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| Leventis (left), Watts (center) and Kane (right) at 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans driver parade. Photo courtesy Strakka Racing |
One of the rare certainties in sports car racing is that you’d expect a Strakka prototype in the field with that driver lineup intact, always punching above their weight. The group won their class at Le Mans in 2010 and finished fifth overall. In their final race together, they finished fourth with an older car in a deep 23-car LMP2 class.
Watts stepped aside from driving after that race, and hadn’t made a major driving reappearance since.
He’s regarded as a driver with a great smile, genuinely good insight – which I saw on all four of my occasions covering Le Mans on site from 2009 through 2015 – and a plucky persistence behind the wheel which saw either him or Kane the standard pacesetter for the entry. But he was no longer going to be a driver in a Strakka LMP2 car.
So he hadn’t had a reason to be in the news. That was until today, as Watts revealed he’s gay. This meant he had to put on a brave face to overcompensate for it the entirety of his racing career.
I figured this blog would be a better platform for penning some thoughts on the announcement.
Alas, the first thought I have is that Watts’ revelation is that it’s a massively brave decision. Racing has a lot of good people involved, although there are some questionable characters. It can also be bogged down by sexism and provide a feeding ground for machismo – where heterosexual males have fun playing with race cars and living the proverbial dream. The ones who are lucky enough to cover it are the ones just telling the stories. For Watts to have to hide his true identity in a world where being an alpha male isn’t just preferred, it’s almost required, speaks volume of his courage.
The second is that he managed to persist and succeed at his day job regardless of the storm that was boiling beneath the surface. What Watts’ sexual preference is has nothing on his ability to manhandle a prototype, with whatever setup it had, with whatever power it produced, and with whoever he was sharing the car with. Seeing a team have as much stability as Strakka seemed to have, knowing it would be that same trio, spoke volumes of how well that core group worked together.
The third thought, and arguably the most important, is that the fact this is news at all reveals how far motorsport still has to come. Matt Beer wrote it well in his Autosport column, saying: “It's statistically ludicrous to think that only heterosexual white males can be any good at driving fast or that only heterosexual white males would enjoy watching people drive fast.”
He’s right, and in addition, there are those non-heterosexual white males who’ve made an impact in racing. It’s a black driver who’s a multiple-time World Champion and easily F1’s biggest star in Lewis Hamilton. There have been female drivers who have won races and championships in open-wheel and drag racing for decades.
And that’s just on the driving front. Let’s not forget Leena Gade, for instance, who was a pioneer with Audi from an engineering perspective. Ruth Buscombe is a strategy ace from the F1 pit wall who brought debut points to Haas F1 Team and also aided Sauber in scoring a pivotal points-scoring finish last year in Brazil. Andrea Mueller has been named lead engineer for Ryan Blaney in NASCAR this year. The list could go on…
From a personal standpoint, some of my best friends in the industry are female and a more blended, more inclusive environment would be better for the sport longer-term – if it is to grow beyond the niche it is now – rather than maintaining its long-standing identity as the “good ‘ol boys club.”
Success should not be determined based on your ethnicity, your gender, or your sexual preference. It should only be determined by whether or not you can produce in your line of work in the industry.
For the entirety of his career, I never looked at Watts as anything other than an unfailingly polite, dedicated race driver who was part of a team that overachieved in sports car racing more often than not.
And today’s announcement that he has a certain sexual preference does nothing to change that.
The reaction to Watts' announcement has featured a number of positive comments on social media thus far, and that's been great to see.
I admire Watts' courage, I respect his bravery and I'm hopeful this announcement could be one that changes the conversation, and perhaps opens doors for more proper diversity in the motorsport arena.
I admire Watts' courage, I respect his bravery and I'm hopeful this announcement could be one that changes the conversation, and perhaps opens doors for more proper diversity in the motorsport arena.
