Women in Sports, Leena Gade.

Leena Gade. Audi Racing team Engineer.



Finding women involved in auto racing is a fairly rare event. Finding a woman who is in charge of the racing team is even more rare. Finding a woman engineer who is in charge of a major racing team and is a winner is ground breaking by any definition.

Enter Leena Gade. In 2011, she was a rookie Team Engineer, and in Audi's vebage, that means she's the one in charge of the team. She decides which tires to use, what services to use, and when to pit the car, and what repairs need to be made. The pressure to win is enormous, with Audi spending millions of dollars per team they expect results.

Leena is diminutive in stature, but not in the esteem that receives from her team, and her peers. In that she is without equal.

Her team has won the 24 hours of Le Mans. An event that visits some teams once in their lives. Leena did it again in 2012. Now you can imagine that any family that raised a daughter to be so independent, and successful would be proud. Of course they would be, and can you imagine if both of the daughters went into motor-sports as engineers, and both were successful? Leena's sister is Teena Gade, and she is an engineer with Skoda Rally division.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/leena-gade/leena-gade-womens-day_b_2829337.html

I love endurance racing. The test of the car is incredible. The stresses the car endures during 24 hours of hard racing is unimaginable to me. I can't even fathom how much strain the brakes are going through during a race where on each lap the car accelerates to 200 MPH and brakes hard down to 50 MPH. The stresses on the people, and the cars is astonishing.

I like team Audi. They have consistently brought new technology to the field, and made is successful. Their most recent car, the R-18 e-tron is a part hybrid diesel powered monster that won the race in 2012 and 2013. Sadly Leena's team came in 5th last year, but in a few months she'll get a chance again.

If you are interested in watching a propaganda documentary of the 24 hours race in 2011, when Leena's team won it all, then you can download it for free here. http://truthin24.com/start I say propaganda because the entire film is about how Audi is working so hard to win the race. It is actually the second of the available free documentaries that is really as much advertising as it is documentary. However, for fans of the race like me, it is entertaining to watch.

Leena Gade is what we want our women to be. Independent, educated, successful, and most importantly, living the dreams they've held all their lives. The work is incredibly difficult, the focus and dedication is like nothing you can imagine. Yet she does it, and she does it better than many men. Partly that is due to Audi and the teams striving for perfection. Mostly it is due to her quality, skill, and dedication.

For the record, I prefer the Audi team with Capello, McNish, and Kristensen. Tom Kristensen is known as Mr. LeMans because he's won the race 9 times which may never be equaled.