Meet The Female Trailblazers of MotoGP

It’s February and that means motorsport series are preparing their return to the track. MotoGP will get the season underway with the Thai GP at the end of this month. Last season was decided in Barcelona, where Prima Pramac’s Jorge Martin secured his first championship after finishing 10 points ahead of Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia.

No woman has ever raced in a full season of MotoGP yet. Even though we won’t be seeing any female riders on the grid yet, it doesn’t mean there aren’t inspiring women working behind the scenes. Let’s get to know some of the trailblazers who are leading the way in MotoGP.

Nadia Padovani

We can’t have the words trailblazer and MotoGP in the same sentence and not talk about Nadia Padovani. She is a true example of how a woman can do it all. She’s a wife, a mother and the first female Team Owner and Team Principal in MotoGP. Padovani took over Gresini Racing after the death of her husband Fausto Gresini. It was a difficult decision, especially psychologically as she explained in an interview with MotoGP, to take over the company. However, it was an essential move to honour her husband and also save the jobs of everyone who works at Gresini.

Padovani got involved in the sport through her husband. When she was still 20 years old, she was studying to become a nurse. The reason she stayed in the sport is because she wanted to continue Fausto’s legacy. In the early 2000s, Padovani left her job as a nurse to raise her children and then she returned to the working world when she took on the role with Gresini.

Safe to say that she’s done an incredible job. In 2022, Gresini entered the championship as an Independent Team for the first time because they parted ways with Aprilia. That same year, Padovani became the first female Team Manager to win in the highest level of motorcycling as Enea Bastianini was the first to cross the chequered flag in Qatar.

This sport opened a whole new world for Padovani where she’s nice constantly travelling and working with the team. She wanted to embrace femininity in the sport so she collaborated with fashion designer Elisabetta Franchi to give an “elegant” look to the team’s grid girls.

Nadia Padovani is an inspiration to find strength in our toughest moments and to not be afraid to embrace our femininity in a man’s world.

Padovani celebrating Bastianini's win in Qatar Image Credit: MotoGP

Elena de Cia 

Elena De Cia works as a Strategic Analyst for Aprilia Racing. She's been involved in the sport since 2012. She studies and analyses numerical data from the bikes while the riders are out on track. MotoGP isn't all about the mechanics and engineers. Numerical data helps to set up strategies and find solutions.

De Cia admitted that, as a fan, she never thought that she'd get to work in MotoGP. She studied maths, which is another passion of hers, at the University of Padua. Some managers from Aprilia had attended the university in search of applied mathematicians. De Cia made sure to get hold of the opportunity, and eventually, her thesis on motorcycle trajectories landed her a job with the MotoGP outfit.

That is why she is an essential part of the team that travels to each grand prix throughout the year. She admits that sometimes all that travelling can be tiring, however, the fact that she's a fan of the sport makes her even more motivated. Despite being a fan, De Cia is a professional who keeps her job at the forefront of what she does with the team.

De Cia admits that when Aprilia visited her university, she didn't think that she'd get chosen. She thought that the team would find other candidates as a better fit, however, fast forward to 2025 and she now inspires us to never hold ourselves back from possible opportunities.

Elena De Cia with other team members of Aprilia Image Credit: MotoGP

Noemi Lacasa

Noemi Lacasa is an RF manager with Dorna Sports, the company that has had the commercial and audiovisual rights for MotoGP since 1991. Lacasa is a different kind of engineer in MotoGP. She isn't essentially preparing the bikes to be as fast as they can be but she plays a massive part in making sure that onboard visuals are generated.

Thanks to Lacasa's dedication, we get to see onboard action during MotoGP sessions. Lacasa works for the department which handles all transmissions of MotoGP sessions and is responsible for the radio frequencies, wireless receptions and systems that deliver us fans the best race experience possible when we watch sessions.

During her first few years with Dorna, she worked on the Motocross Championships, which she found quite demanding since it had limited resources. However, this is what made the job so appealing for Lacasa. Eventually, she started working on the project which would provide fans the opportunity to see the riders' views through onboard cameras.

She admits that when she first started working in MotoGP, she would feel like many people were staring at her because there weren't many women working in the sport. However, Lacasa explained how she always remained professional and didn't let her gender get in the way of her career.

Noemi Lacasa inspires women to not let gender get in the way of their goals, especially when someone is so passionate and dedicated.

Noemi Lacasa overseeing over a 100 onboard cameras during a Grand Prix Image Credit: MotoGP

Barbara Mazzoni

In 2014, MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi set up an academy to train young riders. Eventually, VR46 also entered MotoGP as a team. The mechanics, engineers and chiefs are very important for a motorsport team, however, there's loads of administration work behind the scenes that ensures the running of such a company.

In charge of most administration tasks at VR46 is Financial Officer Barabara Mazzoni. She's been part of the team since it started and has become a household name not just with those who work there but also with the riders.

While she has a very important role in handling the backend of the team, it's become known that most of the riders who train at the academy have developed a great relationship with Mazzoni. She got involved in the project in 2013 when Alberto Tebaldi told her about the project and she was immediately interested.

In an interview with Sky Sport, she previously explained how the riders would turn to her for certain advice sometimes and they created the nickname of Babi for her. She explained how they would even open up about personal things they've got going on in their lives and she's become an integral part of VR46.

Mazzoni is an inspiration for those who want to be a part of the corporate side of a company. Working in a male-dominated environment, she's got one of the most important jobs in a company, however, still finds time to build rapport and bond with the people who are focused more on the racing side of things.

Raffaella Pasquino

Sometimes, one needs to go into a job, even if it's not in their line of work and just believe that it'll work out. Raffaella Pasquino studied television journalism in Florida and returned to Europe searching for a job which would allow her to put her studies into practice.

Instead, Pasquino ended up getting a job as an assistant to the Managing Director of Yamaha Motor Racing. Getting the job wasn't straightforward. She didn't apply for the job immediately when she saw the advertisement because she didn't know much about the world of MotoGP. Eventually, she saw it again and decided to apply. Unfortunately, she applied once the deadlines had closed and too many candidates applied. However, it turned out that none of the candidates spoke Italian and Spanish because they are uncommon languages in Holland, and so that led to her eventually getting hired by Yamaha.

So Pasquino started as an assistant to Lin Jarvis. Four years later, she switched departments and started working with Yamaha Motor Europe. With this department, she focused on media and events planning.

In 2013, she got the opportunity to apply for a vacancy within the team and became the new Marketing Coordinator for Yamaha Racing and ended up working in MotoGP again. Throughout the years, she got to experience first-hand the change and development of the sport. When she took on the role in 2013, she was the only woman in the marketing department but throughout the years she saw the number of women increase within the workforce.

Pasquino also pointed out how there were so few women, that they had men's uniforms and sizes. She was the person who introduced the women's line within the team.

It wasn't clear where Pasquino could end up from working as an assistant, however, life still led her to her passion and she also got to make significant changes for women within the sport.

Raffaella Pasquino working Yamaha Racing Image Creadit: MotoGP

This piece only featured a few women working in MotoGP. A survey made in 2022 by Dorna Sports revealed that more women started following MotoGP in the last year. It also showed that most female fans are younger than their male counterparts, with 56% aged from 16 to 34. With MotoGP’s female fanbase growing, we hope to see more women working within the series over the coming years.