"In women's F1 they love you more as a model than as a driver"

Since she was a child, Belén García (L’Ametlla del Vallès, Barcelona, ​​1999) has had fixed ideas. When she was 9 years old, she asked her father –José Luis, a rally driver– to get on a go-kart and at 16 she began to compete in the Spanish championship. Now 23, after having gone through F4, the European Regional Formula (F3) and the Women Series (the extinct unofficial version of women’s F1), Belén continues with her idea: “I like to run, I feel comfortable with what give me”. And what she has been given, what she has chosen, is resistance.

This weekend he makes his debut at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in the Michelin Le Mans Cup, the gateway to endurance racing, under the umbrella of the Le Mans Series. So García discards the pompous F1 Academy, the renewed Formula 1 project that starts on April 28 to “prepare women to progress to the highest level of competition.” Another business from FOM and Liberty Media.

García, who was the first woman to win a European F4 race (2019) and the best Spanish in the last edition of the W Series (5th), has stood up to the prevailing commercialism throughout the F1 orbit, also the feminine.

“It was an option to run in the F1 Academy, but they asked me for a budget of 150,000 euros. I studied offers, but for me it is a training competition that should be for girls from 16 to 17 years old, who are starting to race with F4. I already did it in 2019. Ok, there is a lot of exposure in the media, but I don’t think it’s a step forward”, argues the Vallesan pilot, who preferred to move to the endurance category, with much less media showcase, which that subtracts reach, sponsorships, aid…

“It was what I was considering when deciding whether or not to race in the F1 Academy. The push that these championships have [like the W Series or the current F1 Academy] is very strong, but they also have a B side: they love you more as a model than as a driver, and I can’t do that. Yes, many things could come out, have more repercussions, but I decided to go down the path that I like to drive with the LMP3, and not along the path of “let’s see what comes out of the photos”, he exposes without complexes.

Thus, García, who definitively gave up pole vaulting –his best mark was 3.15m, in 2018, when he was fifth in the Catalunya sub’20 category– to focus on driving, will run the Michelin Le Mans Cup this season, a category in who will be the only woman among the 60 drivers with LMP3 cars.

I don’t care if I’m the only woman. I am a pilot. I’m going to run, I don’t care if I’m a man or a woman, if I like soccer balls or tennis balls… I’m just worried about being fast,” says García, who was fourth in the tests on Tuesday.

In her experience, being a woman in a world that is predominantly masculine has not caused her more difficulties “than the usual ones that every pilot faces to have a budget, to find a good team, set-ups, to be able to train… the same as everyone else. It is a very difficult world, you have to look for life, trying to get the maximum experience…”.

Only – he admits – he has been harmed by “the physical issue and that the cars are not prepared for a person of 1.60 m, making seats for me is complicated”.

In her second experience in endurance (the appetizer was the Asian Le Mans Series), Belén will take turns at the wheel of the LMP3 with a Ligier chassis with the British Mark Richards. It is a car with great potential, nothing to do with the F4 or F3 cars. “It has a 450 hp Nissan V8 engine, six sequential speeds and Michelin wheels; a weight of about 1,000 kg, and a maximum speed of 286 km/h in Paul Ricard without a chicane,” García describes.

For this reason -he explains-, “in my preparation for resistance I have introduced more cardiovascular exercise; In the formula I needed more arm, more muscle and strength without further ado, but now I need more cardio to manage the longer runs (50 minutes-1 hour) and dehydration”, confesses the vallesana.

His dream, after parking F1 (absolute), “now is to run the 24 Hours of Le Mans”, where he already did the timing with his father’s company, Alkamel, in 2018… the first year that Fernando Alonso won in The Sarthe.