Simona De Silvestro, Paretta Autosport Set for IndyCar Return This Week at Road America

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.

“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.