Dubai: Her training school back home in South Africa is aptly named ‘Driving In Heels' for, as one of the world's foremost women kart racers, Fabienne Lanz has more on her mind than winning races against men.
She cites modelling as one of her pastimes and was the lone woman among the 65 pro-team drivers who took to the kartdrome for the Dubai 24-hour race and finished on top with the Batelco team consisting of Fabienne, Alban Varutti, Oliver Rowland, who won the Mclaren Autosport BRDC Award and is onboard the Mclaren junior team for 2012, Ramez Azzam and Mohammed Mattar.
And while winning has become second nature to her, she believes she has bigger challenges to overcome. Speaking to XPRESS following her victory, Fabienne said: "I'm still waiting for the Yas Marina authorities to give us the green signal to open an advanced driving school for women, something which this region desperately needs in order to promote racing among women."
"It's sad that while this region has a Formula One race, besides such great race tracks in Dubai and Al Ain, there are hardly any women drivers who are keen to take up the sport. A couple have shown interest up to a certain level, but then there's nothing more," she added.
Fabienne has been a regular to Dubai, having had some great races at the kartdrome and this time was no different. Her Batelco team, though, started off on the wrong foot.
"We were moved down 10 positions due to a technical issue with the scale, which left us underweight. The race start is a tradional Le Mans start, where the drivers run across the track, jump into the karts and race off. Alban started the race and made his way up and into the lead in about lap five. He then kept it there his whole stint. Each stint is a maximum of 1hr 15min.
"I went out second after Alban. We kept the pace and were going strong. Timeless Events Racing had very good pace in the beginning of the race and took the lead. we then held second position for a while and then went back into the lead in the early hours of the race," she said.
And just when Batelco thought they had things under control, they ran into further trouble.
"At the technical check at midnight, halfway through the race we ran into big trouble as they discovered the throttle cable was damaged. It was a narrow escape. They team replaced it. To our luck it broke in the early morning stint around 10 am. Alban was driving and he brought the kart to the pits holding his hand on the trottle lever. We drove a spare kart while the technical crew fixed our kart. We then got our kart back and were back on track. We had lost quite some amount of time and fell to third place during that period," she said.
Fabienne's next stop is France in April and then she's off to North Carolina. "The race in France will be interesting as it will be 12 hours one way and 12 hours back the same way. As for North Carolina, it will be great since it will be good for us, a primarily Arab team to be racing in the US," she said.
