Dunedin’s Emma Gilmour is celebrating her new challenge: a full Extreme E season with debutante team McLaren Racing.
The announcement marks a number of ‘firsts’ – the Dunedin Suzuki dealer is the first-ever female driver to be signed by McLaren and the first Kiwi to get a full season drive in Extreme E, the offroad race series created by Formula E head Alejandro Agag.
“Right now, it’s like being called up to play for the All Blacks – but you’re going to be the first female doing it,” Gilmour says.
The Extreme E series runs on courses in far-flung locations; each one highlighting local environmental issues. The track design aims to be challenging but to avoid undue impact on the environment.
All teams field two-driver line-ups with both female and male drivers.
When Gilmour dons McLaren’s evocative Papaya Orange colours in 2022, her McLaren Racing team mate will be American professional race, rally and X-games driver (and sometime Top Gear host) Tanner Foust.
The team entry announcement was made at the COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow with His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales. It also announced Gilmour’s drive.
The announcement establishes a circular linkage between McLaren Racing, founded by Kiwi Bruce McLaren to support his F1 and Can-Am car construction business, and New Zealand’s most successful female driver.
In New Zealand Gilmour is best known for her exploits in rallying, finishing runner-up in the NZ Rally Championship three years in a row (2010-12). She is the only female to have ever won a round of the New Zealand Rally Championship.
She has also competed in rallycross at the X Games.
A reserve driver for Extreme E’s Veloce Racing last season, Gilmour says she is ‘hugely’ proud to represent such an iconic New Zealand motorsport brand in global motorsport.
McLaren is the latest team to join the series for its second season in 2022, raising awareness of the impact of climate change, participating in Extreme E’s robust legacy programmes, and leaving a lasting footprint by challenging its fans around the world to take climate action.
Formula 1 champions Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button run teams (Button both team owner and driver) as does Nico Rosberg; multiple World Rally Champions Carlos Sainz and Sebastien Loeb both race and Dakar racers including Stephane Sarrazin are among the field this year.
“McLaren is the pinnacle of New Zealand motorsport achievement so it’s an enormous honour to be able to be part of their story. I feel so humbled,” she said.
McLaren Racing chief executive Zak Brown said the company is proud to announce Emma Gilmour as its first-ever female driver for McLaren Racing.
“Emma completes our exciting and competitive driver line-up alongside Tanner Foust for our first season of Extreme E. She’s a rally and race winner and has proven herself this year in Extreme E alongside a vast background in competitive off-roading in multiple racing series across the globe. It’s fitting that our first female driver originates from New Zealand where our founder Bruce McLaren was born.”
Extreme Odyssey
Motorsport has long been a focal point for automotive innovation and technology and Extreme E brings some of the world’s most famous teams, representing the latest clean technology, to race in some of Earth’s most remote and stunning locations.
The championship cars are single-make fully electric race SUVs called Odyssey 21. The car’s electric motors drive all four wheels and with 400kw (550bhp) output will propel the 1780-kilogram, 2.3-metre wide racer from 0-100km/h in 4.5 seconds.
Each vehicle comprises a common package of standardised parts, manufactured by Spark Racing Technology with a battery produced by Williams Advanced Engineering. This encompasses a niobium-reinforced steel alloy tubular frame with full integral crash structures and roll cage.
The heart of the car – and the series – are specially developed batteries. Designed to withstand the extreme temperatures, conditions and terrains, the batteries will produce a maximum power output of 470kW (equivalent to approx. 630bhp). The teams have been provided with identical 54kWh battery packs to be used in the first two seasons of Extreme E.
In 2021, teams had the choice of using Extreme E’s bodywork, or working with an automotive partner – as Chip Ganassi has done with the GM HUMMER EV – to put bespoke bodywork on the common chassis.
