The rollercoaster road to Le Mans undertaken by 2023's female starters

Female participation has been an intrinsic feature of Le Mans history since the very earliest editions of the race. The best overall finish by a woman remains the fourth place attained by Odette Siko in 1932, although not for a lack of trying.

Class wins, following Siko's 2.0-litre triumph aboard an Alfa Romeo 6C with Louis Charavel in 1932, have been in plentiful supply down the years. And there is a strong chance of a first class win at Le Mans in the World Endurance Championship era this weekend.

While the number of women in the field this year is one down on the recent high water mark of 2021, when two all-female car crews competed, you have to go back to the 1970s to see women represented on more teams.

The drivers in question, Doriane Pin, Lilou Wadoux, Sarah Bovy, Michelle Gatting and Rahel Frey, each sat down with Autosport at the recent Spa WEC round to discuss their motorsport journeys to date.

Doriane Pin

The teenager has rocketed up the ranks in recent years

Photo by: Nikolaz Godet

Team/car: #63 Prema ORECA-Gibson 07
Age: 19
Le Mans starts: 0
Best Le Mans finish: N/A

Such has been the meteoric trajectory of Doriane Pin’s racing career that even she admits to being taken by surprise.

“Four years ago, I’d just won the French championship in go-karts, so I didn’t expect that I would be in P2 in the World Endurance Championship!” she says. “So yes, it’s quite fast… I’m living my dream because this season is the goal that I had in mind.”

A Sebring podium on her LMP2 debut with Prema was quite the introduction to prototypes for the reigning Ferrari Challenge Europe champion. But big jumps have been something of a theme for Pin, who went from racing Renault Clios in her first season of cars to a Ferrari 488 GT3 upon joining the Iron Dames fold for 2021 – aged just 17.

Paired with Sarah Bovy in the Le Mans Cup, she impressed enough to be called up for a WEC debut at Spa last year when a positive COVID test sidelined Bovy and forced Michelle Gatting to self-isolate. In a busy season alongside her Ferrari Challenge programme, she also took in three European Le Mans Series rounds with Bovy and Gatting, taking a GTE class win at the Algarve Circuit.

“It was the chance of my career,” says Pin of joining the Deborah Mayer-backed all-female Iron Dames effort. “They gave me a lot of opportunities and options to grow as a driver and a person also.”

It must be said that Pin has grasped the opportunities presented to her. She claimed the Ferrari Challenge crown with nine wins from 14 starts, adding four further podiums. The only blemish in an “almost perfect season” resulted from a puncture at Paul Ricard. In a mark of her character, Pin fronts up to kerb over-use. “It was a mistake from myself, I learned from it,” she says.

Pin hasn’t been fazed by her LMP2 graduation to join Lamborghini factory drivers Mirko Bortolotti and Daniil Kvyat. They were in victory contention at Portimao until the latter stages, and at Spa Pin cheekily ambushed leader Tom Blomqvist into the Bus Stop on the opening lap.

Pin is enjoying soaking up her team-mates’ wealth of experience, but says she’s treated as their equal within the team: “They’re not considering me like someone who has no experience. We are three in the car and we are working together for the same goals.”

Having raced on the Le Mans support bill previously, Pin is “really excited” to be part of the main show for the first time, but stresses sagely that she’s “not putting extra pressure on” her debut. “We will do the same work and for sure it’s a longer race, so we are training for that,” Pin says.

Lilou Wadoux

Wadoux became the first female member of Ferrari's works GT driver pool for 2023

Photo by: Ferrari

Team/car: #83 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo
Age: 22
Le Mans starts: 1
Best Le Mans finish: 9th in class (2022)

History was achieved three days after Autosport sat down with Lilou Wadoux in the Ferrari hospitality at Spa. Victory alongside Luis Perez Companc and Alessio Rovera made her the first female class winner in the World Endurance Championship’s modern history.

A back injury that curtailed a promising tennis career set Wadoux on the path to a future in motorsport. Having only started karting as a teen for fun, Wadoux firmly qualifies as a late starter by today’s standards, but compensated by learning quickly and was soon on the radar of the FIA Women in Motorsport Commission for a two-day evaluation at Navarra.

At this stage, the 17-year-old Wadoux still considered motorsport “my passion”, not a potential profession. That didn’t last long. A TCR Europe roll triggered by another driver’s off at Spa looked set to curtail her 2019 campaign, but Wadoux finished third on her French Clio Cup debut in the Paul Ricard finale following a six-month layoff, which opened the door to an Alpine Cup switch for 2020.

