“Women driven by dreams,” is the Iron Dames’ motto – a female-focussed motor racing project that has added two new Dames, Karen Gaillard & Célia Martin, who will compete in the 2024 Michelin Le Mans Cup.
Entering its ninth season, the Michelin Le Mans Cup will feature a 42-car grid, split via 29 LMP3 prototype entries and 13 GT3 cars across 28 different teams.
One of those is, of course, the Iron Dames, who will contest in a Lamborghini Hurácan GT3 Evo2 across the six-round season, in addition to the team’s campaigns in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and FIA World Endurance Championship, along with entries in the European Le Mans Series, 24 Hours of Spa, F1 Academy, French Rally Championship and various Karting series.
The Le Mans Cup is seen as a step on the sportscar racing ladder towards competing in the likes of the FIA WEC – where the Iron Dames have been breaking barriers for female representation in motorsport.
Competing in the GTE category, the Dames became the first all-female team to achieve a FIA WEC podium in 2022 and drivers Sarah Bovy, Michelle Gatting and Rahel Frey pushed the boundaries further by taking the first all-female win in the FIA WEC in the 2023 Eight Hours of Bahrain season finale behind the wheel of a Porsche 911 RSR.
Gaillard and Martin follow in familiar footsteps in competing in the Le Mans Cup, for the likes of fellow dames Doriane Pin, Bovy and Gatting have all contested races in the series.
Swiss racer Gaillard (22), enters the 2024 season having achieved vice-champion success in the 2023 Endurance Prototype Challenge in the Ultimate Cup series, contesting her first season in prototypes in a Nova Proto NP02 machine – she’s also a winner of the 2019 Young Driver Challenge and the 2020 La Filiere Endurance series.
French racer Martin spent 2023 contesting the ADAC GT4 championship in Germany in 2023 for PROSport Racing in an Aston Martin Vantage GT4.
Martin was an SP8 class winner in the 2021 Nurburgring 24 Hours competing with the all-female Girls-Only by WS racing squad behind the wheel of an Audi R8 LMS GT4 EVO and backed that up with a third-place finish in the SP8 class a year later after the Girls-Only squad switched to competing in a BMW M4 GT4 machine.
Gaillard and Martin’s Le Mans Cup campaign will be contested over six rounds and seven races, starting in Barcelona on April 13 and featuring two 55-minute Road to Le Mans races during the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans event on June 13-15.
