NationStates Jolt Archive

Is there some kind of rule against women in NASCAR?

I'm just curious. and maybe drunk

I am familiar with Danica Patrick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Danica_Patrick.jpg), but she's a Formula One driver. I think.

Is there some kind of rule against women in NASCAR?

I'm just curious. and maybe drunk

I am familiar with Danica Patrick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Danica_Patrick.jpg), but she's a Formula One driver. I think.

Never seen her in an F1 race, she might be a test driver I suppose.

No... it's just that women tend to not have death wishes...

Is there some kind of rule against women in NASCAR?

I'm just curious. and maybe drunk

I am familiar with Danica Patrick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Danica_Patrick.jpg), but she's a Formula One driver. I think.

She is Indy, not Formual 1.

EDIT: Here's (http://ca.geocities.com/womeninnascar/) a list of 15 women who have competed in the Nextel Cup. The most recent (Shawna Robinson) is now in the Craftsman Truck series and trying to get a spot in the Winston Cup.

She is Indy, not Formual 1.

Ah. My mistake.

No... it's just that women tend to not have death wishes...

But some women do! Surely in this age of women fighter pilots and astronauts, there are also women who want to drive a car around really really fast.

Is there some kind of rule against women in NASCAR?

I'm just curious. and maybe drunk

I am familiar with Danica Patrick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Danica_Patrick.jpg), but she's a Formula One driver. I think.
Because a female NASCAR driver would sit in the fast lane going 55 miles per hour and not allowing anyone to pass. It would make for a boring race until someone rammed her car and caused her to crash.

EDIT: Here's (http://ca.geocities.com/womeninnascar/) a list of 15 women who have competed in the Nextel Cup. The most recent (Shawna Robinson) is now in the Craftsman Truck series and trying to get a spot in the Winston Cup.

Wooah. Consider my mind blown. That's pretty cool.

Still though, have been very few - 14 women in 50 years - and there hasn't been a single female driver in 6 years now.

Is there any paticular reason for this? I'm not a NASCAR fan, so I'm really an outsider looking in on all this.

EDIT:
Because a female NASCAR driver would sit in the fast lane going 55 miles per hour and not allowing anyone to pass. It would make for a boring race until someone rammed her car and caused her to crash.

But I like the crashes! To me, they're some of the few parts of a NASCAR event that are actually watchable.

But some women do! Surely in this age of women fighter pilots and astronauts, there are also women who want to drive a car around really really fast.
.. in a circle... only going left

Wooah. Consider my mind blown. That's pretty cool.

Still though, have been very few - 14 women in 50 years - and there hasn't been a single female driver in 6 years now.

Is there any paticular reason for this? I'm not a NASCAR fan, so I'm really an outsider looking in on all this.

EDIT:


But I like the crashes! To me, they're some of the few parts of a NASCAR event that are actually watchable.

Well, it's NASCAR. Like football, it's a mans sport, a sport where a man can drink and yell and curse and well, be a man. I'd expect over in Europe and all those other nancy little contries women have bigger involvement in racing.

NASCAR is a favorite among conservatives who feel that a woman's place is in the kitchen

.. in a circle... only going left

Like I said, I'm not a fan.

Except when they replay the crashes over and over and over in slow motion...

NASCAR is a favorite among conservatives who feel that a woman's place is in the kitchen

Or in the bed. :eek:

But some women do! Surely in this age of women fighter pilots and astronauts, there are also women who want to drive a car around really really fast.
And in circles....

^You're exactly four minutes too late for that joke, I'm afraid.

Or in the bed. :eek:

No no no, baby making takes place in the kitchen while the woman is making a post-coital snack.

No no no, baby making takes place in the kitchen while the woman is making a post-coital snack.

See I just have one in every room of the house...except the garage, that's the man cave that one is.

She is Indy, not Formual 1.

EDIT: Here's (http://ca.geocities.com/womeninnascar/) a list of 15 women who have competed in the Nextel Cup. The most recent (Shawna Robinson) is now in the Craftsman Truck series and trying to get a spot in the Winston Cup.
The list is old. There's also Erin Crocker, who drives in Truck (and a couple Busch races). She's really cute.

