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The Mostly Women's Team Paretta Autosport Makes Debut At Indy 500

Doug Jaggers/WFYI

The mostly-women team Paretta Autosport made history at the Indianapolis 500 Sunday. The team’s owned by a woman, with a woman driver and crew members.

The Paretta team started in the last position after fighting to qualify.

Driver Simona de Silvestro managed to move the No. 16 car up about 10 positions before a brake problem in pit lane ended her race. She finished 31st.

Team owner Beth Paretta said while the results were not what they hoped, the team was still a success.

“Just being able to have made the field and be on the grid is an achievement in and of itself, because this is a team that started working together four months ago,” said Paretta. “So just to be able to get through this race, I think it's going to give our women a lot of confidence, they were able to face adversity and figure it out.” 

Paretta said the team plans to be back next year.

Contact reporter Samantha at shorton@wfyi.org or follow her on Twitter at @SamHorton5.

Last month, we welcomed Samantha Horton to our station. She is Indiana Public Broadcasting reporter, mainly reporting on business and economic issues in the States of Indiana for WBAA. After graduated from Evansville University with a triple majors degree (International studies, Political science and Communication), Samantha worked for a Public Radio at Evansville for three years, and then she joined WBAA because she wanted to take a bigger role on reporting. So far she enjoyed working in WBAA as business and economy reporter.