Your Pocket Guide To The Ladies Of TrueCar's Racing(??) Team

When Leo Parente, host of YouTube’s new DRIVE series, stopped me at the Detroit Show to congratulate me on something I’d written for TTAC, I was more than usually pleased. Parente is that rarest of autojournos — a winning racing driver — so his opinion is important to me. “That thing you wrote,” he barked, “about TrueCar. Good stuff.” Well, I didn’t write it, but TTAC readers are no doubt familiar with TrueCar’s recent tribulations thanks to an excellent series of articles by the other guys on the roster.

Leo inspired me to do my own in-depth piece on TrueCar’s woes, but just as I was preparing to do actual journalism, the site distracted me by hiring a bunch of female racing drivers, including Katherine Legge (above), to race in the “inaugural TrueCar racing team.” Curse them! Let’s check these ladies out.

Katherine Legge, a woman who has earned more than her share of respect in Formula Atlantic and DTM, will be running a Lotus IRL car. She will be joined by a diverse team of sedan and open-wheel competitors:

The lovely Shea Holbrook, who has run SCCA and World Challenge events, will be competing in the TrueCar WorldChallenge entry. The team has yet to be announced, but I wouldn’t bet against her continuing with known powerhouse (and my former team) Compass360.

Ashley Freiburg laid waste to Skip Barber’s East Coast series in 2010 and will be running a Star Mazda for TrueCar. Star Mazda is a good solid indicator of potential; if she can make it here…

Shannon McIntosh… gosh, I just hope she does well at whatever she tries. In this case, she will be running in the F2000 Series, a very interesting open-wheel class which frequently runs with NASA throughout the country. Full disclosure: Your author was working on putting an F2000 team together a few years ago. More full disclosure: he’s now thinking about doing it again. Funny running into you here, Shannon!

Emilee Tominovich will continue to compete in the MX-5 Cup, which is a very enjoyable series for pumped-up Miatas running at about Grand-Am ST pace, only now she will be funded by TrueCar.

Like many of us, Verena Mei started in modeling, moved to drifting, continued with time trial, appeared in The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift, and is now in RallyAmerica. How can she fail?

I must say, TrueCar’s strategy of hiring attractive women with genuine credentials in their chosen disciplines certainly diverts attention away from, um, whatever Ed’s been going on about. For more details on the TrueCar ladies, contact me directly, so I have an excuse to contact them, okay?