EXCITING CONTENT role and what will success be if it works out as planned ? “ I am working closely with Nita Korhonen , the Director , on actively seeing and bringing more females into racing . But , it is more that we want talented people to come and we want to empower women and give them the tools to say , ‘ look , there are a lot of women already working here , you can work here too .’ Day-today a lot of it is sourcing stories to showcase the behind-the-scenes roles . A lot of the time people complain that the only female role models we have a lot of the time are the grid models . Well , yes , the grid models have a position which is in front of the TV . We do , and we agree , that we need more mechanics , more engineers , more people actively working in roles that people can see and be inspired to get involved in this sport . The whole message of the CFM is ‘ come and join in .’ It is not a case of ‘ we need women !’ It is ‘ women , come and join in .’” Surprising to some maybe , but Laverty does not see her role as trying to persuade men to be persuaded to accept more women joining in . “ We don ’ t need to . It is clear when you look behind the scenes here , that there are a lot of females already in roles . And the point is that if you ask them it is because they have a passion for the sport . But others , take Silvia Diamanti , from Aruba . it Ducati . She was an IT technician , and had no idea that this even existed until she started working for aruba . it ( a huge Italian Internet provider as well as Ducati ’ s WorldSBK racing partner ) and they wanted her to come to races to organise corporate hospitality and passes and everything . Now she is like , ‘ Wow , racing !’ and she has a role in motorsport . Me ? I was a grid girl , I knew nothing about motorsport until my step-dad wanted me to do the ‘ MCN Babe ’ thing , so that he would be able to drive me to all the races and have a pass for
himself ! I was 17 at the time , I was young , it was fun , I really enjoyed it . This is why I cared that they did not want to get rid of grid girls . We want to be inclusive in the sport , we do not want to cut roles away we just want to be passionate and have fun , enjoy racing .” Laverty agreed that there is a greater width and depth of roles that women do in the paddock , and that they are staying around in the sport for longer . And nobody is surprised about that . “ That is definitely happening ,” said Pippa . “ It is also a generational thing , because some people growing up were probably told , ‘ OK , girls do this boys do that .’ That has changed over the last ten to fifteen years . Now people are like , ‘ I like motorsport … I am a designer , so I am going to do all the graphic designs for a team . Or I like riding motorbikes and I am going to enter the Spanish championship . OK , I wasn ’ t great but now I am going to go into race PR .’ I cannot stress it enough , the time is now . People ’ s opinions are changing .” To make the still-made dominated sport less intimidating for any new woman to enter Laverty had previously started the WorldSBK Ladies Club , as a networking opportunity for women to get together , especially if they are the only female in any particular team . As well as the FIM CFM , individual affiliated Federations also have commissions set-up to advance the opportunities of women . On the ground WorldSBK ground has been broken and glass ceilings smashed , not least in the small but mighty form of Ana Carrasco . Maybe some dinosaurs can still try to find reasons to denude the feat that Carrasco achieved in 2018 ( newest championship , most junior , slowest , least star-studded global
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