New championships are always appearing in the world of motorsport and 2004 was no exception.
However one new series that kicked off last year was different to the rest in that it was aimed solely at female drivers, with Natasha Firman – sister of ex-
F1 driver Ralph – becoming the inaugural Formula Woman champion.
Crash.net caught up with the founder of the series, Graeme Glew, to talk about the past season and where the championship goes in the future...
Crash.net:
How pleased were you with the way the first ‘series’ of Formula Woman went?
Graeme Glew:
It went really well, it was a success as far as television and the championship were concerned. It’s like any new project, you make a few mistakes and I think we have learned from those mistakes and its onwards and upwards now.
Crash.net:
What was it that made you come up with the idea for Formula Woman? Was it simply a desire to get more women involved in motorsport of was there something else behind your thinking?
Graeme Glew:
Several years ago I used to run a racing school, and we used to have women who would come to the racing school and say ‘How come there isn’t a category for women in the sport?’ Ten years on I decided to do something about it. I went along to have a meeting with a manufacturer – actually I had meetings with three manufacturers – and they all wanted to do it, television thought it was great, I went to the MSA who have been trying to get women involved in motorsport for years and they were all very pro and very pushing and it was a case of ‘Lets do it.’
Crash.net:
There was some criticism of the quality of the racing at the start of the season, but then again that is something you would expect if you put 16 amateurs in cars regardless of whether they are male or female. However by the end of the season we were seeing some decent racing.
Do you feel that some of those 16 drivers could go on to be stars of the future?
Graeme Glew:
The criticism was mainly because people didn’t understand that these girls were complete novices, they’d never done anything before, and it was inevitable that the first two races were going to be pretty tame. But Tim Harvey did a great job in training then with me, we got them competitive, and we got to
Knockhill and it was as good as Touring Cars, which surprised me – the girls really got it together.
