F4 girls try to break the barrier in motorsport – 05/05/2023 – Sport

Minutes after a brief photo session, Cecília Rabelo, 15, kindly asks to postpone the interview she was going to give to Sheet. “Could we do it after the race?” asks the young driver. Promptly attended to, she runs to her team’s boxing entrance for more pictures, this time alongside fans.

Two hours before the third race that makes up the opening stage of the second season of Formula 4 Brazil, in Interlagos, the paddock is full. Among drivers and team members, fans circulate in search of closer contact with the cars and, above all, with who will drive them.

Cecilia didn’t want to miss that moment. Neither she nor Rafaela Ferreira, 18. Both debuted in the category last April 22nd. They are the only girls on the 12-rider grid.

Although far from being equal, “it is double what it had in 2022, when Aurelia [Nobels] ran,” recalls Rafaela. “Now she’s in the Italian F4. So I hope that in the coming years we will have more girls competing [no exterior] too”, adds the Santa Catarina native from Criciúma.

Daughter of Belgian parents, born in the United States and passionate about Brazil, Aurélia Nobels, 16, was the only woman in the inaugural season of the grassroots championship who added points towards the super license, necessary to reach F1.

Since 2017, when Felipe Massa said goodbye, a Brazilian has not raced as a starter in the main category of world motorsport. The Brazilian F4 was created precisely to try to end this hiatus.

For Cecília and Rafaela, the competition has a greater purpose. “Since F4 is a grassroots championship, focused on sending people out, I believe it can help open doors for more girls”, says Cecília, from Minas Gerais in the city of Varginha.

Although she ended the 2022 F4 Brasil season in last place, with just seven points, her experience in the championship helped Aurélia win the FIA ​​Girls on Track Rising Stars global selective. As a prize, she joined the Ferrari Driver Academy and lived in Maranello, where she signed an agreement to race for the traditional Prema Racing team in the Italian F4.

On the F1 trail, the next step for her would be to seek space in F3, a category that currently has only one woman, the German Sophia Floersch, 22.

The last training stage is to compete in F2, which in 2023 has 22 drivers, but no women, which shows how difficult it is for them to reach the elite of motorsport. The last one he got was the Italian Giovanna Amati, who raced in F1 in 1992.

That year, F1 had 16 teams and more than 30 drivers. Not everyone qualified for the races, which had practices to define the 26 that would run on Sunday. Amati failed to qualify for any of the three races he entered. She abandoned the World Championship before the fourth GP, in Spain.

Her biggest frustration, however, was the fact that she “wasn’t seen as a competitor” by the other pilots. In an interview with Sheet in 2019, she said that only Ayrton Senna respected her on the grid.

The brief participation of the Italian prevented her from becoming a bigger reference for other women. Cecília and Rafaela do not even mention her name when asked about their inspirations — the first name mentioned by them is that of São Paulo Bia Figueiredo, who raced in IndyCar for six years and, in 2014, was the first woman to compete in a Stock season Car Brazil.

Even separated by generations, however, the fight against sexism in the main motorsport scene connects young Brazilian women not only with Bia’s trajectory, but also with that of Giovanna Amati.

Rafaela Ferreira, for example, went through embarrassing situations during her career of almost ten years in karting.

“When I started, I faced this problem a lot. There were some parents who questioned my car when I won races. I’ve seen a father fighting with his son and saying to him ‘poh, did you lose to a girl? the first pole position woman in the Copa Brasil de Kart (2022) and fourth place in the Brazilian Kart Championship.

With only one year of experience in official competitions, Cecília claims she has not gone through similar situations, but feels that the boys “think it’s worse to lose to us”. The mineira, however, makes a caveat, after all “nobody wants to lose to any pilot”.

At F4, for now, they feel welcomed. “The boys are nice. As most of them have already raced last year, they gave us some tips about the car”, says Rafaela.

As rookies, they had a tough weekend. Adding the three races of the inaugural stage, the Santa Catarina scored six points and is tenth in the standings. Already the miner won only one point and is in the 12th and last position.

The result, evidently, is still far from the ambitions of each one. But it was important as a first step within the Formula championships and, above all, in Brazilian motorsport.