Meet Ellie Pacey. She works on Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 car. And in her spare time, she competes in tractor pulling.
The Mercedes apprentice test technician, 21, is a regular at this very different kind of motorsport event – one that is about to get some exposure to a wider audience.
In a new BBC Three series, The Fast and the Farmer-ish, teams of young farmers from around the UK get behind the wheels of different tractors to compete in racing and skills driving challenges.
Pacey drives a striking pink Veltra tractor as part of her team, the Diva Drivers, an all-female trio from Leicestershire.
She spoke to BBC Sport about tractors, Formula 1 engines and inspiring others.
‘I went to my first event at two weeks old’
So, what is tractor pulling?
Well, the clue is the name. Different types of tractor, some with multiple engines and other modifications, compete to pull heavy drags – or sleds – over an 11-metre wide, 100-metre long track. The winner is the tractor driver that manages to pull their drag furthest.
“It’s not so much about speed as it is about power and driving ability,” Pacey says.
Her team consists of herself and her dad Mark, who competed for years before she was born.
She never really had much choice when it came to tractors.
“I went to my first tractor pulling event when I was two weeks old,” Pacey says.
She started competing when she was eight, driving what she describes as a bright pink “ride-on lawnmower” and progressed onto bigger machines as she got older.
Together with her father, Pacey is among the most successful drivers in the UK, finishing second in the British Championship last season.
For other drivers, it’s common to use outside mechanics to fix engines, but Pacey, the only child of a mechanic father, has learned to do all of that stuff herself.
“My dad always made it clear to me growing up that, even though I was a girl, I was still going to have to work on my own tractor and get involved in messy, manual jobs,” she says, adding, “He said, ‘just because you’re a girl, you’re not going to get away with it’.”
‘I thought I wasn’t strong enough to fix cars or lorries’
Pacey’s interest in engines led her towards Silverstone University Technical college, where she studied engineering.
From there, she got an apprenticeship as a test technician for Mercedes AMG, a Formula 1 engine provider for Mercedes, McLaren, Aston Martin and Williams. She works across Mercedes EQXX, Mercedes One and the Formula 1 engines.
“I always knew I wanted to work within engineering, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do,” Pacey says. “I liked mechanics, but I thought to myself, being a girl, I’m probably not strong enough to be doing something like fixing cars or lorries, which was what my dad did.”
Through her course, though, she found the perfect fit.
“I discovered that I enjoyed running engines, seeing how much power you can get out of them, what changes you can make and what actually happens when you make those changes,” Pacey says.
Formula 1 and engineering are still male-dominated.
The last woman to race in a Formula 1 grand prix was Italian driver Lella Lombardi, back in 1976. Three other female drivers have since participated in the qualifying stages of a grand prix.
The W Series was created in 2018 to allow equal opportunities for women and remove economic barriers – as it’s free to enter.
“These days you often need a lighter driver, so it makes sense to involve more women,” Pacey says. “there is also lots of technology available now even to help with heavy lifting.”
According to statistics reported in 2021 by the Women’s Engineering Society, women account for 14.5% of all engineers in the UK. The numbers have been growing though – that figure represents a 25.7% increase since 2016.
“Mercedes have quite a few female engineers and designers,” Pacey says. “There is at least one other girl in the same position as me on my course and other female engineers too.”
‘I want to get other girls to look at motorsport’
Alongside competing and engineering, Pacey started entering beauty pageants in 2019.
She’s been named Miss Northamptonshire 2020 and got to the Miss England finals last year.
Pacey says the idea was to use her platform to send out a message.
“When I was growing up, I was never told that I couldn’t do anything because I was a girl. I want to get other girls who are interested in those things to look at me and think, ‘oh, well she does it.'”
