When 19-year-old Alice Buckley clears Mount Panorama at Bathurst and makes it to Conrod Straight, she wiggles her fingers and takes a deep breath.
As the only female driver in the Super2 series โ one division below the Supercars championship โ she has a little extra room in her gloves.
โRace gloves are made for men, so my fingers are quite short,โ she said. โSo Iโm allowed to have [long] nails in my gloves.โ
This weekend, Buckleyโs nails are an iridescent pink, but sometimes they match her teamโs colours. One day soon โ if all goes according to plan โ Buckleyโs nails will match a Gen3 Supercar, an upgrade that would make her the first full-time female Supercars driver since 2019.
From the Gold Coast, Buckley drives for her family team, but almost did not get a start in the sport.
โIโve got two older sisters and a younger brother, and when my younger brother was born, dad got flooded with messages from his old karting friends going, โYou have a boy! You get to go back to the racetrack now, how awesome! You can take him karting!โโ Buckley said. โMum didnโt like that at all and pretty much said to dad, โYouโre not living here if the girls donโt get a goโ.โ
While Buckleyโs older sisters did not take to the sport, she did, leaving her brother to trail behind her on the racetrack.
โThe older I get, the more welcoming the community gets,โ Buckley said. โItโs getting better. When I grew up karting, there was three girls in the whole country that were racing in a go-kart and now thereโs girls, whether theyโre in a car or not, theyโre all around. Thereโs team managers, engineers, all sorts of things now, so itโs very accepted, and I definitely donโt feel as much of an outlier when it comes to Supercars.
โSuper2 โ thereโs really not any females working around really, but in Supercars thereโs definitely more. So, itโs a bit of a weird one, where itโs like grassroots motorsports have caught up and Supercars have caught up, so thereโs kind of a delay that I think Iโm sitting in at the moment … Thereโs a few [Super2 drivers] thatโll talk to me and I think a few still think Iโm this weird species.โ
Buckley has learnt to embrace being an outlier.
โI have long nails, and everyoneโs like, โHow do you drive with those nails?โ I love doing my make-up and my hair and wearing sparkle shorts in the race. I just love those little things where itโs like, well, I am different so whatโs the point of trying to hide my difference?โ
Eventually, she hopes that point of difference will attract new fans and corporate sponsors to a world they may be otherwise unfamiliar with.
โI really want to try to target a group of corporate partners who I can bring to the racetrack because I feel like thereโs a lot of females that are really interested in Formula 1 in Australia at the moment and they come to Aus GP and itโs like, โcome to Supercarsโ,โ she said.
โI think itโll help make it more inclusive if there are beauty brands here at Bathurst. Could you imagine how big that would be?
โI really hope that one day I get to be a part of that and maybe have a make-up brand on my car or a hair care brand. Itโd be so cool.โ
Rookie shocks in Bathurst qualifying
Supercars championship rookie Zach Bates has caused a major shock, qualifying fastest on Friday for Saturdayโs top-10 shootout. In doing so, he clocked the fastest lap of Mount Panorama in a Gen3 car. With a time of 2:03:9376, the 22-year-old is the only driver to complete a lap under two minutes and four seconds in this era of race cars.
Drivers are given 40 minutes to clock the fastest lap, with the top 10 on the start line again on Saturday.
After qualifying, Bates paid tribute to his mum and motorsport TV presenter Alison Drower, who died two weeks before Bates made his maiden Bathurst 1000 start last year as a wildcard entrant with veteran co-driver Craig Lowndes.
โItโs been a pretty average year for the whole family. Lost mum last year … so to be able to do this is pretty special,โ he said.
New Zealandโs Ryan Wood sat out qualifying after crashing earlier in the day. Although Wood walked away uninjured, the Walkinshaw team withdrew the car after failing to repair it in time.
Returning Supercars champion Chaz Mostert and Brock Feeney both failed to make the top 10.
This masthead travelled to Bathurst as a guest of the Repco Supercars Championship.
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