Women have been part of racing from the start, but the sport is growing more inclusive.

Recalling his struggles to come to terms with Richmond Raceway, NASCAR legend Darrell Waltrip said he once asked team owner Junior Johnson—also a legend; he even made it into a Bruce Springsteen song—why his car never performed well at the track.

In response, Johnson drawled “Boy, that car don’t know where it is.”

Dave Faries here, chatting with Friends of Laguna Seca CEO Lauri Eberhart as the TireRack.com Monterey Sports Car Championship weekend gets underway.

Eberhart has an equally salient point. Not only does the car not know its location, it also has no inkling about its driver. The person behind the wheel could be male or female, young or old, straight or queer, professional or amateur—and, as we have seen with the likes of Alex Zanardi in the past or Robert Wickens today, the driver might not have the use of their legs. This is true of race engineers, mechanics, strategists and executives, as well. Racing, in other words, is the only major sport that is inclusive. The only quality one needs is talent.

Some might be astonished by that pronouncement. Not Eberhart, who has been around the sport for some three decades. “I’ve never known anything different,” she says. “This is a meritocracy.”

The playing field—at least on track—is relatively equal (one does need a bit of funding to get started). In his second year after returning to racing following a horrific 2018 accident, Wickens won the Michelin Pilot Challenge TCR championship. Trans Am driver Brent Crews claimed the series title at the age of 15. Dave House won an IMSA sportscar race at 77. Louise Smith recorded 38 wins in several different types of race car between 1949-1956. Shirley Muldowney is a three-time NHRA Top Fuel champion. Hurley Haywood is a sportscar legend, racing from the 1970s to the ’90s. He is also gay. Some drivers, he says, would not team with him.

Women have been part of racing from the beginning. In fact, Sara Christian competed in the first NASCAR race, at Charlotte in 1949.

Granted, there have been—and in some cases continue to be—struggles. “When I started I was usually the youngest and always the only woman in the room,” Eberhart recalls. At first NASCAR refused to allow Wendell Scott, a Black driver in the 1950s and ’60s, to participate. But he won at all levels of racing. Willy T. Ribbs also experienced racism in the 1980s.

And problems continue, particularly in NASCAR, which claims a Southern heritage. Although a number of women have competed in the past—Janet Guthrie, Danica Patrick—without much backlash, haters today have taken to social media (naturally) to bash British driver Katherine Legge’s appearance in the series.

“I think there’s a subconscious bias that exists in culture and it shows sometimes,” Eberhart observes. But IMSA—the series on track this weekend—features drivers like Wickens and Sheena Monk, along with mechanics and engineers of different genders and races, all without the level of hate.

Eberhart sees the situation changing more dramatically for the better with the younger generation. There are active programs like Women in Motorsports North America and Bosch’s Electrify Your Career in Motorsports that are creating opportunities. “It will be different for them,” she says.

The Monterey SportsCar Championship begins in earnest tomorrow, May 10 with the Michelin Pilot Challenge at 12:45pm and IMSA’s WeatherTech Championship qualifying at 3:15pm. The main race rolls on Sunday, May 11 at 12:10pm.

Behind the wheels and in the garages will be all kinds of faces. Still white male for the most part, yes. But despite the struggles, no other sport is as inclusive.

“Only racing,” Eberhart says.