I was pleased that Danica drove well at Daytona, but wish she hadn’t faded at the end. With more experience behind her I think she will improve as the season progresses. I am a big fan of Simona and hope she can show her stuff in a better ride this year.

Bingo and thank you.

5 years from now, hopefully sooner, NASCAR will catch up to this way of thinking.

Part of that is exposure to the sport (many young girls are not aware of karting or motorsports in general); part of that is the economy (karting in general is down right now); and another part of that is the sport’s view toward females. Attitudes, unfortunately, haven’t changed a whole lot from years ago with many young men — and sadly, their fathers — unwilling to be beat by a girl and willing to do whatever it takes to ensure it doesn’t happen at any cost.

Things do change and motorsports in general is more accessible to women than ever before but it still has a long way to go. But it has to start with karting and filter up to Indy Car before we see major changes. And those changes are still far away….

I freely admit that I was a Danica fan from the git-go. I love being able to watch history. And there are one Hell of a lot of drivers who cannot favorably compare their records at Indy to Danica’s as Pressdog’s recent piece pointed out. It would not be inconceivable to see Danica (had she stayed in IndyCar) where Ed Carpenter is today: Very competitive on ovals and an also-ran on road and street courses. But being competitive in less than half of a series’ races does not add up to championships (unless you count the A. J. Foyt Trophy as a championship.)

When you have talented, experienced drivers who can’t get a ride for a full season, such as Ryan Briscoe or Buddy Rice, if you were just beginning a racing career, where would you go? Quite honestly, until the IndyCar folks (Mark Miles, are you listening?) can get their act together on that question, then we have a bit of a problem here. Add to that that NASCAR’s second tier series already has a better ROI than IndyCar, and the problem becomes really glaring.

With the aforementioned Miles taking the reins, and based on his commentary on last weeks’ “Trackside…,” at least there is some room for hope.

I thought we wanted the best drivers? If we get that then the sex of the driver should not matter. “Does Indy car still welcome women” you ask? Do we really want “afirmative action”?

It wouldn’t be surprising to see one or several of them looking at opportunities in Road to Indy in the tuture. At this level it is quite common for any driver to look for new places to race to re-gain career momentum, and Road to Indy is an interesting option, first because of the scholarship system, but also because at the end of the day IndyCar arguably remains 2nd biggest single seater championship in the world, long behind F1.

Granted, none of the drivers named in the first paragraph look to be the next big thing – even though Alice Powell is a proven race winner in the national F2.0 BARC and MRF championships, but anyway her career momentum is slowing as she is struggling to raise the funds to go racing again.

Good point. Bar Simona, no other female driver has been announced for the 2013 season on Road to Indy.

Then you have Bia and Pippa still hoping to secure a part time IndyCar gig somewhere. There is also Ayla Agren who tested in USF2000 for Andretti in October last year, but she isn’t signed anywhere yet and time is running up.