QMMF president Nasser al-Attiyah (centre) with participatns of the FIA women’s Cross-Country Selection event hosted by the QMMF.


By Joe Koraith/Doha


At stake was a fully-funded drive in the 2016 Sealine Cross Country Rally and so the nervousness in the room was palpable. Despite having spent five days tackling the tough terrain that is the desert, the 18 women seemed to find the wait more nerve-wrecking.
The winning driver-navigator pair was New Zealand’s Emma Gilmour and Lisette Bakker from The Netherlands. And then what came as a complete surprise to the participants, QMMF president Nasser al-Attiyah announced that two more teams would get entry to the Sealine Rally. This meant that Molly Taylor/Yasmeen Elmajed and Cristina Gutierrez Herrero/Lara Vanneste were also selected for next year’s rally.
This FIA women’s cross-country selection event hosted by the QMMF had received 85 applications from 39 countries out of which these 18 were short-listed. This inaugural event was conceived jointly by al-Attiyah, President of the FIA Women in Motorsport Commission Michele Mouton and Jutta Kleinschmidt, the first and only woman to win the prestigious Dakar. Kleinschmidt along with Fabrizia Pons, multiple rally and cross-country winning navigator were the ones who mentored contenders through five days of intense training.
Mouton acknowledged that all of this was possible only because of the support of the QMMF president. “We would like to thank Nasser (al-Attiyah), our biggest supporter for women in motorsport. The QMMF has done a lot for these women. This is an amazing event, fantastically organised and it wouldn’t have happened without you,” said Mouton.
The QMMF president pledged his support for women in motorsport. “We are proud of all of you. QMMF will always keep supporting women in motorsport. We would like to think of this as the start of a flame which will keep burning brighter. We believe in the ability of the women,” said al-Attiyah.
Mouton said that more and more women were taking up the sport and that signs were encouraging. “We have more girls approaching us. When we started the commission five years ago we didn’t think we would have the same result. The goal is to have more women in more areas of motorsport.”
The women who had come for the event were all experienced campaigners themselves but the desert was a new experience for most of them and Kleinschmidt summed up the improvement that this bunch had shown. “I remember the first day after everyone went out and no car came back for a while. Nasser and I were standing I front of the screen hoping that somebody would come back. But the girls have shown an incredible learning curve over the five days. I want to thank everyone for the discipline shown,” said the Dakar legend. As for the winners themselves they couldn’t quite contain their emotions. “I’m just overwhelmed, it’s been an amazing week and the experience in itself of doing something in which you have no experience, and to be driving around sand dunes, has been amazing,” said Gilmour.
Navigator Bakker was happy that she got the chance to do all the training. “I am really surprised. I didn’t expect it at all! It will be difficult to do more training because, as we learnt here, you can’t learn this from paper, you have to be in the car and you just have to go out there.”
Now the 2016 Sealing beckons and all the three teams will be eager to comeback and give it their all. “Now to win and to have another go at the dunes, I just feel very privileged and lucky,” said Gilmour, summing it up.