Ford Motor Company has decided it would like to see more women driving race cars, so it’s doing something about it. The Blue Oval has begun the Ford Female Driver Development Program, which currently counts 18-year-old Stephanie Mockler (shown) and 17-year-old Alison MacLeod as participants. Ford’s ultimate goal is to these young ladies progress into more competitive series and someday win the Holy Grail of racing for female drivers in the U.S. – a NASCAR Nextel Cup race. Can you believe it hasn’t happened yet?

More and more women are joining the ranks of racing, as this Wikipedia page that hosts 47 names attest to, but it hasn’t been fast nor easy for any one of them. Just like Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball, these females have had to work extremely hard to crossover from fan to female racer and owe a lot those who went before them like Janet Guthrie, Shirley Muldowney and Lyn St. James, among others.

While Danica Patrick is every racing fan’s favorite femme fatale at the moment, we’re fairly certain she won’t be the only lady in pit row for long. There is, however, a slim chance that she might be the first female to win a NASCAR race.

(For Ford’s press release on its new program, follow the jump)

[Source: Ford]

This entry was posted on Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Nascar [t]. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.