Steel Ovaries and Other Tidbits

by Tammy

There's a great new movement and blog that I love, and it has the strangest (or most hilarious) name: Steel Ovary Nation. It's all about supporting women racers, and probably women ass-kickers of any flavor, really.

Its participants, adherents, and supporters are part of the Steel Ovary Nation, or, if men prefer, they can be "Brovaries." Here's the explanation of how it all came about:

I'm a proud member of #SteelOvaryNation (written so because of Twitter, of course), and so is my fictional driver, Kate Reilly. In fact, thanks to Pressdog's efforts*, Kate's gotten hooked up with Shea Holbrook, the founder of the Nation, and will contribute to the blog. I also expect to take a good race-related #SteelOvaryNation photo once the Long Beach Grand Prix weekend rolls around (and my favorite race-weekend partners-in-crime come to town).

In other TFTR blog news, Simon and I caught up in person this past weekend at the Left Coast Crime mystery convention in Colorado Springs. Aside from the unseasonable spring snowstorm, we had a great time and even got to share space on the same panel (The Sporting Side of Murder). Here we are playing nicely together in the book-signing room.

Racing news will resume next weekend!

*More fantastic news coming from Pressdog, who's named me the 25th Woman of Pressdog®! More info to come!

What Are You Thankful For About Racing?

by Tammy

The racing season is now over, and we're staring down the end of the year, as well. With Thanksgiving and all, I spent some time being thankful last week about my life in general. But I wanted to cover a few items I'm thankful for with regard to the world of racing.

Corvette Racing 2012 ALMS Champs: I'm pretty dang happy they pulled it out to win the season championship, their first in the (combined) GT class.

Last-race championship decisions: An awful lot of season championship battles came down to the last race of the year: F1, IndyCar, several of the ALMS classes. Well done with all of the battles, guys.

Pressdog, the blogger: A racing friend introduced me to the Pressdog's blog, and I have to say, he brightens my week. It's my dream to be a Woman of Pressdog (R).

The ALMS/Grand-Am merger: I still have some concerns about how this will turn out (specifically that it won't be a case of losing the good in favor of the ponderous), but I'm hopeful. If nothing else, I think change is good to shake things up. And if nothing else, it makes it really easy for me to transition Kate from the ALMS to the 24 Hours of Daytona for my third book in the series....

TrueCar Racing sponsoring a bunch of female racers: Yeah, I'm letting my feminism out. But I think it's fantastic that a company stepped up and sponsored six female racers across a variety of disciplines. It was neat to follow their tweets as they traveled en masse to races to support each other. I hope TrueCar keeps it up.

Twitter and passionate racing fans and friends everywhere: It's amazing how we can stay involved in the racing world these days from our desk or chair at home. Thank you Twitter, and thank you, committed Tweeters. I don't always agree with what everyone's saying, but I love the virtual community we've got. And what's even better is making true friends in that virtual world. (Find me there.)

So what about the rest of you? What were you especially thankful for in the 2012 racing season?