Gordon Ritchie | December 24, 2024
Motorcycle racing in—its asphalt format—followed some off-road leads in 2024 with the inaugural all-women’s WorldWCR Championship. Or, to give it its real name, the FIM Women’s Circuit Racing World Championship. There were six rounds, 12 races and more classic front-running battles than anybody expected.
Maria Herrera leads Ana Carrasco, Beatriz Neila, Sara Sanchez and Roberta Ponziani at Donington Park. The WorldWCR racing was reliably as close as this in 2024.
Photography by Gold & Goose
Before it finally started at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli in mid-June, some people thought the first-ever FIM World Championship for women was long overdue.
For others, it was not exactly where women’s motorsport should be heading when women had fought hard to be taken seriously inside FIM Championships, which were once not truly open to them.
So, would it be an endpoint or a starting point for female racers?
It seems almost everyone finally moved to the position that it could be both—a destination championship in its own right and a World Championship-level shopwindow for any aspiring and ambitious female rider.
Carrasco took the crown in the inaugural WorldWCR—her second FIM World Championship including the 2018 WorldSSP300 title—in the most dramatic of circumstances.
Another hurdle some people found difficult to overcome was the fact that everybody would be on the same Yamaha YZF-R7 packages, with only some aspects of each rider’s bodywork, leathers, helmets, etc., different from the rest.
This was hardly World Championship racing, was it?
Well, in Moto2, first Honda-only, then Triumph-only engines, and in some years, Moto2 had almost everyone riding the same chassis as well. That’s a hefty icebreaker for the idea of a completely level tech playing field in a full World Championship.
What about it being a World Championship in its very first year of existence—how could that be? Well, memory tells us WorldSSP300 was instantly ennobled to a full World Championship in its first season inside the greater WorldSBK paddock, so the idea of the WorldWCR series following suit had merit.
What was obvious from the beginning of the whole WorldWCR project is that there would be a spread of not just female riding talent taking part but a wide spectrum of experience.
Only unveiled for real at the Jerez WorldSBK round in 2023, the logistics of competing just a few months later would be challenging for many. The basic budget of around 25,000 euros per rider for bikes (Yamaha’s twin-cylinder YZF-R7) and tech support was accessible but not negligible. It was just the starting point, of course.
Maria Herrera was always at the front in 2024 but lost out on the title at the last corner of the last lap of the last race.
In reality, when we got to the first real racing round—well into the 2024 calendar year at WorldSBK’s round four at Misano in June—there would be a mix of well-supported teams in at least titular offshoots from some existing WorldSBK/WorldSSP teams such as Evan Bros, Ampito Pata Prometeon and MotoX Racing, plus some more homemade or first-time efforts.
To the relief of some, there was a fair smattering of established female racer royalty up front, too, such as former WorldSSP300 Champion Ana Carrasco, who was an early full-time entrant for the Evan Bros squad. Carrasco’s 2018 title was thus the first and, so far, only FIM World Championship win by a female, an achievement that should never be underrated.
Although not a full-time entrant, but an every race “wildcard,” Carrasco’s Spanish archrival Maria Herrera was also in from the first round. Both have competed against the men for their whole careers and were certainly the two entrants with the biggest reputations.
Italian Roberta Ponziani was always a top five challenger.
Carrasco had been on record as saying she would not want to race in an all-women’s championship—she was a racer, not a woman racer—that was kind of her mantra. So, if we want to know why this new championship was so attractive, maybe we should ask her what changed her mind? I did just that, in March this year, when she was at Catalunya for the WorldSBK weekend.
“I think the same thing: that we are all the same,” said Ana about wanting to race everybody. “But, for sure, it is the first time ever that Dorna and the FIM are trying to have the female riders to be in the World Championship. For me it was important that the few riders that are at the top level should be in this championship from the beginning to try to push the championship a bit in its first year. If we were not here it would be quite strange. If they are trying to help the female riders, of course, we should try to help also. That is why I decided to be here in this championship this first year.
“Maybe for us (the established female racers), it is something that has come a bit late, but it will be something important for the future riders, so I think we have to be here, pushing the championship. Ten years ago, I think it would have been impossible to have a grid of 24 riders in any championship. So, it is growing, but not as fast as we want. I see this championship as more of a platform for riders to make them grow and then go to other classes.”