“It’s a very close championship because all the cars are the same and it’s not easy to make a big difference,” she says. But Wadoux was a winner in her second season, finishing third in 2021. Her performances were noted by the Signatech-run Richard Mille Racing team and, after a test with its LMP2 ORECA-Gibson 07, Wadoux was brought into its line-up for the 2022 WEC alongside Charles Milesi and rallying royalty Sebastien Ogier.

Having an eight-time world champion team-mate arguably reduced the attention on Wadoux, who appreciated that as both were series newcomers “in this car we are the same”.

“All the races were good because every weekend I learned something different,” she says. And by Fuji’s round in September, conversations had started with Ferrari. “Richard Mille was a sponsor for many years with Ferrari, Philippe Dumas my manager works in AF Corse and a lot of things [came together],” Wadoux explains.

But before her decisive audition in the post-Bahrain test was the small matter of a first Hypercar outing for Toyota. Learning both new cars either side of a lunch break made for “not an easy day for me”. But Ferrari was sufficiently convinced to make Wadoux the first female member of its Competizioni GT driver roster and that faith was repaid in Portimao. On her belated first race outing with the Scuderia, after Perez Companc’s early exit from Sebring, Wadoux starred en route to second.

Ferrari’s 499P Hypercar programme is tantalising, but Wadoux is clear that “for the moment I will stay concentrated on the GT”.

“I hope one day to test the LMH and why not to do some races?” she says. “But for the moment GT is the only focus.”

Sarah Bovy

Bovy became the first woman to secure a category pole position in the WEC at the Monza round last year

Photo by: Iron Dames

Team/car: #85 Iron Dames Porsche 911 RSR-19
Age: 34
Le Mans starts: 2
Best Le Mans finish: 7th in class (2022)

The last-chance saloon counted Sarah Bovy among its regulars before she joined Iron Dames in 2021. Deborah Mayer’s programme opened the door to a regular international racing programme “in good conditions with the best engineers, having the opportunity to do a lot of kilometres”, which the Belgian had always been denied by budget struggles.

A second-generation racer, father Quirin making 10 Spa 24 Hours starts between 1976 and 1991, Bovy’s career is a story of one-offs and “last-minute drives in some not ideal line-ups”. Her Spa 24 debut came in 2007 with the Alfa-powered Gillet Vertigo – which “was not an easy car” for an 18-year-old – but, as she puts it, “the journey was clearly not linear”.

“I had some cool opportunities, I did some good things, then I spent many years with no drive at all,” she says. “Joining the Iron Dames project was more than my last chance – I already had my last chance two or three times before! W Series was already my last chance and I was only a reserve driver in it [making two race starts in 2019].”

Bovy’s regular qualifying duels with benchmark bronze Ben Keating have been a highlight of the World Endurance Championship in recent times, with Bovy taking a historic first pole for a female driver at Monza last season. That one-lap prowess has become a Bovy strong suit, a point underlined by pole on the Dames’ Porsche debut at Sebring.

She points to this as evidence that her vastly increased seat time over the past two years “brought me to a level I had no idea I could get to”, having previously considered qualifying “one of my big weaknesses”. For that reason, her Monza feat was more significant as a “personal achievement” than for its significance to stat boffins.

But Bovy acknowledges that, for all the effort involved, qualifying is only one element of a race weekend. “It’s not what makes the final result, it’s just one point when a race win can be up to 50 points in Le Mans,” she says.

Having tasted success last year in the European Le Mans Series at Portimao with Doriane Pin and Michelle Gatting, and in the Spa 24 Gold Cup class with Rahel Frey, Bovy is itching to translate that winning feeling into the WEC.

The disappearance of the GTE Pro class means more Platinum factory drivers than ever are in the Am division, while the level of bronze drivers is continually increasing. But Bovy is confident “that we have an extremely strong package” to better the Dames’ best finish to date at Le Mans.

“The competition is not waiting for us,” she says. “We keep working really hard.”

Michelle Gatting

Gatting reckons she's a much calmer presence in the team after five years as part of the Iron Dames project

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Team/car: #85 Iron Dames Porsche 911 RSR-19
Age: 29
Le Mans starts: 4
Best Le Mans finish: 7th in class (2022)

A speculative phone call was vital in putting Michelle Gatting onto the international stage in sportscars, after she’d taken the long route to keep her racing career alive.

