Revolutionary Le Mans 2022 team Iron Dames aiming high as all-female racing team

When the 90th edition of the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans gets underway next month, Italian racing team Iron Dames will be the only all-female line-up on the grid.

The gruelling endurance race, which begins on June 11 and ends the nest day, will feature talent ranging from ex-Formula One driver and last year’s winner Kamui Kobayashi to Hollywood star Michael Fassbender.

But looking to make an impact at her fourth consecutive Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance (LMGTE) Am race in a Ferrari 488 is Swiss driver Rahel Frey. She will race alongside team-mates Sarah Bovy and Michelle Gatting, who will compete day and night at the Circuit de la Sarthe, north-west France, under the name ‘Iron Dames’.

Frey at 36 is no stranger to the challenges presented by Le Mans, having first taken to the famous track back in 2010. Yet she insists the ambitious Iron Dames have loftier expectations than their previous Le Mans outings.

“Doing better than ninth is the objective, honestly speaking,” she exclusively told Daily Star Sport. “We ended up there the last three years.

“In 2020 we went there and we said we just need to finish the race, and we did it, we didn’t make any mistakes and we got a lot of attention. The next year we had the speed to finish in the top five but unfortunately luck was not on our side, we had punctures and suspension failure.”

Rahel explained how anything can happen in a 24-hour race and that adaptability to challenges is one of the keys to success. Whether there is a sudden change in the weather or tiredness kicks in at 2am in the morning, it is up to the drivers to make a call on who feels most up to the challenge at that particular time.

But in the case of Frey, Bovy and Gatting, all three drivers have had to fight for their careers and are more than suited to the hurdles a race can throw up.

Frey herself was a self-confessed natural at go-karting as a child in the Swiss countryside, admitting to “connecting” with her first ever kart due to her natural affinity for all-things fast. Meanwhile, Gatting’s achievement last year in becoming the first ever female to win the Ferrari Challenge Europe will go down as a historic moment.

The hurdles each of the female drivers has faced in the past cannot be understated, and the fact all three are on the same team is a rare occurrence. That is even more so the case given the lack of female role models competing in motorsport during their formative years.

Frey has no issue speaking about the difficulties female racers have and still face in motorsport. The Niederbipp native was lucky enough to receive assistance from a mentor early in her career as she made the move to single-seaters, though others have not been so fortunate despite things admittedly improving in the past three to five years.

She said: “Getting the right possibilities, sponsorship money is always very difficult to find. That's the first hurdle.

“To get into a very competitive team in single-seaters and to get a good seat, that's very difficult for women drivers. You always have to speak up very quickly for yourself. As a female time driver at that time it was quite difficult to get to get the trust, to get the possibility just to do a test and show your abilities.”

The Iron Dames are at the heart of changing that, step by step. The team, created and led by Deborah Mayer, has made it a priority to support women in motorsport since 2019.

They take pride in not only employing a team of all-female drivers, but creating opportunities for female mechanics, marketing members and PR personnel. It is a collective effort from top to bottom.

Frey believes the rising popularity of Formula One has helped increase the discussion surrounding diversity in motorsport. Various projects like the FIA’s Girls On Track initiative and the Iron Dames’ support for young female drivers are the driving force behind that, which she hopes will only encourage other teams and manufacturers across the sport to do the same.

“I would love to see Formula One teams letting female racers join their driving academies at a very young age,” she explained. “To basically follow them throughout the first steps of their career, that is exactly what's needed.

“We can connect with the young girls easier today than it was like 10 years ago. It’s on us to make the connections and open the door.

“But we can do so, I have already seen the change. There is a movement and it’s just a matter of time before we have a female racer within Formula One. It will come.”

Frey, Bovy and Gatting will continue flying the flag for female drivers and women everywhere when they take to Le Mans in June.

Make no mistake, the task as ever is huge, and the Iron Dames are aware that they need a strong performance if they are to improve on their best finish. But Frey could not hold back her emotions when asked how it would feel on a personal level to one day win what she feels is the “biggest” event in motorsport.

She said: “I’m totally lost for words thinking about it. Deep in my heart, that's still on my list before I can retire. I just want to win this race. I truly believe it is still to come.”

Before we could begin to picture that moment, Frey characteristically added: “When the vision is completed with Iron Dames then I will help the younger generation with all of my heart.”

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