challenge BE INSPIRED
ALL GEARED UP Singapore Red Bull Team’s first compet itive female race car driver, 25-year-old Emmeline Ang, talks to Allswell about life on the fast track. By Nirmala Sivanathan
“I
first heard about Red Bull’s search for female race car drivers on the radio in February 2011. It was the first time I had thought about becoming a race car driver. I was never into stuff like Formula One and my entire experience of car racing till then had been playing Daytona arcade games when I was in school! But I told myself to go for it because I wanted to try something new. The news that I was going to become a race car driver for a year didn’t go down well with my family. My dad was like, ‘Why are you trying to kill yourself ?’ But eventually, he came around to it, and my family and friends have been very supportive.
to you to concentrate for a long period of time under tough conditions. I ran the Standard Chartered full marathon back in 2010, and the marathon training definitely came in handy in building up the mental strength I needed on the race track. As for people who say that women make bad drivers, I would say that’s just a silly stereotype... there are bad male drivers too! In fact, I think what is good about female drivers is that we are not afraid to ask for help. Even my instructors on the race track said women make better students because they are not afraid to ask what they are doing wrong. For other women who are thinking about taking up racing, m y advice is if you see an opportunity to do it, don’t hesitate, just grab it. If you never try, you will never know what you can achieve.”
PHOTOS: Red Bull
“For other women who are thinking about taking up racing, my advice is if you see an opportunity to do it, don’t hesitate, just grab it”
Race car driving is so different from what I thought it would be, from the heat to the G-‐force acting on your body. But when you are driving at 170 km/h in a race, you don’t think about that at all. Time speeds up — 75 minutes on the track go by in a flash — and it’s only when you get out of the car that you realise you are dripping with swea t. Having won the search for a female race car driver, I joined the Red Bull Team and competed in the Sepang 1,000 km Endurance Race in December last year. I got to drive on the track by day and by night. Driving by night is so much more challenging than by day — some corners you don’t really see, and you have to rely on gut instinct to make the turn. The other thing I never realised about racing before is how mentally taxing it is. Racing is an endurance sport — you are all alone and it’s u p
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