Meet Graeme, founder of Formula Woman- a community of women from around the world who share a passion for motorsport
Hey everyone, Logan from FanAmp here with a very exciting announcement!
Introducing our newest FanAmp Base… Formula Woman!!
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Graeme, the founder of Formula Woman, to learn more about their initiative and how they aim to provide women with the coaching and support they need to jumpstart their careers , whether as a racing driver or otherwise.
We’re so excited to have Formula Woman a part of the FanAmp community, so without further adieu, please give them a warm welcome!
Graeme: Formula Woman is providing an opportunity for women to try their hand at being a racing driver. Many of the women who have joined feel like they want to be a part of this new community. Probably 50% have been active in the drivers’ seat and the other 50% have just been watching, and learning from the sidelines.
In terms of what Formula Woman provides, it’s a way for women, who have never had a chance to experience the racing side of motorsport, to have a go at it. Whether that be go-karting or actually getting on a track, or even trying sim racing. Formula Woman offers introductory ways to get into that as well as training days once girls have found their footing in amateur racing.
We have go-karting days, both with rental karts, but also professional go-karts. We offer sim racing, which we do at Silverstone at iZone, and that comes with coaching on many different kinds of simulators from GT racing sims, to the single seater ones with the full motion screens.
Then we do track days which actually gets the girls into the cars. There are two options, one is hot laps which lets them sit in the passenger seat with someone who is a racing driver and then option two is getting in the drivers’ seat themselves with a coach in the passenger seat. We take them to different tracks all over the UK as well as using different cars starting from the BMW road cars then moving into Ginetta race cars, Project 8 Jaguar, and then more recently, Radicals.
This year we are looking to be more of a community and get some girls involved in events and virtual events here and there so we can really forge a place for women in motorsport, but specifically women in motorsport who have an interest in trying the racing side too.
Graeme: The big event is the Nations Cup which will take place in December in the Middle East. We’ve been working on that project for over a year now and it’s mainly for the women that have already been through our process and that have really proven they want to be a racing driver. We’ve got 50 women entered from 26 different countries and the whole thing will be televised globally. It’s all starting to take shape and we have two agencies in the Middle East; a sponsorship agency and an event agency.
It is literally for women who have been novices and have developed their training through us and through other people as well. We’re bringing them all together and hopefully we will have a Nations Cup winner on December 17th!
We are also bringing back the Formula Woman competition this year, which will be held in April. It’s a chance for women around the world, especially in the UK, who have not had a chance and don’t have much experience in motorsport, to compete in the Formula Woman competition and try and get the prize. We’ve announced the prize too which is joining the Formula Woman team and getting a Radical drive in a mini series, which is a great opportunity for some talented young driver to have a chance to get into the motorsport world in the UK.
Graeme: Back in 2006, we ran a Nations Cup in Caterhams but we didn’t have too many women enter. I think there were about 15 ladies from South Africa, Australia and the United States. It was just a one-off event at a track called Rockingham which doesn’t even exist in the UK anymore. But yes, that was a long time ago, 16, almost 17 years ago.
Graeme: In terms of motorsport, the racing side, obviously, we want to keep growing that and bringing more people, and more women into that by giving them the chance to get into the motorsport world. We also want to help the women we already have step up and do more racing in different categories.
On the community side, we really want to engage the Formula Woman community and grow a space for women to engage with each other and speak to each other around the world. We just want a place for women to talk to each other about racing, a space where they can share their knowledge, and be able to ask questions to people who may already be racing here and there. This year we really want to hone in on the community aspect and put a lot of focus there.
Graeme: Formula Woman is so widespread, it’s not just national but it’s also international and we have lots of members around the world, but specifically, we don’t have a great way of being able to join those members to others around the world, but also to ones in their same country.
For example, we had loved for our Australian members to be able to speak to each other, meet up with each other and do that around the world, but we don’t really have an avenue for it yet. That’s where we really want FanAmp to join in and be the glue basically. Our goal is to make FanAmp our one stop for all our engagement, because we have our socials that bring people in and give people information, but we want FanAmp to be the place where they can go to discuss whatever might be announced that week, talk about racing or the motorsport industry in general, or even just to talk to other women in the motorsport space. All of that, we would like to be conducted through FanAmp.
We have three channels at the moment, an announcements channel, the community channel, which will hopefully get everyone engaged and talking to one another, and then lastly, the competition channel. We hope to use this as a way to share information on the competitions and to allow the competitors to talk amongst themselves and share any experiences that they have. For example, letting people know what time they’re arriving, where they plan on staying, how they’re getting someplace, we want it to be an open space for them to bounce different ideas off of each other. We would also have people from the Formula Woman team, get in there and talk to them about anything upcoming and share crucial information.
Graeme: I would say one of my most exciting experiences was seeing the first four ladies competing in the Trade Centre McLarens when they went out on track for the very first time. The first race was the most exciting because I suddenly realized that the girls were quite competitive against their male counterparts.
I also found it very exciting when Lotus loaned us a car to race in GT Cup as well, with Alana from Canada and Sara from Jamaica. They just kept getting faster and faster and they eventually beat some of the guys, which I think is what it's all about.
Graeme: Without a doubt, Alana Carter has proved to be the most successful driver to come out of our program. And I’ll be very honest, the reason that she’s been so successful is 1) she won the competition on her own merit, but 2) she was able to introduce her own sponsors. It is very difficult to find sponsors and we can get people to a certain level, but we can’t find the sponsorship for everybody.
Quite a few of our drivers have gone on to do things on their own, and we encourage that. We love to help point the girls that have trained with us in the right direction. For example, one young lady went off to Sweden and drove electric minis in a championship. Another went off to drive Mazda’s in the MX-5 championship, which is a very low cost, effective way of going racing.
We also have girls who come to Formula Woman and have never done any racing before and they just either joined the competition or did a track day and then they’ve gone off and done racing. Hanna Celsie, was a big part of Formula Woman and she did a boot tour, which is a three day packed training session and then competed in the competition. Not long after that, she entered into a championship in Ireland.
Graeme: All women around Monaco. Why not? It’s never been done before. Maybe also Silverstone. It’s such a great track, everyone knows it. To me, the idea of being on the track is crazy and if we got an actual race at Silverstone, it would just be incredible. I think I’d like it to be a proper F1 weekend format as well with practice, qualifying and the race. I’d maybe even want it to be a sprint weekend. It would be amazing to have it in some really fast GT Cars.
Graeme: I just want to add that Formula Woman has a free membership to join. To access all of our resources and our community, join us on FanAmp and lastly, you can sign up for our newsletter to find out about our big events that we have coming this year. We are hoping to have a lot of track days this year as well as holding lots of community events, whether they are virtual race viewing parties or in person meetups. We are going to be very community driven this year and we look forward to hopefully getting as many new people as possible from around the world! So if you want a taste of motorsport or racing, or you just want to share it with some other like-minded women, it’s the best time to sign up now.
On behalf of FanAmp, we are very excited to have Formula Woman join as the newest edition to our community!
