Ladies are far from taking over the world of motorsports, but they continue to make small inroads and accomplishments. Sarah Fisher is the most recent female to score points in major league auto racing.

Now a woman has scored points in world championship motorcycle racing.

It happened last week in Mugello, Italy. 24 year old Katja Poensgen became the first woman to win points in the 250cc championship as she finished 14th in the Italian Grand Prix.

This is Poensgen’s first season racing 250cc bikes and she had never raced in the rain before. Rain caused nine riders to crash out of the race while Poensgen motored carefully on to the end.

Nice work.

It seems kind of odd, but CART, after showing the world a couple weeks ago that it has better drivers, cars and teams than the IRL, is making a move which will bring it closer to the IRL’s formula and car specifications.

Robin Miller of ESPN.com reports that CART soon will announce it is abandoning turbocharging for its vehicles. Champ cars have used turbochargers since CART began in 1979. According to Miller, the CART board of directors has adopted the plan.

Miller said it appears that CART is considering a 3.5 liter or smaller engine.

Kevin Kennedy, communications manager for Ford Racing Technology, said that boost pressures have  been reduced about as low as they can go. Couple that with the fact that auto industry technology is moving away from turbochargers. Twenty years ago, they were seen as the easiest way to get power from small, fuel efficient engines.

Computer engine management has become a more flexible and simpler way to achieve efficiency and meet emission standards than tempermental turbochargers.

Kennedy also pointed out that it makes things easier for Ford and other carmakers who make racing engines. Normally aspirated engines of about 3.5 liters are what already are used in IRL and Formula 1. Ford and Honda already compete in F1 and CART and Toyota, which currently is involved in CART, will be moving into F1 next year.

All that may matter in the boardrooms, but what really matters is slowing down the cars. Besides reducing boost pressures, they’ve tried a lot of aerodynamic tricks to increase drag and still maintain down force, but teams still figure out ways to make the cars faster.

Taking off the turbochargers seems to be the next logical step.

Meanwhile, in the IRL, GM will replace the Oldsmobile Aurora engines with a new Chevrolet Racing engine. GM is phasing out the whole Olds division and Oldsmobile announced earlier this year that it would withdraw from the IRL engine program at the end of the current season.

According to the Associate Press, Joe Negri, GM’s IRL/Road Racing Group manager, said the Chevy racing engine coming out next year will be significantly different from the Aurora.

I wonder why.

GM has supplied Aurora engines to the IRL since it began its current formula in January of 1997. Since then Aurora engines have won 41 of 42 races, including five straight Indianapolis 500’s.