women

“Competitive” isn’t a dirty word, and nice girls can be competitive, too.

/ Ann Morey

side by side

For most of my adult life, I identified myself as “not a competitive person.” I was a nice, thoughtful, collaborative, easy going person. Competitive people, I thought, were aggressive, confrontational people who would throw you under the bus and do anything to get ahead. That definitely wasn’t me. I wore the “not a competitive person” label with pride.

And yet, somehow I fell in love with wheel to wheel racing, a sport that involves battling door to door with other cars for the same scrap of asphalt. Racing is arguably one of the most competitive things a person could do. How did that happen? It turns out I was a competitive person all along, but being competitive didn’t mean quite what I thought it did.

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Impostor syndrome and women in motorsports – How I overcame feeling like a fraud on the race track

/ Ann Morey

pink helmet

This is a difficult topic to write about, which is probably why I couldn’t find anyone else who’d written about it when I went looking for information. And that’s why I’m writing about it, because I know I’m not the first woman to have gotten behind the wheel of a race car and felt like a total fraud. Or the first person, because some of the things that made me feel like an impostor have nothing to do with my gender.

Spoiler alert: this story has a happy ending! After I figured out I was experiencing impostor syndrome, I did my homework on it and got to the root of my fear that “I don’t have what it takes to be a ‘real deal’ race car driver.” As it turned out, I was holding a few inaccurate beliefs about talent and abilities that were getting in my way.
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High Performance Driving Education (HPDE) for Smart Girls

/ Ann Morey

 

HermioneHandUp

“Ooh! I know what brake pad knock back is!”

When I started doing HPDE events, I brought the same overachiever, goody-two-shoes attitude with me that had made me so successful in school. Even though it had been ten years since I graduated from college, that “Smart Girl” in me just can’t help but come out any time I’m in any kind of class.

But HPDE isn’t wasn’t like the other classes I’d taken. HPDE is first and foremost about making sure everyone is safe on track. That means instruction is often geared toward keeping overconfident drivers safe from themselves and others, while information on how to improve driving performance is deprioritized. That’s understandable, because drivers who overestimate their skill level and drive over their head are objectively more dangerous than rule-following drivers who politely lift and point faster cars by, but may never reach their full potential as a driver.  Continue reading →

A supportive, flame resistant bra for women in motorsports

/ Ann Morey

Update October 12, 2022
The Arc Bra recommended by this article is no longer available for sale. I’m currently researching alternatives and will publish a new post on the topic soon! – Ann

I’m writing this post so that the next woman who scours the internet searching for a supportive, flame resistant bra to wear racing will have an easier time finding one than I did. I’ve spent a lot of time researching safe and comfortable fire resistant undergarments for women, and I’m putting it all in one place to make other women racers’ lives a little easier.

But… spoiler alert! There is one bra that won’t fuse to your skin at 130°F and will contain your DDs when you sprint across the paddock to the tech shed. It’s the Arc Bra. It’s made of Nomex and Kevlar and is designed for women who work in environments where they could be exposed to an electrical “arc flash.” Note: I am so excited about this bra that this might sound like they paid me to write about it, but they didn’t. It’s just that exciting to discover that your big boobs won’t keep you from enjoying racing!

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