Team confirmed plans for three-race deal, continued emphasis on creating opportunities for women in the sport.
More than a year after its first and only IndyCar appearance in the 2021 Indianapolis 500, Paretta Autosport makes its return to the series in this Sunday’s Sonsio Grand Prix at Road America in central Wisconsin.
And back behind the wheel of the No. 16 Paretta Autosport Chevrolet as she was at Indy last year is veteran Swiss driver Simona De Silvestro, who is scheduled to make three starts for the Paretta group this year: Road America as well as upcoming events at Mid-Ohio in July and Nashville in August.
Since team owner Beth Paretta formed Paretta Autosport, her goal was to build a female-majority organization. That remains her goal, although several females who were part of the 2021 Indy 500 operation have moved on to other IndyCar or NASCAR teams.
Much of the personnel for this year’s team will be on loan from Ed Carpenter Racing, which has formed an alliance with Paretta Autosport. ECR replaces the previous partnership that Paretta had last year at Indianapolis with Team Penske. And while most of those are men, including team engineer John Gentilozzi, the plan is still to train and develop females for a variety of roles with the team, including over-the-wall positions.
After an absence of more than a year, Simona De Silvestro and team owner Beth Paretta return to the IndyCar grid this week at Elkhart Lake, Wisc.
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“There’s a few that are coming back,” De Silvestro said during a Tuesday afternoon teleconference, although most of those returning females will be working behind-the-scenes. “Three of them left or got different opportunities, which I think is really positive. What Beth is going to try to do is find more girls that they can kind of train and train with Carpenter and kind of build with them and give them their first step into it. Hopefully, they will grow enough within the team that we can start really running with those girls, and they can really do like changing tires or be pointed out to be left front or something like that.
“But that will take a little bit of time now, you know, especially with our new association with Ed Carpenter. So, this is all kind of a work in progress. But hopefully, I think with this year and hopefully even more races next year or something like that, this is really kind of the steps towards that goal.”
De Silvestro looks at herself as a race car driver first, and a female second.
“For me, throughout my whole career, I’ve always just been a driver,” she said. “As the years went on I realized that, in the sense, I definitely can have an impact as well because I just kind of went my way. I didn’t care that I was a girl, I just wanted to be a racing driver, and I wanted to win races. And that’s how I went about it.
“I think racing is a great platform to show that you can compete against the guys. I think I’ve shown that in the past. And I think that’s a really important message. And also, in business and all that, if somebody is good enough, they should get the opportunity. That’s something that I’ve always fought for. I’m still fighting for this to really show that anything is possible. For sure, it’s not an easy walk, but hopefully if we get good results, it will create even more opportunities for young girls to kind of follow their dream and not be afraid to try something different.”
It will not be an easy task for De Silvestro this weekend. She has not been in an Indy car since last year’s Indy 500. She will go into Friday’s practice sessions essentially cold, with no prior testing to get her reacquainted with the car.
But she has realistic expectations.
Simona De Silvestro last raced in the NTT IndyCar Series last year at the Indianapolis 500.
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“I think the last time I was at Road America was 2009,” De Silvestro said. “So yeah, it’s been quite a while. But for me and the expectation, at the end of the day you want to do the best job you can. We have to be realistic as well, we have not tested, it’s the middle of the season, all these guys and girls have been running half the season already. So we need to see where we kind of stack up.
“I’m really looking forward to getting back in an Indy car. I think I’ll push quite hard to get up to speed as quickly as I can. If we do our job correctly, I think we can be on the competitive side, for sure. I don’t think we can win the race or be a podium. I don’t think that’s realistic.
“The field is super deep. So from that point of view, we have to be realistic, just need to do our job correctly and just kind of keep chipping away at it. And you know, I think finishing the race, and if we do everything correctly, I think the results can be alright.”
Tatiana Calderon is racing for A.J. Foyt Racing this season.
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De Silvestro and A.J. Foyt Racing’s Tatiana Calderon will mark the first time since 2013 – other than the 2015 Indy 500 (De Silvestro and Pippa Mann) – that two females have competed in an IndyCar race together.
“I think the trend has changed a little bit that there’s some up-and-coming (female drivers in) the junior series, it’s much more common to see female drivers, which is really positive. Being the two of us in the top series, and hopefully also get results, I think it can encourage even more girls to go driving and all that. I think it’s really important that we are able to be competing in IndyCar again.”
De Silvestro is a veteran of 69 IndyCar races in her career, but Sunday will mark only her second start since three starts in 2015. The other previous start was, of course, last year’s Indy 500, when she finished 31stafter crashing with 31 laps remaining in the race.
“Getting the three races instead of the 500, it makes a lot of sense,” De Silvestro said. “The situation we would have been in, Ed (Carpenter) couldn’t run a fourth car, there wasn’t enough people to run a fourth car. So it really didn’t really make much sense to try to do something that wasn’t really possible to do and just to do the 500.
“Coming up with these three races, to where Beth wants her team to go and how she wants to grow it, it makes just a lot of sense for us to be a bit more on track as well. And I’m getting this experience and also all the women that are involved to get to experience different things. And hopefully we’ll get some momentum through that to do this.”
Keyword: Simona De Silvestro, Paretta Autosport Set for IndyCar Return This Week at Road America