Carrasco, predictably enough, fought Maria Herrera for the inaugural WorldWCR title.
Carrasco won but only after the most dramatic finish to any World Championship class in the whole 2024 WorldSBK paddock. It went to literally the final corner to be decided when Herrera crashed out after hitting the rear tire of yet another Spanish rider. It was a fittingly wild finish to a remarkably competitive season for the elite female riders.
Australia’s Tayla Relph (8) was one of only two non-Spanish riders to take a podium in 2024.
The big question we need to answer after WorldWCR’s first year of existence is this:Was it successful and valid in its own right?
In terms of racing spectacle, it exceeded everyone’s expectations. Just how close the races were, how exciting it was to watch, and how evenly matched it was. At least up front and in some notable battles down the field, too.
Four or five Spanish riders dominated to a remarkable degree, showing that the modern-day true home of bike racing is definitely well ahead of the curve in terms of producing female talent, not just male talent.
Sara Sanchez (511 Terra&Vita Racing Team) was a bit of a find and ended up just 24 points from the well-proven exploits of championship runner-up Herrera. Sara scored eight podiums from 12 races—two of which were race victories—so it wasn’t just the Carrasco/Herrera grudge match right up top.
Experienced racer Beatriz Neila (Ampito/Pata Prometeon) took four podium places, weighted towards the back end of the year a little, but she was inside the top four in every race but three.
Italy’s Roberta Ponziani (MotoX Racing) placed fifth overall but scored only one podium in race two at the Cremona round in Italy. She was almost always inside the top five.
The only other podium scorer (also the only other non-Spaniard to score a podium) was tiny-but-mighty Aussie Tayla Relph (TAYCO Racing) who took a third place at Cremona, also in race two. She finished seventh overall after upping sticks from Australia with her boyfriend for the entirety of the season. That podium obviously cost a lot of money if you take it in isolation, but did Relph learn a lot more about racing than if she had continued only in Australia?
By several factors, that must be a yes.
Mallory Dobbs represented America in WorldWCR with the Sekhmet Racing Team run by Australian Maddi Patterson (left). Dobbs improved steadily throughout the year to be a regular top 10 finisher.
America was represented in the class by Mallory Dobbs, racing for the Sekhmet team, which had been set up by MotoGP journo and woman-of-many-roles Australian Maddi Patterson. Creating a team in such a relatively short space of time was not straightforward, but by the end of the year, Dobbs was finishing more regularly inside the top 10 and closer to the front than when she started out.
Dobbs leads Chilean Isis Carreno (99) and South African Jessica Howden at the final round at Jerez.
If there is one criticism of the first season of WorldWCR, it is that the 24 best women racers on planet Earth were probably not all inside the championship this year. That is partly a result of throwing the net far and wide and accepting entries that were a little unproven simply to ensure that there would be a full grid.
The disparity in experience and sheer pace was most evident in the first round, particularly when there were some bizarre crashes and restarts.
Mia Rusthen on the grid for race one at Misano. The Norwegian would crash moments later and suffer serious head injuries but returned to the paddock for the final round at Jerez as a spectator.
Then there was one particularly horrible one that almost led to a true tragedy. The sight of Mia Rusthen (coming back from the brink after that awful round-one Misano crash and serious head injury) walking into the press conference room at the Jerez finale—under her own physical power—was both uplifting and mind-blowing. Then we witnessed her answer questions from the media in a language other than her own native Norwegian, with great care and lucidity. Believe me, it was a deeply emotional experience for even the most cynical of the jaded paddock observers.
Mia and others in her 2024 peer group proved what most people already knew—tough racing cookies come in all varieties. Anybody who thinks otherwise should probably leave the chat now.
Up front, we can put the first year of WorldWCR into more perspective by remembering that this was not Carrasco’s first full FIM World Championship win but her second.
Nothing is ever perfect, especially the first time out, but WorldWCR will be back again inside WorldSBK for year two. Those teams and riders who will return are now fully cognizant of what is needed to try and run nearer the level of the rock-hard Spanish opposition.
Finding enough riders of other nationalities who can close the gap to the top four in ’25 should be the mission for all involved from right now until the new season starts in April at Assen in Holland. CN
