What can you accomplish in 6 seconds?

That’s the question Beth Paretta posed to a rapt, standing-room-only audience during her opening keynote at the ASI Show Orlando 2024 on Thursday, Jan. 4.

“You could pour a cup of coffee, you could tie your shoes, but could you change a tire?” asked the owner and team principal of Paretta Autosport, the first woman-owned, woman-driven and woman-forward team in the INDYCAR Series. “In 6 seconds, I was able to change some people’s perception of what’s possible.”

Beth Paretta, owner and team principal of Paretta Autosport, talks with ASI President and CEO Tim Andrews during the opening keynote at ASI Orlando.

Paretta’s INDYCAR team, in which women comprise around 70% of the roster across all roles, including mechanics, engineers and over-the-wall pit crew, launched in 2021 and made its debut in the Indianapolis 500 that same year – a significant milestone in the event’s 110-year history. (Consider, Paretta noted, that women weren’t even granted access into the race pits at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway until 1971.)

The road that led Paretta to Indy was long and winding, but it began when she was just 5 years old, helping her father and older brother restore a 1952 Ford pickup truck. “I would wander into the garage because it was the hub of activity, and my father would give me a part to clean,” she recalled. “I had grease on my tights after church on more than one occasion.”

Despite that early love of cars, it never occurred to Paretta to pursue a career in automotive engineering or racing. “It wasn’t something that was encouraged,” she said. “I didn’t know it was available to me.”

Paretta received a bachelor’s in broadcasting and film from Boston University and an MBA from the University of Vermont. She started her career in the alpine skiing business before transitioning to working in automotive dealerships and for car brands. In 2011, she became the director of marketing and operations for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ performance division.

Paretta recalled sitting in many a meeting where executives would lament a looming engineering shortage and a shallow talent pool. That’s when she had her “aha” moment: What if you could use automobile racing to inspire the next generation of women to pursue STEM careers?

“Racing can reach kids,” Paretta said.

In addition to being an exciting spectacle, automotive racing is “a living lab” and “STEM in action,” with car brands developing new technology to improve performance on the track and using the high-pressure environment as a proving ground for their “best and brightest engineers,” she added.

By February 2021, Paretta had assembled her women-forward racing team, with the intention of competing in the Indy 500 that May. The pit crew of promising, but untried women apprenticed with experienced racing industry professionals Paretta also hired. They would meet at 5 a.m. each morning to practice at a mockup pit stop.

A typical pit stop in the INDYCAR series needs to be no longer than 6.2 seconds, since that’s how long it takes to fuel the car, Paretta said. During those few precious moments of refueling, the pit crew will also change all four tires. The team’s first pit-stop practice run took 18 seconds. So, they jacked the car back up and tried again, gradually whittling down their time and introducing new variables to ensure they were prepared for any real-world situation that might arise.

“They had to learn economy of motion,” Paretta said. “It’s like a ballet.”

On May 23, 2021, the Paretta Autosport team qualified for a spot in the 33-car field for that year’s Indy 500. “I cried on national television,” Paretta recalled. “That’s the moment that history was made.”

A week later, 30 laps into the race itself, all eyes were on Paretta Autosport. Four of the seven over-the-wall mechanics at the pit stop – which was being broadcast on the Jumbotron – were women. And when the team changed the car’s tires, the crowd cheered. Paretta shared: “Our pit stop had looked like everyone else’s.”

In the end, she added, they didn’t complete the pit stop in the crucial 6.2-second timeframe. Instead, Paretta said triumphantly, “They did it in 5 seconds.”