Deborah Mayer reappears with pivot for Iron Dames program

Those of us rightly concerned with the future of Prema IndyCar — which has now missed a race — have not heard much from financier Deborah Mayer since all that started to melt down due to lack of funding. In other categories, we did know that the Iron Dames program, which Mayer founded, would not be racing much if at all this year, but she has now at least attempted to do some press about it.

Iron Dames is reorienting itself as a more open-ended support system for getting more women into motorsports, rather than a race team with cars for women to drive, and some may see this as a defeat, but I think it’s a good call. That program was too rigid to get solid, lasting results. It was a box into which everything had to fit, rather than an adaptable team that could draw together the right drivers, the right car, and the right program. The drivers were top-notch; that wasn’t the problem. The problem is that the best women in racing should be seeking the best seats in racing, and the movement supporting them should be helping them do that rather than spending all its resources trying to go racing all by itself.