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Racing
Engineering is very happy to announce that it has signed an agreement
with Maria de Villota for the 2004 Spanish Formula 3 Championship.
It is the first time in Racing Engineering’s history that one
of its single seaters will be driven by a woman and everyone at
Racing Engineering is looking forward to working with Maria on the
race track.
Maria
de Villota, the 24 year old driver from Madrid, is part of a family
that is entirely dedicated to motorsports. But Maria has so far
not only scored good results on race tracks, but also likes every
kind of sportive competition. She spent five years playing tennis
on a semiprofessional base, finished the Madrid Marathon in sixth
position in 1997 and loves skiing, swimming and athletics. Apart
from her sportive career Maria always had an eye on her professional
education and can therefore look back onto a very solid school education.
She spent several years in the USA, studied Business Administration
and has finished her studies in Sports Sciences. Furthermore Maria
works for the two motorsports magazines “Car and Driver”
and “XTR” and is responsible for the motorsports section
of the magazine “Woman”. Since 1999 Maria has been in
charge of the sportive area of the racing school “Emilio de
Villota”.
With
all these qualities Maria never lost her focus on her racing career.
She started in karting in 1997 and won her first race in Cuba. In
1999 she was chosen out of 2500 drivers to become a member of the
“MoviStar Team”, where in 2000 she stepped on the podium
for the first time. She finished the 2001 season as vice-champion
of the Formula Junior. In 2002 Maria joined the Spanish Formula
3 Championship but also registered very good results in races of
the Mazda Cup as a driver of the Ford Junior Rally Team.
For
the 2004 season Maria has joined Racing Engineering to compete in
the Spanish Formula 3 Championship and will drive Racing Engineering’s
Formula 3 car for the first time this weekend at the Circuit of
Albacete during the Spanish Formula 3 Winter Series. Maria has a
very clear objective for this weekend and announced, “I am
very exited about this race weekend as I am driving Racing Engineering’s
Formula 3 car! I do not have very high expectations for this weekend
in regards to results on paper. For me it is much more important
to work on the car and I am really exited to drive this car. I will
work together with my engineer Papy and my mechanics Francisco and
Billy on the car. For me it is more important to deliver a good
job working with them, as I have not driven a car during the Winter
break. As it will be the first time in two months that I drive a
race car I know it will be a hard weekend for me and therefore my
focus is on the pre-season testing. I am very confident that this
will be a very good year. Given all of Racing Engineering’s
program I am sure that the results will come. Until this year I
never had the chance to know my car and team really well before
the season started. This year it is different and the way we already
started working I am sure this will also have a positive effect.
I want to gain the podium this year in as many races as possible.
Last year this was very hard for me as I was usually starting from
around eighth position and this has always been a very dangerous
place to go into a race from. This year I want to have better qualifying
results and then my races could be great. I am ready for it. I have
trained a lot and psychologically I am at my best. I am convinced
that the results will come.”
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