Female NASCAR driver ‘would love to have a tampon on the side of my car’ – Charlotte Observer

A woman considered to be one of the top up-and-coming female drivers in NASCAR said she would “love to have a tampon on the side of my car.”

Julia Landauer, who competes in NASCAR’s K&N Pro Series West, made the statement to Bloomberg Businessweek magazine in a profile of her and her racing career in its Sept. 4 edition.

Her point: Female and unisex family brands are missing out by not advertising in a sport where nearly 40 percent of the fan base is female, she said. Why not cosmetics, pharmaceutical and feminine hygiene brands on the sides of cars? asked the Stanford University grad from New York City.

In an interview with the Observer last year, Landauer said she gave “all the credit in the world” to Monster Energy Cup series driver Danica Patrick “for being the first woman in modern times to break into the Cup series. It’s a tough club to break into, and so I think she’s done an incredible job with her brand and shown that women can make it, they can be successful, they can be fan favorites and be on the best teams, and that’s great.

“I hope I can prove I can be a different type of woman with a different brand and a different type of message and at the end of the day my results speak for themselves,” Landauer said in the Observer interview. “As long as you provide value and can show talent, you will be able to make a case for yourself.”

Landauer, 25, is one of the few female drivers close to reaching one of NASCAR’s top three series. K&N is one notch below.

Asked in a 2013 interview published on the Women You Should Know website why the sport has so few women drivers, she said: “I think once we see a few more women succeeding in the sport, we may see a greater interest in having more women in racing. At least I hope so!”

On Facebook Live from her N.C. home on Saturday, Landauer said: “I think there are a lot more girls climbing the ranks in racing than when I was doing it, and thank you to the parents who are helping encourage the girls to do it. … It’s one of the few sports girls can actually do it against boys.”

A tampon ad on the side of Landauer’s car would certainly rank high on NASCAR’s most unusual sponsor list.

In 2013, USA Today published a list of what it considered the five “goofiest” sponsors in NASCAR history: Boudreaux’s Butt Paste, a diaper rash remedy; Kim Kardashian Fragance; the Lovable brassiere brand; Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips; and Viagra, the erectile dysfunction drug.

While a tampon ad on the side of a race car might seem unusual, Landauer isn’t the first to have suggested it. That honor goes to Ricky Bobby, Will Ferrell’s character in “Talladega Nights,” who pitched Maypax tampons among other spoof products.

The difference?

Landauer’s pitch is no joke.