Future of motorsport? Extreme E showcases power of providing equal platform to male and female drivers

Molly Taylor drives to Capo Teulada, the venue for the seventh and eighth rounds of the Extreme E Championship. In the passenger seat is teammate Kevin Hansen, who is already giving suggestions about Taylor’s driving behavior on the winding roads of Sardinia.

Both drivers are part of the Veloce team, one of ten male-female combinations racing in Extreme E. The humor and respect between them is evident, with women proving to be an important part of their journey into motorsport.

Taylor’s mother Coral is a four-time Australian rally champion co-driver. She navigated the route to success for rally driver Neal Bates and Toyota.

“When I was in elementary school, my dad was doing the school runs and making the school lunches, and my mom was on her way to a rally. So that was my normal,” Taylor said.

Molly Taylor is the youngest person to ever win the Australian Rally Championship, and the first and only woman

“As young kids we are so impressionable, and it’s not that anyone ever said you can’t do this, but you are so influenced by what you see. I probably didn’t realize at the time how much of an impact it had on me, and now I can I look back and see that much more clearly.”

Kevin Hansen is part of the Hansen motorsports dynasty. His father Kenneth Hansen is the most successful rallycross driver ever with 14 European championship titles, and his brother Timmy is a 2019 rallycross world champion.

But it is mother Susann who is the real pioneer. The only woman to ever win a European Rallycross title in 1994, and now team manager of Hansen World RX, the 2021 World Rallycross Champions.

“My mother used to race and she was all on her own. It was very rare to have a female who was really good at that time and she won the championship, the only girl to win the rallycross championship,” said Hansen. .

“It is close to my heart and I am very proud of my mother for doing this.”

Kenneth and Susann Hansen celebrate Susann’s first ERA 1400 Cup win in 1994

What’s unique about Extreme E is that it enforces complete equality between male and female drivers.

There is only one car and points are awarded to the team as a whole, not to the individuals, so each driver’s performance is just as important as the others.

Taylor and Hansen have noticeably different ways of working, with Taylor focusing on the details and data, and Hansen taking a more instinctive approach. This was a combination for success, not least because of their complete trust in each other.

“We can really share many different sporting qualities and merge them. So that relationship works really well for both our developments,” says Hansen.

Extreme E has been to Sardinia for rounds 7 and 8 of the Island X Prix

“I think that’s something that not many other teams have, and also the great respect and joy of spending time together.

“We need to understand each other, know that we will be there to support each other no matter what we do. I don’t race just for myself, I can only provide the 50 percent of the actual performance on the track.”

This conversation about collaboration and admiration between male and female drivers feels like a new beginning for motorsport.

‘The stopwatch has no gender bias’

The question of when F1 will have its first female driver since the 1970s has been asked repeatedly in recent years – with motorsport offering a rare opportunity for gender neutrality in the sport, and F1 seen as the pinnacle. The Italian Lella Lombardi was the last woman to participate in a Grand Prix in 1976.

By broadening the view away from single-seater racing, you see that, despite all odds, female drivers are matching the men.

Molly Taylor was part of the Rosberg X Racing team in 2021 and won the first Extreme E Championship together with Johan Kristoffersson

“What’s interesting about Extreme E, the male drivers, we have the best of the best in pretty much every motorsport discipline there is. We have a nine-time world rally champion, Dakar champions, world rallycross champion, the absolute top.

“So that’s an incredible opportunity as a driver to be put in that pool and you learn super fast when you’re in that environment,” Taylor said.

“The real success of it is that if you get the opportunity, you can take the opportunity, and that’s what’s been really encouraging over the last few years: we’re seeing the pace of development on such an upward trajectory. .”

The drivers receive equal resources and seat time, which leads to a substantial improvement among the women year after year.

In the first season of Extreme E in 2021, the average time difference between male and female drivers was 5.8 percent. Last year that fell by almost a third to 4.5 percent, while the difference at the last race in Uruguay fell to 3.1 percent.

Lewis Hamilton’s X44 team won the 2022 championship, with their female driver Cristina Gutiérrez crucially setting the fastest overall lap time at the penultimate X Prix in Chile.

“When you put the helmet on, it’s the lap times, it’s what you do on the track, the stopwatch has no gender bias. It is what it is, and it’s good enough or it’s not,” said Taylor.

Just as important as the gender neutrality in Extreme E is the fact that it produces great racing.

The Veloce car’s windshield wipers broke midway through the race in Sardinia, but Molly Taylor missed just one waypoint and leaned out the door to find the finish line

Electric SUVs are thrown around basic tracks and often end up missing several pieces as drivers collide but continue racing.

This exciting product reaches an audience that often would not voluntarily research gender equality.

‘There is such a desire for great women’

As more women are inspired, encouraged and supported to pursue motorsport as a career, the achievements of female drivers will continue to increase rapidly.

Currently it is not the norm for men and women to race side by side, but it could be possible.

“It’s like any change in motorsport: everyone is always skeptical (in the beginning),” says Hansen.

“I’ve heard the conversations behind the scenes, like ‘but she’s the woman, she shouldn’t be that good’, or in any sport, the way they talk about that in football too, looking down on the performances of women.

Extreme E travels to Chile in December for the final two rounds of the championship, where Veloce can still claim the title

“I must say that this championship has brought about a real revolution for women in motorsport. There are so many more who can now dream of reaching a top level and that wasn’t the case before, now there is such a desire for great women.

“It’s just athletes on the grid, it’s not ‘here are the girls, here are the men’. It’s a really exciting competition and if you have a mixed grid during the race it will always be a challenge to race against one of the others. them.”

Extreme E leverages the strengths and differences between male and female drivers to create blockbuster motorsports and demonstrate equality to audiences worldwide.

Egos are no longer present in the paddock, but have been replaced by teams that advocate bigger goals and more racing.

Taylor and Hansen carry on their family’s legacy through their success on track, but what is most memorable is their passion for change and their ability to self-reflect. This feels like the future.