Women In Motogp
Women In Motogp – The number of women working tirelessly in the ™ paddock is constantly growing and with it being International Women’s Day on Sunday 8 March – and the start of the new decade of racing – every eighth month in 2020 will champion a woman’s story and role in the paddock.
Maria Herrera (Aspar Team) is the first one we talk to. She represents women in the FIM Enel MotoE™ World Cup 2020, just as she did in 2019. Born in 1996, Maria has spent her entire life on a motorcycle, a passion passed on to her by her father. But unlike her brother and sister, she clearly understood since childhood that competing was her calling.
Women In Motogp
“When I was seven, I started doing the first races, I liked to win and I worked to make my hobby my job,” recalls Maria, thinking about the first steps taken on the road that then took her to the world championship.
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Like all children and teenagers who want to compete, Maria found that she combined duty, that is, studying, with pleasure – racing bikes. “My mother has always been very strict on this aspect was crucial: after training I had to do my homework and then I could play.”
Herrera’s career began when she was 12 years old. Her parents accompanied her around Spain to get to the track where she competed in the national championship. “Sometimes to participate in the competitions I didn’t go to school on Friday and then I caught up with exams and questions later, often it was a Saturday when I could have stayed at home but I was alone in the class with the teacher to catch up because I didn’t want to and couldn’t stay with the school curriculum.”
Along with the Saturday mornings spent at school, Maria missed moments and parties with friends to exercise but it was thanks to the many hours of training that the opportunity came that changed her life.
In 2013, Monlau Competicion hired Herrera to participate in the Spanish Championship: “I was 17 when I moved to Barcelona to live near my team. I used to see my parents at the races but I spent most of the time at the track or in Barcelona to train.” Studying Catalan to go to school, meeting loved ones for a few hours every now and then, afternoons spent in the gym, but all this was the indispensable path to win a place in that elite of riders who are part of the World Championship.
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Behind every great conquest are hundreds of sacrifices and Herrera reveals to us the reason why she never gave up: “When you travel to compete, it’s nice because you’re living your passion, that’s what you’ve fought so hard for. Sometimes it’s hard to spend time away from home, friends, family, but then I remember that I’m doing what I want most.” Making your dream come true requires work and commitment, but then the longed-for life becomes the real life. reward too many sacrifices.
Several years later, Herrera is still excited when she talks about her first participation as a wildcard in the Moto3™ World Championship at the 2013 Aragon Grand Prix: “I presented myself as the person leading the Spanish Championship, sharing the track with riders like Luis Salom, Sandro Cortese and Alex Rins seemed incredible to me, I was riding on cloud nine.”
During a seven-year World Championship career, Herrera has seen the paddock welcome more and more women even though she remains the only rider competing in one of the ™ World Championship categories. “For years, both in the Spanish championship and in the world championship, I was the only girl in the team, instead I see that every year there are more and more girls who deal with different tasks but most of them take care of the coordination within the teams. “
“We girls stood in the garden. It is enough to see how many girls today work with telemetry or are engineers, and if they are there, it is thanks to their skills and nothing to do with gender.” points out Maria, who has both lived and continues to live this with challenge. “I don’t want to be where I am just because I’m a girl. I’m part of this environment because I’m worthy. If I wasn’t, I’d be doing something else.” Maria specifies to exclude any kind of compliments simply linked to being the only girl competing in an all-male grid “I think we are getting more and more used to seeing women involved in the box, although I would like to see an increasing number of them, especially in engineering and telemetry.”
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Maria Herrera, for her part, increases representation in the FIM Enel MotoE™ World Cup, an adventure that began in 2019 together with the curiosity of riders and spectators. “When I was told that the bike weighed 260 kilos, I was scared and thought ‘how can I ride such a heavy bike?’ Instead, it was a great experience that we lived to the fullest, both riders and fans who had a lot of fun watching our races.”
The opening round of the MotoE™ World Cup was at the German Grand Prix and, along with the emotions that accompany Maria at every race, that time there was even more curiosity and anticipation because it was a completely new competition, “I found very strange: the moment at the start of the race because, strangely, there’s silence. Until you start, you don’t feel anything but your heart. And then you start to have fun with the bike.”
In 2020 we will see Maria Herrera once again defending the colors of the Aspar Team in the FIM EnelMotoE™ World Cup. After the test at Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto, scheduled for April 10-12, the first round of the electric class will be at the Red Bull Spanish Grand Prix on May 1-3, 2020.
Every race weekend LIVE and OnDemand, exclusive interviews, historic races and so much more great content: this is VideoPass! As we welcome the return of Ana Carrasco, we looked at the other women who have successfully competed in the World Championship
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In 2022, the Grand Prix paddock welcomes back 2018 SSP300 World Champion Ana Carrasco following confirmation that she has signed for the BOE SKX outfit in Moto3™. To celebrate Carrasco’s return, we thought it would be a nice idea to take a look at the women who have managed to score in the World Championship over the years.
The Pink Warrior is back! ????@AnaCarrasco_22 returns to #Moto3 class in 2022 with @boemotorsports! ????# pic.twitter.com/WmK75qJRAE— ™???? (@) February 1, 2022
The first to succeed was Taru Rinne. But the Finn first excelled at home in karting, against famous four-wheel stars such as Mika Häkkinen and Mika Salo. It wasn’t until 1987 that Rinne competed in his first two races on the international motorcycle scene. A year later she finally got a place in the Championship and her 14th place at Le Castellet etched her name in the history books. Rinne scored another 23 points in 1989, with two top 10 finishes on the way at Hockenheim and Assen.
Tomoko Igata would go on to do even better in the 125cc class. The Japanese rider, who had become a familiar face in the Japanese Superbike Championship, scored a total of 30 points in two seasons. After a first appearance in the 1992 Japanese GP, she became fully part of the class in 1994. After finishing 14th in Sydney, Igata also reached the top 10 twice in 1995, but returned to her home country after the season ended.
Happy International Women’s Day
Then there was Katja Poensgen – the first junior cup winner in Germany, in 1995. In the same year, Poensgen also won the EC in super mono. She then went on to compete in the German 125cc and Supersport Championships, WorldSSP and European Superstock 1000. In 2001 it was time to jump into the 250cc World Championship and she was immediately rewarded with a 14th place in the Italian GP, the first time a woman ever finished in points at that level of competition.
In 2013, a young Spanish rider from FIM CEV Repsol (now FIM JuniorGP) named Ana Carrasco arrived at the Moto3™ World Championship. And right away, Carrasco took nine points, including eight in Valencia alone. Unfortunately, her moves to RW Racing GP and the RBA Racing Team did not see her add to her record of achievements – at least not in Moto3™. Moving to the WorldSSP300 Championship, Carrasco regularly battled at the front and in 2018 she managed to take the title in 2018 – the first woman to win a motorcycle World Championship title. Now Carrasco is back and ready to add to his Moto3™ achievements.
In 2015, there were two women on the Moto3™ grid, like Maria