“International single-seater motor racing has become a billionaire boys’ club,” says Alice Powell. The British driver should know after her successful career came to a grinding halt four years ago for lack of funding. She had returned to working with her tradesman father and was facing stark reality in the form of unblocking a toilet when given another shot at her dream – finally racing again in the new women-only W series, which holds its inaugural race next weekend.
Powell is thoroughly invigorated by the fresh start and speaks with good cheer of the travails she has faced. The billionaire boys’ club is far from being consigned to the dustbin of history, but Powell and 17 other female drivers know they are being given a chance to get a foot in the door.
“People have the opinion that if you haven’t got the money then what’s the point trying – the W Series is here to change that,” says Powell. For her the change could not have been more welcome when the W Series approached her last year.
“I was working with Dad, we do bathroom renovations, decorating, fixing things, all sorts,” she says. “When I met the W Series they asked me what I had been up to and I said: ‘Yesterday I was unblocking a urinal.’ I don’t think it was the answer they expected.”
The series could be a gamechanger. It consists of six races across Europe, all of which will be shown live on Channel 4, and is privately funded. Crucially then, the single-seater, single-make series does not require drivers to bring backing, and there is a £1.14m prize fund. Some 54 women drivers from across the world were selected by a panel and whittled down to 18 through track tests. Next Saturday at Hockenheim they will race for the first time, with the season finale at Brands Hatch in August.
Powell cannot wait. Before lugging bricks, kitchen units and, indeed, toilets about, the 26-year-old from Oxford was highly rated. She remembers watching racing on TV when she was three, so entranced she would just go quiet. She grew to admire Michael Schumacher before her grandfather took her karting when she was eight. “I just kept going round and round, they couldn’t get me to stop,” she recalls.
What followed was a whirlwind. After karting, she began racing in sports cars in 2007. In 2009, at 16, she was youngest female driver in a Formula Renault race. The next year she became the first woman to win a Formula Renault race in the UK and followed it by taking the title that year, also the first woman to do so.
In 2012 Powell took a drive in GP3 (now F3), two steps down the ladder from F1, and became the first woman to score points in the series. Then in 2014 she won the Asian Formula Renault series, with four wins. That high point was followed by a crushing low as it proved to be her last full season. There had never been any lack of commitment on her part, and at no point had she been put off competing in a sport dominated by men.
Last week Red Bull’s motorsports consultant, Helmut Marko, questioned whether the “brutality” of F1 was “in the female nature”. Powell has heard it all before. “I remember a kid’s dad said: ‘You can’t let yourself be beaten by a girl,’” she says. “Those words stayed with me a long time. It knocked my confidence, but I loved it so much I carried on.”
What put the brakes on a promising career was motorsport’s fundamental problem: finding the money to go racing. Powell had no billionaire in waiting. She had a backer but they could not meet the required demands: at least £500,000 for GP3 or £1m for GP2, both figures that are dwarfed by F3 and F2 today.
“People say it’s down to talent, you should get the sponsorship if you are doing well,” she says. “But it’s not the case. I know men who have won titles and fallen by the wayside. I won two championships and in my last year racing I won one and still didn’t get the sponsorship.”
The 2014 season was Powell’s last and although keeping her hand in with driver coaching and trying for new drives, she had begun to accept that her career might have come to an end. Her glee at getting a second chance is clear. “It has given me the opportunity to get back out racing,” she says. “And I am not the only one in this position, given this chance to get back out there and put my foot back on the ladder.”
She also believes in the wider value of the W Series. “It will have lots of positive impact,” she says. “I had no idea there were so many talented females out there. You would think since there are so few you would know everybody but you don’t. It’s increasing the experience for drivers who want to try and progress into higher levels and on the engineering side, the W Series will encourage more females into engineering because they can see women participating in racing. I hope I can be a role model.”
There has been vocal criticism from some female drivers, largely that the series is segregating women in a sport where they already compete on a level playing field with the men. The arguments have weight but are not the final word, and Powell disagrees.
“It’s not segregation, it’s opportunity,” she says. “For female drivers to try and get a little higher up the ladder, to help them into mainstream motorsport. It’s not like you can never go back to racing against men, we are going into it to get racing and gain experience.”
Four years has been a long time in the motor racing wilderness for Powell but the driving ambition is as strong as ever. “When my name was read out it didn’t sink in for days,” she says. “I was so excited to know I was back racing. I have been given another chance, a new lease of life.”