m super pumped. She’s an amazing person. I wouldn’t be here without her from that point of view. I think all of the women involved, me, myself, the other ones, I think we’re pretty grateful for her really fighting for this and getting it going.”
This three-race deal – Road America, Mid-Ohio and Nashville – is really important to get Paretta back in the media spotlight in order to drive more female staff as it expands.
Call it a soft reset. Anyone familiar with the IndyCar staffing market will know that its expansion over the last few years to more full-time cars – coinciding with similar booms in many other categories – means mechanics, engineers, pit crew and everyone else is at a premium right now. Never mind if you’re trying to filter that by gender, too.
“There’s a few [women] that are coming back. Three of them left and got different opportunities, which I think is really positive,” adds De Silvestro.
“But I think what Beth really is going to try to do is really find more girls that can kind of train, train with Carpenter, kind of build them in. Just actually giving them their, let’s say, first step into it.
“I think she’s been able to do that last year. I think that’s kind of how she’s looking at it: giving the first step. Hopefully, they will grow enough within the team that we can start really running with those girls and kind of they can really do the changing tire and all that, really be pointed out to be left front or something like that.
“But that will take a little bit of time now, especially with our new association with Carpenter. This is all kind of a work in progress.
“But hopefully with this year and having even more races next year or something like that, this is really kind of the first steps towards that goal.”
De Silvestro herself hasn’t raced on an IndyCar road course since 2015 as she spent the rest of that season until 2022 away from IndyCar in Australian Supercars, GTs with Porsche and in Formula E as a reserve driver.
A fourth place finish at that last road course certainly points to the capability of this driver, but De Silvestro has already acknowledged she faces an uphill struggle. The last time she raced at Road America was 2008 in Atlantic, and she hasn’t raced or tested in the Aeroscreen era of IndyCar on a road course.
The sim is her best friend at the moment.
Asked by The Race what the biggest challenge will be, as so much has changed since 2015 despite the chassis remaining the same, De Silvestro said: “Yeah, in the sense when I’m in the car, it feels pretty similar because, like you said, it’s the same chassis.
“But definitely with the aeroscreen it seems the behaviour of the car has changed quite a lot, as well as looking at the onboard looks different than how I used to drive it.
“To be honest at the moment, I haven’t driven it. I’m a bit maybe overthinking. I need to go into the weekend and see what we got.
“The good thing is it’s been quite a while. I think in a sense I won’t really remember how it really felt like so I can start from a blank sheet and work from there.
“I think a lot of the guys who have been running a lot, I think the aeroscreen changed that a lot. I think they’ve been trying to get the feel they used to have without it. In that sense for me, it’s been so long that maybe I’ll just hopefully adapt to it a little bit quicker.
“But the other thing, I only haven’t done a really long race, like an IndyCar race in a while. I did GT last year where I think we were in the car for like 45 minutes. I think that’s going to be interesting to be back in the car for two hours.
“For me, I feel like a little kid again getting to drive an IndyCar. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it.
“Hopefully I haven’t forgotten how to drive so I think we’ll be okay.”
Before @simdesilvestro returns to #INDYCAR this weekend at @RoadAmerica, she was at the #DetroitGP to get back up to speed.
She was on the @ECRIndy pit stand, who's partnering with @ParettaSport this season. pic.twitter.com/w2i25V3Vku
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) June 8, 2022
If De Silvestro can be in the same postcode as team-mate Daly – who is usually slightly behind the other ECR car of VeeKay on road courses – that would be a huge success after so long out of the car and without any testing and at a track as tough as Road America.
As always, this team means so much more than just results. It’s a vessel for change.
But ultimately everyone in that vessel still wants to be treated the same as every other team when the green flag drops, so there will still be huge expectations at least from inside the team this weekend.