Nascar has been trying to diversify and draw in more women and minorities, but it's a slow process. In the past, the women that have raced in Nascar haven't been competitive, but part of that is not getting signed to a competitive team. Maybe women not getting a good team is part of a bias, but I think that will change soon, especially if the women that are currently in the Craftsman Truck Series are good.

Yes, Danica Patrick is in the IRL, not Formula 1. Part of the reason she's competitive is the fact that her team is a very good one (owned by Bobby Rahal). However, I believe she was quoted as saying she wouldn't consider moving to Nascar because the season was much longer.

Well, it's NASCAR. Like football, it's a mans sport, a sport where a man can drink and yell and curse and well, be a man. I'd expect over in Europe and all those other nancy little contries women have bigger involvement in racing.

Where I come from, women drink more, yell louder, and curse more colorfully than a large number of men. Hell, I'm a girl, and I can beat 9 out of every 10 guys in a burping contest.

It probably has something to do that NASCAR is incredibly boring and stupid, and generally women are smarter than men, so they find real sports to entertain themselves.

And I don't understand the lack of a women's football league. Men would like to see women tackle each other, right? A lot of girls I know like football. Why shouldnt there be one?

Cuz men will feel embarrassed when they realize that women will PWN their asses during the race. :rolleyes:

Because a female NASCAR driver would sit in the fast lane going 55 miles per hour and not allowing anyone to pass. It would make for a boring race until someone rammed her car and caused her to crash.
You mean Nascar is exciting?:p
Have they actually learned how to have a right hand or alternate turn/s yet?
^You're exactly four minutes too late for that joke, I'm afraid.
Watch me be a day late.:p

There was a female driver in Nascar '94(yes, that old computer game.) Named Rachel or something. The rosters for those games are taken straight from the seasons they are based on. Might've been a Papyrus invention though.

Because NASCAR is really lame and dominated by the type who prefer their women barefoot and pregnant.

The reasons it is lame in and of itself are thus:

1) It's endless circles around a track. Boring. It would be much more exciting if they raced on actual roads.

2) NASCAR stands for National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing. However, all the cars I see involved clearly are not stock, they have all been quite modified.

3) The cars and drivers are moving billboards.

You mean Nascar is exciting?:p
Have they actually learned how to have a right hand or alternate turn/s yet?

Watch me be a day late.:p

Almost a week late, actually. Last week's race occured at Infineon Raceway.

http://www.infineonraceway.com/video/ir_nascar_2005.wmv

Because NASCAR is really lame and dominated by the type who prefer their women barefoot and pregnant.

The reasons it is lame in and of itself are thus:

1) It's endless circles around a track. Boring. It would be much more exciting if they raced on actual roads.

2) NASCAR stands for National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing. However, all the cars I see involved clearly are not stock, they have all been quite modified.

3) The cars and drivers are moving billboards.
Indeed. It's horrible. Hell, the only reason I played that old game was

1. I had nothing else to play at the time.
2. I was seven years old.
3. I loved executing crashes involving all cars possible.
4. Seriously. I even called myself "The Car from Hell," painted it all black, enabled cheats, and drove around the track the wrong way to smash cars up so they couldn't compete.

You mean Nascar is exciting?:p
Have they actually learned how to have a right hand or alternate turn/s yet?

Watch me be a day late.:p
NASCAR actually races on two very difficult road courses, every year-Sears Point (Infenion) and Watkins Glen.

NASCAR, and all racing for that matter, is a patronage sport. It costs far more to go racing than can realisticly be made from winning racing. Thus, all those stickers all over the car and the hats that they keep switching out during the interview. Even then, sponsers really only stand at best a chance of recovering the money spent on a team in actual sales. Though with NASCAR you do get a lot of impressions and you have a fan base that will buy based on 'thier' driver. Even without that, racing fans make a point of buying from companies that sponser racing.

So while you're still trying to get the best driver, you're also getting the best spokesman. The more money that has poured into racing the last we're seeing of the homely racer. Now it's pretty boys that sell goods as well as drive fast.

