Who Holds the Keys? Women in MotoGP's Senior Leadership and the Question of Why There Aren't More

At Misano this September, a room full of young women met the engineers, coordinators, press managers and welders who keep a MotoGP weekend running. The day told a hopeful story about the paddock's middle. The harder question sits higher up the org chart: who is actually leading?

The short answer. A very small group, and the details matter.

THE TEAM BOSS WHO CHANGED THE PICTURE

Nadia Padovani is the owner and team principal of Gresini Racing, and she is widely recognised as the first woman to lead a MotoGP team. She stepped into the role in 2021 after her husband, team founder Fausto Gresini, tragically died. Before that, she had spent years in a different career, working as a nurse and then stepping back to raise her children.

Padovani’s first season at the helm delivered a landmark. The 2022 season opener in Qatar, Enea Bastianini won for Gresini, making her the first woman team principal to win a MotoGP race. By Padovani’s third year leading the team, Gresini had signed eight-times world champion Marc Marquez. Industry coverage in late 2025 described that season as possibly the best in the team's history.

Padovani describes her own identity plainly: "I'm a woman, a mother and a worker." She has also said that being credible in the eyes of others is a daily challenge in her position.

A second woman to hold a team boss seat in recent years is Aurora Angelucci. In 2023, Motorsport.com reported that Angelucci, who founded the Angeluss team at age 20, had taken over MTA, making her one of just two female team bosses in the paddock alongside Padovani.

THE NEW CORPORATE TIER

Other recent movement is at the commercial level. Since Liberty Media acquired MotoGP in July 2025, the series has been rebuilding its executive bench. In September 2026, MotoGP announced four senior appointments. Two of them are women: Louise Young, who joins as Chief Operating Officer after years at Formula 1, where she rose from senior legal roles to lead its race promotion business, and Denitza Batchvarova, who joined as Chief Strategy Officer after more than a decade of strategy leadership at UFC and TKO.

Across the executives named in recent reporting on this overhaul, including the Deputy CEO, the President of the MotoGP Group, the CFO, the CAO, the CCO and the CMO alongside Young and Batchvarova, only two are women. That is progress worth noting, even if it’s a modest number.

HOW THIS COMPARES TO FORMULA 1

MotoGP is not alone. Formula 1 has had only two female team principals in its history, Monisha Kaltenborn at Sauber and Claire Williams at Williams Racing. Technical and team leadership remain among the most male-dominated areas of motorsport.

SO WHY HAVEN'T THERE BEEN MORE?

There is no single answer, but several threads run through the reporting.

1. A thin pipeline at the roots. No woman has ever competed in a full season of MotoGP or Moto2, and Gina Bovaird remains the only woman to start a premier-class race, in the largely boycotted 1982 French Grand Prix. Women are also scarce among paddock mechanics and engineers. Team principal roles have traditionally been filled by people who came up through riding, engineering, or team management. When those starting points are scarce, the leadership ranks stay scarce too.

2. Ownership as the open door. Padovani inherited her team. Angelucci founded hers. Both routes run through ownership and entrepreneurship rather than a promotion ladder inside an existing team. This suggests that when the usual hiring and promotion path is difficult, ownership and entrepreneurship can keep the door open.

3. Visibility. Longtime MotoGP communications veteran Matt Birt has described a paddock in the 1990s where many people assumed women were there in hospitality or as grid girls, even though women held important roles without public profiles. Biancamaria Calderoni of Misano World Circuit told us the idea for TogetHER began when she read about Aprilia Racing welder Cristina Toteri and realised how many women work behind the scenes without appearing. People who go unseen are harder to promote, and harder for young women to imagine becoming.

4. The credibility tax. Padovani's remark about credibility points to an extra layer of proof that women in these seats often feel they owe.

5. A new door on the business side. The Liberty-era hires came from F1, UFC, and similar properties, which means the women arriving at the top came up through legal, race promotion, and strategy ladders, not the sporting ladder. That opens the executive suite. The garage and the team principal seat remain a separate question.

WHAT COULD CHANGE THE PICTURE

Structured pathways are starting to appear. The FIM Women's Circuit Racing World Championship gives female riders a defined career path for the first time. TogetHER's long-term plans for school tutoring, educational programmes and a dedicated Career Hub aimed at the engineering, management, communication and logistics roles that feed future leadership. Several of the women who spoke at Misano already hold senior operational roles, including Paola Braiato of Ducati Corse in operations management and Sandra Vilchez, MotoGP team coordinator at Gresini Racing.

The talent is present in the paddock. The question for the sport is whether it will build the ladders, make the careers visible, and open the next team principal seat to someone who has earned it.

Who do you think should be the next woman to lead a MotoGP team? Tell us in the comments.

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SOURCES

- MotoGP.com, "MotoGP strengthens leadership team with executive hires" (September 2026)

- BlackBook Motorsport, "MotoGP overhauls leadership team as Liberty era ramps up" (September 2026)

- Motor Valley, interview with Nadia Padovani

- Jalopnik, "Nadia Padovani Becomes First Female Team Principal To Win A MotoGP Race" (March 2022)

- Dive-Bomb, "How Nadia Padovani is leading Gresini Racing full throttle" (December 2025)

- Motorsport.com, "The young MotoGP trailblazer striving to solve its age-old diversity problem" (October 2023)

- Shift the Gears, "Perspectives: Matt Birt on Inclusivity, Women, and the Future of MotoGP" (July 2025)

- The Paddock Journal, "Think Formula 1 Team Principals Have Always Been Men? Think Again" (August 2026)