Vicky Piria - “It is irrelevant to me whether I race against men or women.”

(via OnTheChicane) - The W series is fast becoming one of the most renowned racing series of our time. Publicly launched in 2018, the inaugural season of the women’s only competition wasn’t until 2019. The female-only division was created as a response to the lack of female drivers progressing to high levels of motorsport, namely F1.
With the news of W series being a supporting race series for the 2021 season breaking out, it was only right that we caught up with Italian racing driver, Vicky Piria. In 2019, Piria participated in the selections for the then newly created W Series. She passed the first phase and the final selection, becoming one of the 18 drivers to compete in the
6-races series, being the only Italian in it.

“I was 8 years old when I tried a go-kart for the first time, together with my younger brother Joey” Vicky tells us. Though karting started off as something that was ‘by chance’, Vicky says racing was never her ambition. “[at the time] I wanted to be a marine biologist!”

From karting in 2003, she worked her way up progress through to the KF3 category by 2008. In 2009, Piria moved onto single-seaters, with part time entries. With this, she contested in Formula Renault 2.0 for Tomcat Racing. 

Despite racing never being her ambition, Vicky found much inspiration in Ferrari; the racing house born from the same country. “When I was a little girl, it was Michael Schumacher’s era, so it [Ferrari] was a big influence and inspiration for me.
I also love the Enzo Ferrari quote, ‘if you ask a child to draw a car, for sure he will colour it red’ - for me it was true.”

Pushing on with inspiration from her idols, Piria made her debut for Trident Racing in the GP3 series in 2012, and progressed on to Pro-Mazda in 2014, being one of three females contesting the 2014 championship.

In 2019, Piria was the only Italian female to race in the W series. “It was a huge honour for me and I am very proud of it. Italian knowledge of motorsports isn’t quite big unfortunately; Italians are big football fans but don’t watch much racing like the British or Germans. Italy has a huge heritage in cars and race cars, so I hope eventually I can play a little part in the growth of racing popularity in Italy.”

“I think it [The W Series] will be a revolution and I am sure that thanks to F1, it will show more people the female talent we have. It will show that it’s perfectly normal and that girls are just as competitive as men. At the moment, it is irrelevant to me whether I race against men or women or both. Nothing changes for me”.

“When I was a little girl, reading interviews, the best athletes would always say, ‘have fun’. At the time I never understood why, but now I think it’s the best advice you can give; if you have fun and enjoy yourself, you’re better.”

Commenting on her racing colleagues, Piria tells us, ’you can always learn from everybody.’ Claiming that she likes to have ‘lots of idols’, Vicky shared, ‘I like to get the best inspiration from more than one driver or athlete. Maybe I’d look to Lindsey Vonn for her perseverance, or Max Verstappen for his aggressiveness.’

For her future, Vicky hopes to see herself still racing! ‘I’d like to maybe give endurance racing a go. But hopefully I’ll be racing prototypes or GTs!’

Follow more of Vicky’s racing journey as she participates in the 2021 season of the W Series.

You can also find her on Instagram here.