The problem with patronage is that it becomes a bit of an old boys network, and in racing it's fed from the bottom up. Hardly any father goes out of his way to but his baby girl in a race car with the same frevor that they put little Johnny in one. I was put in the racing seat at the age of 5, at that time there where a lot of little boys but hardly any girls-sisters where used as trophy girls. Little girls are put in cars at the behest of mom ("If you're going to do it for Johnny, you have to do it for Jenny" This is a cartoonish generalisation. Often mom doesn't want her daughter in those 'death traps' and there are instances where dad willingly and enthusiasticly puts his daughter in the drivers seat, but these are rare.)

So the little girls are already given less preference for even being asked if they want to race, much less finding out that they are good at it. And, frankly they are. By the time I reached my teens I feared racing the girls because they meant business in no uncertain terms.

Providing they get through that selection process they have to encourage themselves to continue on to pursue racing. At this point they tend to drift to other kinds of racing. Danica went to IRL, there are plenty of women who race in sportscars, etc. There even is (was, I haven't checked) an all women spec racing series with 40 women in Panoz Esperantes.

For the handful of women who get to peak at the top level they now have to get that paronage. Now sponsers have to think if this woman will be as good a spokesman as the dude shes racing against or will she just be a novelty act. If she isn't a Danica Patrick who comes out of the box finishing in the top spots she's considered a novelty-even Danica has to face that criticism, so it's not enough for them to be good and given the chance to develop like the sea of dude drivers, she has to be better than everyone else immediately.

With NASCAR, the Good Ol' Boy racing, it's right there in the name. So that's even more of an overcome. So a talented woman race car driver could deal with that hassle or go to a series where she could be more competitive and not have to put up with quite as much crap.

So NASCAR will probably be the final frontier for a woman that challenges at the top level.

Rallying used to be dominated by women until the 70s. Pikes Peak, I believe-I'd have to look this up to be sure, had a record that was held by a woman until the 80s when, suprise, money started showing up at the event.

But all these things are changing. Women will be a presence is racing providing racing can justify itself in the coming years-and the only way it can do that is to take the lead in developing alternate fuel and fuel conservation technologies. That is happening with Audi's diesel winning both teh 12 hour of Sebring and 24 Hours of Le Mans, the latter which will be contested by a Puegot diesel next year, and IRL using Ethonal fuel exclusively this year. Not all of these will work (I don't have a lot of faith in ethonal) but not every innovation is 'the one.' The point is that racing needs to go back to it's roots of 'improving the breed' of cars in general.

It probably has something to do that NASCAR is incredibly boring and stupid, and generally women are smarter than men, so they find real sports to entertain themselves.

And women bitch that men are sexist... :rolleyes:

And I don't understand the lack of a women's football league. Men would like to see women tackle each other, right? A lot of girls I know like football. Why shouldnt there be one?

Lack of interest, what else?
Well, duh, the misogynistic rape culture that we live in, right?
:rolleyes:

Where I come from, women drink more, yell louder, and curse more colorfully than a large number of men. Hell, I'm a girl, and I can beat 9 out of every 10 guys in a burping contest.

It probably has something to do that NASCAR is incredibly boring and stupid, and generally women are smarter than men, so they find real sports to entertain themselves.

And I don't understand the lack of a women's football league. Men would like to see women tackle each other, right? A lot of girls I know like football. Why shouldnt there be one?
49% of NASCAR viewership is women. Why do you think Tide sponsers a car?

Well, it's NASCAR. Like football, it's a mans sport, a sport where a man can drink and yell and curse and well, be a man. I'd expect over in Europe and all those other nancy little contries women have bigger involvement in racing.
Nope.
I know one woman who used to race but she said that she wasn't strong enough. (she is quite petite). The other drivers could drive faster on corners etc.

Fascinating posts, Cannot think of a name. Like I said, I'm not really a fan myself, but I was wondering about the causes of the lack of women in NASCAR. You've explained it quite well. Shame about it really, but I suppose it's not too different from some of the other fields women have faced trouble getting into in the past.