The Dane’s promise had been demonstrated during two seasons in the DTM-supporting Scirocco R-Cup, including a run of four consecutive podiums in 2013 as part of the FIA-endorsed young driver excellence academy. But momentum was sapped by a lack of funds that curtailed her 2014 Porsche Carrera Cup Germany campaign and led to an enforced year on the sidelines.

When she returned to racing in 2016 it was, by necessity, in the burly V8 touring cars of her domestic Thundersport championship. And despite standout performances, winning races and finishing third in the 2018 standings, it seemed nobody was paying much attention. This was underlined when Gatting first enquired about a test with the nascent Dames project then run by Kessel Racing, as she says “people had no clue who I was”.

But a ringing endorsement from a Danish motorsport contemporary secured Gatting an all-important try-out at Misano that led to entering the 2018 Gulf 12 Hours, the first outing for Deborah Mayer’s Dames. She has become a programme fixture in the years since, contesting the European Le Mans Series from 2019 to 2022, the World Endurance Championship from 2021 and the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup from 2022.

Gatting reflects on an “incredible” amount of personal development in that time, having moved beyond her initial determination “to show [the team] who I am” by proving her speed in every session to make good on this “one-shot opportunity”.

She says: “It’s not that they didn’t like it, but for sure they were a bit like, ‘We need to calm her down a bit’. I’m definitely becoming a much better team player now than I was five years ago.”

Gatting also believes she’s “a much better driver” with the benefit of that experience. She regards her Ferrari Challenge Europe title-winning exploits in 2021, blazing a trail followed last year by Doriane Pin, as “very important for my own self-confidence” as she took her first car racing crown. “Let’s say I bloomed as a flower after that,” Gatting says.

This year has brought new challenges for the Dames, following the Iron Lynx outfit that runs the Dames splitting with Ferrari to forge a partnership with Lamborghini in GT3 racing. Sister brand Porsche was an obvious stop-gap for the GTE class’s swansong year and the 911, Gatting says, is “fitting our driving style very well”.

A technical alliance with Proton Competition has helped the Dames to hit the ground running and Gatting welcomes the healthy rivalry with Christian Reid’s squad. “I love it,” she beams. “It’s amazing!”

Rahel Frey

The experienced Frey leads the driver line-up and is project manager at Iron Dames

Photo by: Marc Fleury

Team/car: #85 Iron Dames Porsche 911 RSR-19
Age: 37
Le Mans starts: 5
Best Le Mans finish: 7th in class (2022)

A stalwart of Audi Sport’s customer racing pool in GT3 who also represented the four rings for two seasons in the DTM, Rahel Frey is among the most experienced female racers on the international scene. That made the Swiss a logical choice both to lead the Iron Dames line-up on-track and be its project manager.

“This just felt right from the beginning,” says Frey, who has been involved since the start in 2018 and along with Michelle Gatting contested Le Mans every year since 2019. “I saw the possibilities the project is creating and I am very happy that I took that decision.”

Frey’s remit, as well as passing advice on to young female karters, includes building up physical and simulator programmes for the Dames drivers, plus deciding who drives where. It was Frey’s call to replace herself with Doriane Pin for the final three European Le Mans Series rounds of 2022.

“I’m not someone who will block a young driver,” she says.

Frey is open in admitting plans to “increase testing with new females in the future to really be a door-opener”, so the current line-up can’t get too comfortable. But by the same token, she has ensured continuity in recent years, fostering a tight-knit environment in which the drivers’ respective strengths are well known.

“We know exactly what’s needed, when someone needs more support, when someone feels very confident just jumping into the car and race as fast as possible,” she says. “It’s one of the key factors.”

As a result, Frey feels the programme is well-placed to succeed in a manner that her first outing at Le Mans as part of an all-female assault in 2010 was not. Only her third race outing in Matech’s Ford GT1 and the first with both team-mates present, after Natacha Gachnang’s leg-breaking crash in Abu Dhabi, ended early with engine failure. Frey recalls: “Clearly this first attempt was a dream come true, but we were not ready by then.”

The task facing the Dames in the ultra-competitive GTE Am class isn’t lost on Frey, but she has full faith in her crewmates after their Portimao podium.

“I always dreamed about Le Mans, to do it in a competitive car, with competitive people in a competitive environment,” she reflects. “That’s why I was very excited to go back in 2019 and now we know each other so well, we are aware of our potential. Clearly, we have the experience to do a competitive race.”

If Frey is successful in her aim of finding more promising talents, then more tough calls may be on her hands soon.

“I love to drive,” she smiles. “For me, it’s very difficult to let go!”

Can the Iron Dames make more history at Le Mans?

Photo by: Marc Fleury