The GTE ruleset in the FIA WEC produced countless standout performances from world-class drivers, hundreds of hours of door-to-door action and a slew of unforgettable moments since the championship’s inaugural season in 2012.
It was therefore fitting that the final GTE race back in November at Bahrain delivered a result that will be looked back on for generations to come.
The win for the Iron Dames Porsche, which was driven almost faultlessly by Sarah Bovy, Rahel Frey, and Michelle Gatting in the eight-hour season-closer, will go down in history.
That’s because the trio became the first all-female class-winning crew in a circuit-based FIA World Championship*, at the end of a season in which Lilou Wadoux made history earlier in the campaign, becoming the first female driver to win an FIA WEC race in the Richard Mille AF Corse Ferrari.
“It was emotional and intense,” Rahel Frey told DSC after the finale. “Like Sarah always says, I think it’s easier when you’re in the car because then you’re in control of what you’re doing.
“When you’re watching the last stint from the other side, you are out of control. And being out of control is not a strength of any driver. But in the end, we trusted each other, we can rely on each other. I can just say, I’m very proud of all of us, we did not crack under pressure. And this makes me very happy.”
The final hour of the race produced real tension. When the Porsche on the other side of the Dames garage from Iron Lynx was forced into retirement from the lead, as Bronze-rated Claudio Schiavoni was not well enough to race, it was game on for the Iron Dames, who inherited first position.
This left Michelle Gatting in the final two hours to hold off a fast-charging D’Station Racing Aston Martin. Casper Stevenson, in the Aston Martin at the end, reeled in the Dane, but couldn’t get close enough to make a move. His efforts in closing the gap resulted in a drop-off in performance caused by worn tyres and brakes.
“Going into my first stint I heard the gap was around 15 to 18 seconds,” Gatting told RACER. “I thought going into the last stint it would be more or less the same. But unfortunately, it went from 18 seconds to 1.6 in a split second, at least that’s the way it seemed. I was like “Is that him?!!” and then he was in my mirrors. I wondered “Whoa, where did he come from?”
“He was really pushing to catch me,” she continued. “And at one point, I was maybe a little bit too calm in the car because I wanted to avoid killing my tires too early. But to be honest, when I saw that he was very close I also knew there would be a drop off for him. So when the gap was around 1.6 seconds, I started to push a bit more and he got a bit unlucky with traffic.
“And you know, in the end, I felt that I was more or less always in control of managing the gap to him.”
The Iron Dames team hopes the result, which comes at the end of a season which included a standout GTE Am win for young Frenchwoman Lilou Wadoux in the Richard Mille AF Corse-Ferrari at Spa, will inspire more women to pursue careers in motorsport in the future.
We need more of us
“I think this shows the female strength,” Frey said to DSC. “And we know that we have a very strong female crew also behind us. Clearly, the drivers are always in the spotlight. But it’s not only about the drivers. We have strong females around us who put us there. We have our leading Dame Deborah Meyer, she really believes in us and she keeps pushing the project.
“Clearly in the future, we also focus on the young ones to bring more Dames up. Because we need more of us. We are proud and we need to pass the experience to others.
“We keep pushing, we keep working hard, I think we can still prove that we are one of the fastest out there. And this is exactly what we want. We want to show how performant or competitive we are to keep inspiring the next generation.”
This victory for the Dames comes six years after the team was founded began back in 2017. And it adds to a growing list of accomplishments for the project which includes a standout ELMS GTE win in its final race with the Ferrari 488 GTE EVO at Paul Ricard and a historic Gold Cup class victory at the Spa 24 Hours last year.
We want to show how performant or competitive we are to keep inspiring the next generation
Yet that Bahrain victory stands out. As the final chapter of GTE racing’s story was written, a new chapter for female drivers in elite-level sportscar racing was being penned.
Next year Iron Dames is expected to return in LMGT3 with a Lamborghini Huracan GT3, and right now the sky, it would seem, is the limit.
“We just kept fighting for it,” concluded Bovy. “And that’s what Iron Dames do, even when it seems impossible, we just go for it and see what happens.”
*It has been correctly pointed out that our original text ignored the achievements in 1981 and 1982 of Michele Mouton and Fabrizia Pons in the World Rally Championship – the text has been changed to more accurately reflect the historical significance of the Iron Dames win.
