Ana Carrasco: “I have shown that a woman can be competitive and win a World Cup”

MADRID, March 24. (Royals Blue) –

The Moto3 rider Ana Carrasco (KTM) stated this Thursday that in motorcycling it has been shown that “a woman can be competitive and win a World Cup”, for which she insisted that in this sport “gender does not matter”, although she pointed out that it is “important” to work on opportunities for girls at the base.

“I am one of the few women who compete in the world championship. And along the way I have found people who believed in women and I have been able to be world champion, it takes people like Midas who believe in things before they happen. In motorcycling does not matter the gender, we have shown it, a woman can be competitive and win a World Cup,” said Carrasco at the presentation of the Study #EllasConducen Sin Barreras by Midas.

The world champion in the Supersport 300 modality in 2018 sees “logical” that there are more men than women in motorcycling, because “there are few girls who start practicing this sport”. “But since 2013 I have noticed a very big change within the ‘world’, not so much at the pilot level, but within the World Championship family there are more women,” she explained.

“In all the teams there are women working. What people see are the pilots, we are very few women, but 50% of the paddock are women. It would be very important to work at the base,” he added.

The study presented by the company Midas reveals that 50.66% of women have received sexist comments when driving, a fact with which Ana Carrasco “has freaked out”. “I think it is important that we are aware of the barriers that women face when driving,” said the pilot.

According to the research, there is 18.5% of men who consider that women drive worse than men, an idea also internalized by 7.5% of women. In addition, 4 out of 10 respondents continue to pay attention to the sex of the driver in case of witnessing an incident while driving. This makes women feel that they have more barriers when it comes to driving than men, specifically, almost half of women (49%) have encountered difficulties when driving.

These and other conclusions of the study have been presented this Thursday at an event organized by Midas at Carlos Sainz Karting. The Deputy Director of Training of the DGT, María José Aparicio, and the Moto3 rider Ana Carrasco, ambassador of the #EllasConducen initiative, participated in it; along with Jocelyne Bravo, Client & Digital Marketing Manager at Midas, and Silvia Jardim, head of Institutional Relations at Ayuda en Acción.

“We have come a long way, but we still have important challenges to face. In Spain there are just over 27 million drivers, 15 million are men and 43% are women, a huge presence on the road. Although there is a pending account with professional driving,” said Aparicio, who insisted that women are “safer and more respectful when driving.

As stated in the study, 60.30% of women do not receive any type of administrative sanction, while 69.75% of men acknowledge that they are fined mainly for speeding (45.25%) and not respecting the signs on the road (12.25%).

Thus, from Midas they stressed that “there is still a long way to go, despite being a model country.” “We have to keep raising our voices to break down those barriers and empower women,” Bravo said during the ceremony.