Pippa Mann: The One in the Pink Car

Pippa Mann grew up in Britain racing carts and then moved to open-wheel cars in Europe, becoming the first female driver to score points and start a race from pole position in the World Series by Renault. She moved to the United States in 2009 to race in Indy Lights, the feeder series to IndyCar, and in 2010 she became one of only two women to win a race in that series.

In addition, a statistic I know she's especially proud of, she became the only woman in any racing series to capture a pole position at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The same year, she finished fifth in the Indy Lights championship and was voted Most Popular Driver for the series.

She qualified for the Indy 500 for the first time in 2011, becoming the eighth woman in history, and the first British woman, to do so. Since 2011, she's started the race four more times (2013-2016), and this year, she'll make her sixth attempt. She's officially on record as the second-fastest female in history at IMS, with a top qualifying speed just under 230 mph.

The Indy 500 is the focus of Pippa's racing season, but she also makes the occasional appearance for Dale Coyne Racing on other ovals. In addition, in 2017, she's started racing Lamborghinis in the Super Trofeo series, and she helped found an all-female karting team, Team Empower.

In the interest of full disclosure, I know Pippa, and she's been invaluable to me as a source for my books. So I'm biased, for sure, but she's also a hell of an inspiration. You see, Pippa loves racing—loves racing in the Indy 500—so much that she works 50 weeks a year to pull together the money from sponsors to spend 2 weeks with her car on track. ALL YEAR. Plus, as if that level of fundraising wasn't enough, she's taken on more.

In 2014, she connected with the Susan G. Komen Foundation as an unpaid partner. Then she managed to convince her paying sponsors to make their logos really small, in order to have Komen on the car. Then she got partners and friends to donate goods that she could sell/auction to raise funds for Komen. In the past two years, the campaign has earned more than $135,000 for Komen.

What I find even more interesting is Pippa's experience with pink—because I went through the same transition in recent years. You see, as a female in a male world, growing up, Pippa eschewed pink, so as not to seem "girly" (we all know that usually means "weak," right?). And then along came Komen and the need for a pink car. So she took a deep breath and embraced it. And I think she came to love it (as I have). Now, she's finding that a lot of sponsors and fans LIKE to be associated with the female and the female cause on track...so the pink has turned into an asset.

"It's kind of cool that all those little girls who are fans now not only have a girl to cheer for in this year's Indy 500, but also can cheer for a girl in a pink car!"
(from my own interview with Pippa in 2015)

Most of all, what's inspiring about Pippa isn't just her struggle to get a car on track or to raise money for Komen or to proudly wear pink. It's not how well and much she interacts with fans on social media. It's not even the fact that she's an admitted book nerd! It's that she's unfailingly positive. She posts positive messages every morning, and I've never heard her say a bad word about anyone. She knows that positive attitudes attract people, and besides, she seems to truly take every day she gets to be involved with racecars as a gift and a privilege. We could all learn from her.

P.S. Go check out her eBay auction for the cool stuff and experiences on offer—especially the Turn the Cockpit Pink item!—and help her raise even more money for the Susan G. Komen foundation this year!

(Top photo from pippamann.com.)

Why I Donate

Twenty-five years ago, I gave a family friend a gift of a star named in her honor. She was particularly hard to buy for, and I wasn't sure if she'd like the gift or not. Turns out, she loved it. She hooted, with the distinctive laugh she had that I can still conjure in my memory. And she displayed the certificate proudly.

It was only a couple years later that cancer would take her from us.

That time it was lung cancer, not breast cancer. But the first time, back in 1980 or so, it was breast cancer. I was a kid at the time, so the magnitude of her battle was lost on me. But looking back, the 20 extra years we had her in our lives was a miracle.

Her name was Barbara, and she and her husband were good friends of my parents (we lost her husband to cancer also, five years before she died). Barbara was about 10 years older than my mother, and she wasn't related by blood, which was important. Because as I was wrapped up in the self-centered murkiness of my teen years, and as I tried to figure out who I was that was different from who my mother was, Barbara helped.

I thought of her as my fairy godmother of logic. (My logic godmother?) She was the one who'd talk sense to me, who'd straighten out my warped, irrational brain. Who'd help me see past the "I shoulds" and "I can'ts" to my own soul and happiness. In a way, for me, she really was magic.

I'm not telling you she was perfect. She wasn't, I know that. But she was a great friend, and I still miss her, deeply. I still think of her sometimes and cry because I miss her. I still get angry at cancer for taking her—and so many other wonderful people we've all known—from us.

And she's why I give anytime someone asks for a donation for a cancer organization. She's why I'm spreading the word as widely as possible about Pippa Mann's pink car for Susan G. Komen at the Indianapolis 500.

Twenty-five years after that named star, 16 years after I last saw her, and nowhere near Christmas or her birthday, I'm giving my friend Barbara another gift. I'm giving her a ride-along in Pippa's car for the entire Indy 500 race, by putting her name in Pippa's racecar. I think Barbara would like that a lot.

