Hong Kong E-Prix: BMW junior racer talks about being a female driver on International Women’s Day
- Beitske Visser, the junior racer who is a test driver for BMW’s i Andretti Motorsport, talks about being a women in pro racing
- The Dutch driver’s father was a racer and her parents also owned a car dealership
Beitske Visser has racing in her blood.
Her father raced touring cars in the Netherlands and her parents also owned a car dealership. She first got into racing at the age of five, however has been acclimatised to the world of engines and speed since birth.
“They were running (the car dealership) together, so pretty much the day after I was born, I was heading there every day.”
The 23-year-old is the first woman to make it onto the BMW Motorsport Junior Programme, having spent the previous three seasons in the Formula Renault 3.5 World Series. She serves as the test and back-up driver to Antonio Felix da Costa and Alexander Sims with the BMW i Andretti Motorsport team who have one win and seven podiums in the current FIA Formula E Championship season.
The course runs around the Hong Kong Central Harbourfront and Visser said her job is to support and soak up as much knowledge as she can while spending time with the drivers and overall team.
“My job is to learn from them and be ready in case I have to jump into the car.”
She said she is aware of her gender in what is still a male-dominated sport (all 22 drivers in Formula E are men), but said it doesn’t necessarily impact her much these days. She has noted in interviews when she was younger racing in karts that some drivers would try to run her off the road. But now, she said, in the high-ranking professional leagues, it is business as usual.
“Of course it’s there, but I’ve been in the racing world pretty much my whole life, so I don’t really know anything else. Pretty much everywhere I have raced since I was five I have usually always been one of the only girls racing. So to me, it’s normal.”
If all goes well, Visser’s next step is to become a full-time Formula E driver, but she said right now she’s focused on supporting da Costa and Simms in any way she can in terms of preparing for Sunday’s race.
“That would be my goal, but you can’t really plan that far ahead. I just need to focus on my job for this year, and then at the end of the year, there will be a progression of performance for next year and we will see.”
And of course, she would love to see some more female drivers like herself come up through the ranks.
“It would be cool to see more girls and women in the racing world in the future for sure.”
