A few years ago one of our brilliant contributors at Girl Racer decided to set herself the most incredible challenge.
As a Porsche club racer, Rebecca decided she wanted to inspire those in motorsport, but particularly girls in the sport, to get out there, go for your dreams and never take no for an answer. Project Le Mans was born.
Over a three year period, Rebecca went from racing her 944 in the BRCSS to driving an LMP3 car made by Ligier, powered by a 420bhp Nissan engine teamed with an X-Trac sequential gearbox and a carbon-fibre chassis and closed cockpit. Her team were the Spanish crew of Speed Factory. It is hard to believe that a young woman with no major history of motorsport, her roots are actually more based around salsa dancing, could end up taking on the iconic circuit in such an incredible car after just three years. But she did and she certainly didn’t let herself down.
The question is, is Rebecca Jackson just a one off or could you take the same journey and end up living your motorsport dream?
There is a lot to consider before you even hit the track. To race in europe you need a special licence and are going to need money, either to hire a car at the circuit or to attract sponsors to a factory team like Rebecca did. Of course you could get your first few years experience by funding your own car and small race team. This means you are going to need to get to grips with how to ship cars overseas which can be complicated. If you nail out all the boring sensible bits first, you will have a good understanding of how much money you need to secure and how hard the next few years will be. Whilst Jackson made it seem simple, don’t underestimate the hard work going on behind the scenes. There were lots of mistakes made and plenty of hurdles to get over, however she was well versed in what could go wrong and had strong contingency plans in place.
Choose a path that will lead to your final destination but try to get experience across lots of different types of racing. This can help improve your style and safety on track. Try rallycross as a way of learning how to control your car when the terrain changes and spend some time beside the track working as a marshall. It is a great way of picking up extra tips on track positioning.
Finally, you need to be the queen, or king, of self promotion. Jackson went full throttle at just about every company who would give her the time of day. Securing plenty of media interest and giving her sponsors a lot of TV and Radio time. You are going to have a lot of people watching you and wanting you to fail. Ignore them. They are the extra fuel you need to succeed.
If you believe you have the talent and you can dream big enough, don’t let anything stand in your way until you hit the checkered flag. This special lady has shown us all that it can be done. So go do it.
