Lindsay Brewer

 

Lindsay Brewer competes in the  Indy Pro 2000 championship in the USA, a part of the Indycar development ladder.

She has raced single-seaters, touring cars and sportscars. After some races in the Skip Barber series, she entered the 2022 Indy Pro 2000 championship with Exclusive Autosport. She did not do a full season. Her best finish by far was eighth at Indianapolis and she was 15th in the championship. 

Early in the season, she also did some guest races in the F1600 championship, driving a Spectrum. Eighth was her best finish there too, at Barber. At the end of 2022, she tried out for the all-female W Series, using an F4 car, but was not selected.

Her second Indy Pro 2000 season was also run with Exclusive Autosport. Sadly, she did not do as well and finished 18th overall this time. Her best finishes were a pair of eleventh places at Indianapolis and Portland.

In 2021, she raced in the TC America touring car series, driving a Honda Civic Type R run by the Skip Barber school team. She did the first four rounds of the championship, with a best finish of eighth at Circuit of the Americas. The team was second in the TC championship, mostly thanks to Eric Powell, but Lindsay was fourteenth overall. 

Throughout her career, Lindsay has been accused of not being a real racing driver and of using motorsport to further her internet influencer presence. She responded to comments made by NASCAR driver Hailie Deegan about female drivers who are Instagram models first and racers second by challenging Deegan to a race, which did not happen. Her commitment to the Indy Pro 2000 series since 2022 should have gone some way to dispelling some of this negativity, but a series of newspaper reports describing her as “the world’s sexiest racing driver” have not helped.

She entered one race in the 2019 Saleen Cup after taking four years away from competition to attend college. Before that, she raced Legends at club level, as well as testing stock cars. She had raced karts from an early age and finished fifth in the PSL Racing TAG Minimax championship in 2009, when she was twelve.

At the end of 2023, it was announced that she would join the IndyNXT (formerly Indy Lights) grid in 2024.

(Image copyright Times10)

Dorothy Patten

 Dorothy Patten was a British driver who mainly competed in rallies, but also raced before and after the war. 

Her origins are rather obscure and “Dorothy” was not her real given name. It is likely that she was originally named Alice Minnie Patten and had come from a working-class background. Both of her parents died before she was ten and she and one of her sisters were sent to St Mark’s Home for Girls, a domestic science school where Minnie trained as a maid. 

A 1939 summons for speeding close to Brooklands in the name of Dorothy Minnie Patten, in her car, seems to prove her identity. 

Alice Minnie Patten was born in 1906 in Flintshire. As a teenager, she worked as a housemaid in a surgeon’s house, but at some point in the 1920s or early 1930s, she seems to have come into some money and moved to the south of England.

She got her start in motorsport very early, in 1933. Her first car seems to have been an Alvis, which she drove in that year’s Alpine Rally, finishing fourteenth in class and 53rd overall. She tried again on the 1934 Alpine but does not seem to have finished. 

Starting from John O’Groats, she tackled her first Monte Carlo Rally in 1935, still with the Alvis. She was 79th overall.

Another of her early cars was a British Salmson, which was the first she used for circuit racing. She was second in the Unlimited Standard Sports Car class for women in the 1936 Brighton Speed Trials in it, narrowly beaten by Kay Petre in a Frazer Nash. The following year, she raced it at the Crystal Palace circuit, finishing third in an Unlimited Sports Car handicap at the United Hospitals and University Motor Club meeting.

She drove the Salmson in the 1936 RAC Rally and the 1937 Monte Carlo Rally. The same, or a similar, car, also finished the 1938 Monte. This car belonged to Rainer Dorndorf. It took her to a 43rd place in the 1937 Monte, from 81 finishers. Some results lists have Dorothy entered as a co-driver to Rainer Dorndorf in a Salmson in the 1938 Monte and crashing out, but this sounds unlikely given her own entry.

She was named as a car entrant for R.E. Dorndorf's special-bodied Darl’mat Peugeot in the 1939 Sydenham Plate. This was a car that Dorothy didn’t race much herself at the time, although she used it in rallies. Her first major result in it was probably an eleventh place in the 1939 Paris-St. Raphael Rally. She was fourth in Class B, for drivers with no previous podium finishes.

Later, she married Rainer Dorndorf, a German based in Ireland, and began styling herself “Baroness von Dorndorf”, although her husband does not appear to have held such a title. As a British national married to a German, she was briefly interned during the war, although she was soon cleared of being any risk and released. By 1942, the pair had divorced and Dorothy was apparently engaged to Captain Anthony Ryan. They never actually married. It was claimed in the Tatler that Rainer Dorndorf had died in a hunting accident in 1938, but this was untrue.In 1947, she did remarry, to David Treherne. 

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Dorothy was able to resume her career after the war. She entered the speed trials held at Elstree Aerodrome in April 1946, taking the Peugeot to a class win. She covered the quarter-mile course in 22.8s.

The following year, she went back to the Brighton Speed Trials, but could only manage 17th in class and sixth-fastest lady. Her only circuit race in this car seems to have been a three-lap contest at Goodwood in 1948, although her finishing position is not recorded.

She died in 1975, aged 68.

Thanks to Adam Ferrington for information.