Race For Equality & Change
AS FEATURED IN THE 2021 INDIANAPOLIS 500 PROGRAM
The first INDYCAR race weekend of the season at Barber Motorsports Park April 17-18 was filled with “firsts” and barrier breaking moments that will live in the INDYCAR history books forever.
It was also a glimpse of the progress the last 10 months of Race for Equality and Change have brought to the industry in many different areas and a peek at what the future of INDYCAR holds.
When Alex Palou drove his No.10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda to victory circle in the season-opening Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama for his first career win, it wasn’t just his “first” that the history books will remember.
Danielle Shepherd, a simulation engineer and Aeroscreen tear-off attendant on the No. 10 car became the first woman to go over the pit wall for a winning car in INDYCAR history.
That wasn’t the only barrier broken.
Yuven Sundaramoorthy became the first driver of Indian descent to win a race in INDYCAR and in the Road to Indy ladder system when he won the season-opening Cooper Tires USF2000 race in the No. 22 entry for Pabst Racing.
Sundaramoorthy, 18, is from Wisconsin and just wrapped up his first year at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is competing in his third full season in USF2000.
Also on the Birmingham, Alabama, track was Myles Rowe, the 20-year-old driver of the No. 99 Force Indy machine. It was the debut weekend for Force Indy, an African American-led team headed by Rod Reid, which was announced as part of the Race for Equality and Change near the end of 2020.