I hope you'll join me and #GetInvolved, so we can both celebrate the survivors (and fighters) and kick cancer's ass.

(photo from Pippa's Instagram)

5 Questions with Pippa Mann, Revisited

Racing driver Pippa Mann will return to the Indianapolis 500 this year for the fourth time, and it’ll be her second time “going pink.” That’s right, she’s returning with her pink racecar, supporting—and supported by—the Susan G. Komen foundation.

Pippa’s starting a big campaign aimed at rounding up more support … but not for her own funding, though she scrambles as much as any racecar driver for that. No, she’s aiming to get us all involved with the mission to end breast cancer forever. Along the way, she’ll celebrate the fighters and survivors by carrying their colors into battle on the racetrack.

I’m going to #GetInvolved, and I hope you will also. To kick things off, here are five questions Pippa answered last year before the “greatest spectacle in racing.”

Tammy: Why do you love to race?

Pippa: I love the adrenaline, the feeling of speed, of controlling that powerful car underneath me. I'm competitive, so I love beating the boys on their own terms, too. Much like the horse riding I started with, it's one of the few sports where we get to play together and compete as equals. I love that about motor sport.

What's your racing goal or dream?

Haha, this is easy! Winning the Indy 500 one day!

But I personally have a second goal, pertaining to the Indy 500, that I feel very strongly about. Currently I am the only female pole winner ever at IMS, which I achieved in Indy Lights in 2010. In a race, so much can go wrong, so much is dependent on everything else around you. In qualifying, it's just you and the car your engineer has managed to give you—there are still all sorts of factors that come into play, but so many fewer than on race day. One day I want to repeat my feat from Indy Lights in an IndyCar at IMS. I want to be on pole for the Indy 500.

Aren't racing and the fight against breast cancer a strange combination?

You might think, but here's a different perspective: The Indy 500 reaches millions of people. Literally, millions. Millions here in the U.S., millions across the world. There are around half a million at the track itself when you combine race day and carb day attendance together, before we even get into the people who come out for qualifying weekend. The parade through downtown Indy on the Saturday before the race is the third largest parade in the U.S., after the Rose Bowl parade and the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and it's also televised nationally.

The potential reach, to hopefully connect with people via this pink car—this entire pink program—and to raise awareness, is massive. Don't think of this as a motor race. Think of it as a national platform at one of the biggest, most prestigious sporting events of the year, with a female athlete to help spread the word. Then it's a campaign on this same, amazing national platform, to try and raise funding by those who want to get involved in a bigger way, too.

Why is this pink car so important this year?

When I was a teenager, who just started racing, I never wanted pink anywhere as a part of my racing program. I didn't want to be perceived as "the girl" on track, I wanted to be perceived as good, someone who the other drivers either respected—or given karting was, ahem, occasionally something of a contact sport—even someone they feared and knew not to mess with. Pink didn't really fit into that vibe.

That was an attitude that took me a long time to grow out of, and the first time my thoughts about it really changed was actually due to Sarah Fisher again. My first year in the U.S., in 2009, I vividly remember her car at Homestead, when they turned her entire program pink during breast cancer awareness month for Susan G. Komen. I had never seen that before, and it stuck with me.

Now here I am, five years later, with my own pink Susan G. Komen IndyCar. This time, instead of running it for breast cancer awareness month, we're running it at the Indy 500. It's a program I am incredibly proud to have put together, and I am proud to be associated with such a great organization and with a cause that means so much to me. We are using our program to raise awareness and funding [through #GetInvolved], and my helmet is changing color for the first time in over 10 years to match our program.

Then there's the completely secondary reason why this program is kind of cool, and this is something I have only grown into admitting over the past few years.

Let's face it, 99% of little girls do like pink. I have worked with so many young karters, and met so many little girls who are race fans out at the tracks over the previous five years. They are always so pleased to be able to cheer for me when I'm driving, and so sad when I'm not. Completely aside from the big reasons why I want to run this car, to me, it's kind of cool that all those little girls who are fans now not only have a girl to cheer for in this year's Indy 500, but also can cheer for a girl in a pink car!

Tell us how different it is to say "my race is no longer about me"?

I'm a racing driver, and we have a bad habit of thinking of ourselves first and foremost nearly all of the time. So yes, it is pretty weird not only to say that, but also to feel it, and to know it deep inside, too. I'm not out there racing for just me and my team this year, and this car means so much more than racing a car with just a standard logo on the side.

This isn't even really about racing anymore. It's about using this race, and the entire Indy 500 event, as a platform for a campaign to raise awareness and funding for a disease that one in eight women in the U.S. are diagnosed with. Every time I say “one in eight,” I am reminded how scary that statistic is. My family has been touched too, but we're not the anomaly, we're the rule. That's why this is not about me or my family personally. It's about everyone who has been affected or touched in whatever way. This is much, much bigger, and way more important than me.

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Follow Pippa at @pippamann and find out more at PippaMann.com.

Photo credits: Chris Owens (more).