“Race queen” (katakana: レースクイーン - rēsu kuiin) is a
Japanese term for a type of promotional model found
as part of a pit crew in certain kinds of motor
racing, such as F1 races. The equivalent British
term is “Pit babe".
The first usage of promotional models in motor races
was during the late 1960s when model Rosa Ogawa was
brought in to represent the race winners. It was
then that the term race queen was coined. Prior to
that, women in motor races were mostly wives and
girlfriends of drivers and staff, with the exception
of some who were drivers.
In 1983, the sun tan lotion company Hawaiian Tropic
sponsored the 24 hours of Le Mans. The company
brought its models over from the United States to
appear on the racetrack before the race began. These
models wore bikinis bearing the company’s name. A
year later, that practice was imported over to Japan
for the Suzuka 8 Hours motorcycle race.
The official job of a race queen is to hold an
umbrella over the driver while his car is being
worked on.
They generally wear some sort of revealing costume
(mini-dress, swimsuit, hot pants, or the like), as
well as pantyhose and high heels or knee-high boots.
Campaign girls in other countries are generally
looked down upon as the occupation is regarded as
“low profile” or disgraceful. However, in Japan,
race queens have a higher profile and are regarded
as idols varying only by the motor sport event they
appear in.
The average age for these girls is late teens to
early twenties and demand for them wanes with age.
Some go on to become models or even actresses but
those who are unable to leverage their career into
something larger, sometimes slowly “decline” into AV
work, marriage and eventual obscurity. It is not
unusual for some of them to have a background as an
AV Idol.
Race queens who operate in prestigious events and
with a large fanbase can also be found at automobile
shows purely to draw crowds where they are nearly as
important an attraction as the cars or electronics
products that they are promoting.
There is a magazine dedicated to them called Gals
Paradise.
The models, referred as “grid/pit girls” in Europe,
are very common in many series worldwide, but are
mostly banned in the United States due to the
reasons of being associated with sexism. Only the
ALMS and Champ Car series have such models. In DTM
and some other events, organizers have started to
recruit male models as in startlines.
The term is also used outside of Japan in Korea,
China and other Asian nations. The Korean term for a
race queen is a “racing girl". In Thailand they are
known as “pretties” and they are used extensively at
events ranging from the Bangkok International Motor
Shows to minor events such as openings of shopping
centers. There are businesses dedicated to
recruiting and providing pretties for events,
classifying them into several categories according
to skills and experience. A pretty-presenter does
product presentations; a pretty-dancer is part of a
dance group at a manufacturer’s booth; a plain
pretty just stands and hands out promotional
materials. Wages are lucrative for the most
attractive and experienced pretties, several times
what they would normally earn in an office
job.[citation needed]
South Korean carmakers Hyundai and Kia have recently
announced that they would cut down on the number of
models in their shows, stating that “We would rather
have the spectators’ attention on our cars than the
attractive ladies.”