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Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK welcomes FIA Girls on Track

For the second year in a row, Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK welcomed a big delegation of FIA Girls on Track, an initiative run by Motorsport Australia intended at fostering gender equality in racing and motivating the next generation of female drivers, engineers, team management, and spectators.

At the Australian Grand Prix media day, the team welcomed the FIA Girls on Track group, who met with key team employees and drivers for an inspiring talk about life in the paddock and at the team’s headquarters. The participants also got a firsthand look at how a Formula One team works during a tour to the team’s garage, escorted by one of the team’s Computational Fluid Dynamics engineers, Krystina Emmanouilides, who is also an ambassador for Motorsport Australia’s FIA Girls on Track programme.

Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK is making a practical effort to assist the sport in moving towards a more sustainable, varied, and inclusive future: the team is organising a variety of events to boost career development for younger generations. Emmanouilides will offer a year-long mentoring opportunity to one of the young participants to the visit as part of these efforts, aimed at inspiring and empowering young women, and as an integral part of the FIA Girls on Track programme – a direct action at the grassroots level to help grow a new generation of women in motorsport.

Krystina Emmanouilides, CFD Engineer of Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK: “As the diversity of the F1 fanbase grows, there are an increasing number of young girls interested in pursuing a career in motorsport. Initiatives like the FIA Girls on Track are important to show young girls the wide range of roles that are available within our sport. One of the ways we can increase the number of women coming into the workforce is to promote the sport and industry at a “grassroots level”. Seeing first-hand what it means to be doing these jobs in the team can go a long way into inspiring the next generation of engineers, marketers and even drivers. Having women in these positions to serve as role models is extremely important to show them that women are already thriving in the industry, and they can too. I’m really looking forward to mentoring one of the girls I met today: hopefully, one day, she’ll be here in the paddock doing the same.”

FIA Girls on Track is a grassroots educational programme that introduces girls and young women aged 8 to 22 to a variety of career opportunities in motor sport through a series of enjoyable educational activities ranging from karting slalom to media tutorials, practical STEM activities, and fitness workshops. In addition, a career pamphlet highlighting 22 various motorsport occupations and role models was released in 2020.

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