This essay argues that the gendered body is not accounted for in the physical conditions of motorsport but instead through the discourse of the sport. Specifically, women’s bodies signify as different in three main ways: beyond vehicles (navigating the space filled with other bodies and their respective vehicles), with vehicles (coordinating with the technology of the vehicle), and inside vehicles (operating in the space of and interacting with the technology) but situated by their gender’s discursively constructed characteristics. For women drivers in motorsport, these locations of identity formation offer embodied experiences mediated through discursive constructions. This article examines these articulations of the female body in motorsport, focusing on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Donna Haraway, and Iris Marion Young.
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