Historic GTE-Am Win “Quite Emotional” for Iron Dames

Michelle Gatting said the Iron Dames’ historic GTE-Am class win in Saturday’s FIA World Endurance Championship season finale in Bahrain proves that the all-female squad is capable of winning races in top-level sports car racing, labeling it “exactly what we want to achieve.”

Gatting, driving the No. 85 Porsche 911 RSR-19, held off Casper Stevenson’s No. 777 D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GTE in the closing stages of the 8 Hours of Bahrain to take the final victory of the GTE era.

More notably, it makes Gatting, Rahel Frey and Sarah Bovy the first all-female crew in championship history to secure a race win.

Gatting said after the race that the victory was an emotional one for the team, adding that it proves that they are capable of taking wins in world championship competition.

“Finally getting this win, it’s been something we’ve wanted to achieve for a long time and finally to get it for the last race, it’s something [that] is quite emotional for all of us,” Gatting said.

“Very proud of Rahel, of Sarah, of our whole team and of this project. This is exactly what we want to achieve and what we want to prove, that we can compete on exactly the same level as everybody else and that we’re here to win races.”

The result marks a new milestone for the Iron Lynx-led program. The team claimed both a GTE class victory in the European Le Mans Series decider and a Gold Cup triumph in the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa last year.

Gold-rated Frey added that the Bahrain win serves to boost the program’s standing as it looks to introduce the next generation of female driving talent into motorsport.

“What we always aim for is to make the team stronger,” said Frey.

“I added a fair value to the team with my experience and to see that we can win races with the Iron Dames on the highest level in GT racing makes me very proud.

“I clearly keep passing my experience to the younger generations. We have younger Iron Dames coming up and this is also something that we focus on for the future and this makes me very proud.

“Nevertheless I’m still a racer, I love to race and I want to keep fighting for more wins.”

Gatting faced pressure from D’station Racing driver Stevenson in the final hour as the Brit closed the gap to the leading Porsche to under two seconds in the final hour before falling away again to 5.548 seconds at the finish.

“He made me sweat, to be honest,” Gatting told Sportscar365. “The first stint, I was so much in control, I was just managing the tires, like the first stint early on.

“I was like, ‘Yeah this is good. The car feels good. I’m just managing the pace.’

“And I thought it was going to be the same towards the end because going into the second-to-last stint, the gap was around 15-18 seconds.

“But then for the last hour, they stepped up the game a bit. They got hungry and they could see that I was maybe not pushing as much as I should at that point.

“When he got very close, I was really trying to manage the tires because I was already struggling a bit. But at one point I was like, ‘OK I need to push to try and increase the gap.’

“I knew he was pushing a lot from behind because I also know him as a driver; I knew how much he was trying to catch me.

“So at one point when I felt like the gap was around two seconds, I could calm down a bit again to keep the tires.

“It was tough. He put a lot of pressure but it was nice and I’m very happy that I did not crack under the pressure.”