In some of the more traditional racing formats, sexism and the status quo has kept women out of world class motorsport tournaments. We’ve not seen a woman on a Formula 1 starting line since Lella Lombardi in 1975, for example. There are efforts to redress the balance. All-female championship The W Series tried to propel women back to the F1 grid, though ultimately it was disbanded after a couple of years, and now The F1 Academy is picking up where the W Series left off, aiming to act as an incubator for female talent, feeding them eventually into the Formula races, but progress has been painfully slow.

Where progress has been gratifyingly speedy, is in electric racing series. Since 2014, there have been three women to take part in Formula E—Formula 1’s electric equivalent. And a sequence of other electric car races have sprung up globally, with women in the driving seats alongside men. Off-road series Extreme E made headlines when it launched in 2019 for a first-of-its-kind mandate, that every single team would have both a male and a female driver. Suddenly, experienced rally drivers like Emma Gilmour and Molly Taylor were given a level playing field to take on legends like Sebastien Loeb and Jenson Button, and it made for incredible television. And as the World Rallycross championship switched over to electric vehicles in 2022, the format also ushered in its first ever full-time female competitor at the top level: Klara Andersson. 

But what makes e-racing so effective at engendering equality? “Motorsport has always been a platform for new technologies,” says Andersson, “which means while you try new things out, like different electric vehicles, you can also try out different formats, like Extreme E bringing the gender-equal aspect to all its races.” As Andersson observes, when you’re inventing a new racing series, you get to write the rulebook from scratch, which makes penning women into visibility a lot easier. “I think there’s also been a change in society, which has impacted the world of motorsport,” adds Åhlin-Kottulinsky. “Our approach to male and female and however you define your gender identity has seen a development more broadly in society, and so newer racing series have been able to reflect that shift.”

Zhang and Andersson share a keen understanding of the pressure at the top of the sport for women. As Zhang has already pointed out, there are still plenty of onlookers unsold on the idea of women competing against men, waiting to gloat over any tiny mistake, hoping to deploy the ‘I told you so’ that’s on the tip of their tongues, which makes crashing out of a race that much more unsavoury. “I focus on my female fan base,” says Zhang. “Fifteen years ago, it was just me that was going to Europe to race. In China, there were just one or two women racing drivers. But now 30 percent of my social media followers are women telling me they want to have lessons and get into racing.”

Andersson keeps a similar vision in mind on race days. “When I won my Swedish championship title in 2021, it was me against 55 men. And then in 2022, stepping onto this grid was my biggest challenge so far; it was such a step up. And I do feel the extra pressure to perform because I am a woman. You feel like you need to prove yourself over and over again and that’s not always easy mentally. But I just think of myself as the little kid walking around in the paddock and I want to show her what’s possible and that she can do it too.”

As the World Rallycross finale comes to a close and the sun sets on another racing season, it’s time to ask where we go from here. Though women like Zhang, Andersson and Åhlin-Kottulinsky are making impressive strides, there is still a huge distance to travel if we’re going to see true parity between the sexes in motorsport. In the absence of many women at the top of racing, there is the issue of role models. As a child, Åhlin-Kottulinsky says she was pushed to idolise women who had made it to the forefront of other sports instead: “I looked to Annika Sorenstam, who was the first female golfer to compete against men. I listened to podcasts about her and tried to follow her mindset.”

All three women agree that we need to be furnishing the next generation of girls with discipline-specific, approachable mentor figures. As such, they are all extremely careful about the part that they play in the journeys of the women coming up after them. Åhlin-Kottulinsky has joined a Red Bull initiative called Under My Wing, which will act like a driving camp, for girls to try go-karting and off-roading and so on. Likewise, Andersson works with Volvo and CE Dealer on events for young women, as well as with the FIA Women’s Commission, an initiative that aims to improve access to motorsports for women and nurture future talents. Zhang’s efforts to pull other young women along after her are remarkable—she now has her own race track in Beijing, a driving school which coaches girls and has even founded a Chinese Rallycross Championship with the ambition of one day having an equal number of female drivers as male on its grid.

Beyond this though, Zhang considers her responsibility to extend much further. In a sport which is extraordinarily expensive and relies heavily on sponsorship, she sees her femaleness as crucial leverage in conversations among the men who still hold the purse strings. So, she makes herself presentable, she puts on a smile and she gets herself invited into the rooms where money talks. “At this point, being female makes me special,” she says. “If I were a man, the sponsors probably wouldn’t invite me to join them as much, but because I am unusual, people are inquisitive and they want to ask lots of questions of me.” While they might be inviting her in for the pleasure of her company, it is Zhang’s mission to make sure they leave with a better understanding of women as competitors. Money may talk, but Zhang’s presence speaks louder.

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