NEW YORK • Jackie Heinricher, a professional race-car driver and a biotech executive, set out a few years ago to create an all-star team of female drivers.
She knew it would take millions of dollars to run a team, but she felt confident companies owned or run by women, or interested in marketing their products to women, would quickly deliver all the sponsorships her team would need.
"By now, I would have thought the car would be covered in tampon ads and Massengill and whatever," she said. "I didn't get any bites."
Instead, the team found its main support from Caterpillar, the construction equipment manufacturer.
That financing was enough to get her dream rolling and, in late January last year, Heinricher Racing made its debut in the GT Daytona Class of sports car racing in the International Motor Sports Association.
In the association's 50 years of racing, the team was the first to complete a season using exclusively female drivers – and it finished the season in October in the top 10.
When Heinricher visited Caterpillar in September to discuss plans for this season, however, she was told the company would no longer bankroll her team.
As the 2020 season got under way, she raced the clock to find a sponsor to keep her team together. But another owner wooed away her drivers, leaving her to affect change as the only woman team owner and, at least this season, not from behind the wheel.
Auto racing has come a long way since the 1970s, when men threatened to boycott races if women were allowed to compete.
There are highly qualified women behind the wheel, in the pits and on engineering teams – in numbers as never before.
But finding sponsors for the necessary US$3 million (S$4.2 million) to US$6 million in financing for teams, always a difficult part of racing, has been a barrier for women, who are often treated as marketing gimmicks rather than serious competitors.
Heinricher said she had sought to put together an all-female team "to demonstrate that women can compete head-to-head with their male counterparts and win if they have legitimate support".
That should have attracted sponsors.
Among her drivers was Katherine Legge, who owns a track record at Laguna Seca, a marquee track in Northern California. Simona de Silvestro has a podium finish in the IndyCar series, which includes the Indianapolis 500.
Then there is Heinricher, founder and president of BooShoot which pioneered commercial bamboo production. She was the first woman to compete in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo. In 2017, she and Pippa Mann were the first all-female team in the Trofeo series, taking third in the pro-am event.
The Heinricher Racing team made its debut at the Rolex 24 At Daytona, an annual endurance race, in late January last year.
The first all-female teams raced there in 1966, when two teams of women drove small baby-blue Sunbeam Alpines for an oil company sponsor that called them the "Ring-Free Motor Maids".
One of those drivers, Janet Guthrie, would become the first woman to compete in the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500.
But the 1966 campaign "was embarrassing", she said in a telephone interview, because the women had no hope of contending with such underpowered cars.
The all-female teams came in third from last and last, but ahead of 26 cars that did not finish.
Back then, using women as an attention-getting stunt was considered smart marketing.
But as recently as 2016, Mr Bernie Ecclestone, chief executive of Formula One at the time, said a female driver "would not be taken seriously".
That was years after Danica Patrick had won an IndyCar race and earned the pole position at the Daytona 500.
Patrick, who retired in 2018, got plenty of sponsorship and media attention, but a healthy portion of it played up her sex appeal rather than her driving skill.
The motor sports industry has made efforts to battle the perception it is not female-friendly – creating commissions and diversity programmes – but tangible change has been harder to come by.
In June, when Heinricher Racing applied for a spot in the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans, it was turned down.
Ms Michele Mouton, president of the Women's Commission for thRead More – Source
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