'It's awesome fun' - Gilmour enjoying debut campaign

Earlier this year Emma Gilmour became the first female driver in the history of Red Bull Global Rallycross. Since then the Kiwi has been getting quicker and quicker with every round.


She heads into Daytona scratching at the door of the final, but the Hyundai driver remains focused on improving herself in a richly competitive Red Bull GRC field.

Just before the first round of heats at Daytona, Gilmour spoke to me about her year so far.

Emma Gilmour interview

Dominik Wilde: So it's your first season, you've been making progress throughout, from your point of view how has this year been?

Emma Gilmour: Yeah it's been tough. I had very limited testing time in the car up until midway point and then once we got testing time it sort of made a big difference and I felt a lot more comfortable in the car. But it's a really competitive series so it's challenging and the biggest thing is probably the caliber of drivers you're against and the amount of track time you actually get, it's really hard to hit the ground running so they're the things I need to come to grips with, but I love it! It's awesome fun, I'm really really enjoying it, but yeah it's tough.

Dominik Wilde: At this event (Daytona), it's the biggest field since X Games, it's the biggest track we've had this season so have you had to change your approch this weekend because of the bigger field?


Emma Gilmour: For me the biggest thing is still working on improving myself and doing a better job so, touch wood, so far the car's running well. Still not a hundred per cent happy with the set up when we hit the dirt, I tend to struggle a little bit on, quite a lot actually in the hairpins and it is costing us a lot so we've still got to find the car's sweet spot for the set up but the track itself is fun, it'll be interesting to see how it races with other cars, it's good to see bit of a bigger field as well, it makes it more interesting.
Dominik Wilde: What about the heat? Because it's quite hot this weekend so how are you coping with it, do you have to change the way you do things? Is it affecting you or the car?


Emma Gilmour: You just have to manage it really. But it is, it's really hot (laughs). The cars get hot regardless of the outside temp, but then when you add the outside temp with how hot the cars are it's, yeah, it's pretty taxing.