Alpine, Renault's sporting brand, has just launched its new F1 car for the 2023 season, but alongside the new wheels, there's a new programme set to support women in all aspects and at all levels of motor racing.
As well as the new Alpine A523 racing car, Alpine and Renault have launched the Rac(H)er programme (pronounce it as as 'Racer' but with a heavy H in the middle), which comes with an "ambition to promote equal opportunities for men and women to enhance its performance."
Only 6 out of 885 drivers have been women
As Alpine puts it: "In 72 years of Formula One racing, only six out of 885 drivers have been female, an under-representation of women, which is also accurate within the automotive industry. For Alpine, bringing diversity to its workforce while maintaining a meritocracy is an important pillar in improving its overall performance."
A big part of this plan will be Alpine's Human High-Performance Centre, which is in Enstone near Oxford, next to the F1 car factory. Alpine has: "teams have designed a scientific protocol and a unique research programme to measure the physical, physiological, and cognitive data of its drivers and teams. With use of specialised knowledge of very specific data, the Human High-Performance Centre will house the progress of Alpine athletes, whatever their gender. This data will both improve Alpine's understanding of its athlete's performance and contribute to the creation of tailor-made training programmes built up by Alpine Academy Director Julian Rouse and his team, overseen by BWT Alpine F1 Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer."
First women recruits to the Academy
Rac(H)er has already found its first racing recruits - German racer Sophia Floersch has joined the Alpine Academy (through which other successful racers such as Oscar Piastri, Guanyu Zhou, Romain Grosjean, and Robert Kubica have passed) and will race in the Formula 3 championship. "Joining the Alpine Academy is an honour and a major opportunity in my career. I have great ambitions, and I am sure by applying the knowledge and expertise from Alpine, it will only help me grow. I can't wait to start this new chapter and represent the Alpine brand on the global stage," said Floersch.
Abbi Pulling, a young British racer, has also signed up to the Alpine Academy, having impressed in last year's W Series, and will be competing in the new Formula 1 Academy Series in 2023.
Younger drivers are also being encouraged - six woman talents officially join Alpine's young-driver karting programme: Aiva Anagnostiadis (15, from Australia), Angélina Proenca (13, from France), Chiara Battig (12, from Switzerland), Lisa Billard (13, from France), Maria Chiara Nardelli (12, from Italy) and Kaur Kera Sukhmani (10, from the United Kingdom). The six drivers will benefit from a tailor-made, purpose-built sports programme to grow them into the champions of tomorrow.
Inspiration from outside of motor racing
Alpine's Academy is also recruiting ambassadors from outside the world of motor racing. Nicola Adams, a two-time Olympic champion and gender equality activist, commits long-term to Alpine as its new role model and coach of the brand. Nicola Adams will coach the Academy drivers and the Alpine F1 teams based in Enstone throughout the year. She will also give conferences to inspire, motivate and raise awareness of diversity as a key driver of performance. "As a top athlete, my mentors have played an instrumental role in my career. I can't wait to pass on my experiences, to coach the drivers and teams, to share and give advice to them as well as to make my contribution to Alpine and help alleviate gender inequalities in sport." said Adams.
Meanwhile, Zara Rutherford, the youngest woman pilot to complete a solo round-the-world flight, has also signed up.
Some concrete figures back all of this up. Alpine says that by 2025, it wants to increase the number of women in its team from 12 per cent at the moment to 30 per cent by 2025. This pilot programme will be combined with other innovative initiatives. Alpine has launched and implemented at its Enstone factory a specific workshop, "Allyship Training", for empowerment and created a Women in Engineering Group pioneered by the Stress team to raise awareness of Women in Engineering at Alpine.
Laurent Rossi, Alpine CEO: "Rac(H)er is key in our continuous quest for performance, to build the future of our industry by driving real change and creating equal and fair opportunities across a range of human talents. Sophia and Abbi, for example, are a fine example of such talents. I am delighted that Sophia is joining our programme and it's an honour to promote Abbi to the Academy. Both drivers, I am sure, will bring a lot to Alpine."
Claire Mesnier, Alpine Human Resources VP: "With Rac(H)er, we have been working relentlessly over the past six months, with the support of Renault Group, not only to encourage reflection, but also to put in place concrete actions to move forwards. Now that we have shifted our organisation's culture, we accelerate forwards with the creation of the Human High-Performance Centre as well as by the deployment of numerous internal initiatives to empower women and encourage new generations to join the motorsport industry, whether engineers, mechanics, or drivers."