LOVE MOTORBIKES. Even though I don’t ride them, I love them . . . I always said I would buy a ninja bike, park it in my yard, sit on it and rev it to ten thousand RPMs just to hear that sound – I love the sound,” says Natasha Farnum, a spa therapist who is the current spa manager at the Sugar Cane Club Hotel in St Peter.
At first glance, Farnum might appear to be the average women addicted to beautifying herself. Not so. Her addiction is speed and engines, which is not seen in the average woman.
Although she is part of the beauty industry, her choice of sport completely clashes with what society considers feminine. “Every time I go to car racing, my nails are polished,” she says, “and the guys are like, ‘oh my God, Natasha’.”
The question is, why would such a women be involved in motorsport? The answer is simple: “The sport choose me.” Her family is entrenched in motorsport – in fact, the first car she was ever in was her father’s racing car. So at 16 she wasted little time getting her licence and her love of speed turned into her driving style, so her father saw it fit to harness this passion and got her into racing at 19 years of age.
That’s when it all started – at 29, Farnum has been racing for the past decade of her life.
While some would say this or that person is my inspiration, hers was just speed – nothing more, nothing less. Once it has an engine, she is there, whether it is “speed boats, monster trucks or anything that goes fast”.
While she doesn’t have a driver she wants to emulate, she is fond of drivers who entertain the crowds – like Trevor Manning, Andrew Jones and Geoffrey Ullyett.
She’s always had a passion for racing cars and just pursued that passion. She prefers to win the hearts of the fans rather than win the race, although wining is a plus.
Natasha has, for the past ten years, driven at Bushy Park and she enjoys the thrill of the chase. She prefers starting last to get that adrenaline rush from overtaking fellow competitors, what she calls “tunnel mode”.
She is also a woman with exceptional talent and bravery. She recaled going to a wedding last October and was handling some sparklers which unfortunately blew up in her hands. This resulted in second-degree burns on her hands and, even more troublesome, she had racing the next day.
But in typical Farnum fashion she woke up next day with her hands apparently pain-free and asked her dad, “You think they would let me race?”
She left that morning, went to the track, then headed for the doctors and got her hands redressed so she could hold the steering wheel.
By the third race in her class she had moved from 12th place to the top of the podium. This was a boon as she was off to represent Barbados in Britain at Brands Hatch that same month.
Regarding her Brands Hatch experience, she recalled how expensive it was just to do practice runs around the track after having to pay some £150 (BDS$456) for a 20-minute practice period – a period that gave her only four or five laps before something went wrong with the car, so she went into her race with scant familiarity of the track.
It was sort of a culture shock for her: the car grouping was different, the way pitting was handled, the track rules and the apparent laid-back safety rules off-track. She said she was accustomed to a much stricter set of rules here in Barbados. Fortunately, she met some guys from Ireland who extended an invitation to her to take part in some races with Formula V cars. However, the mother-to-be has to place her ambition on hold as she awaits her newborn.
What surprised her most was that Bushy Park has more of a following than Brands Hatch. Where we have some 2 000 people at a normal race meet, Brands hatch had about 200 spectators. However, she thinks this could be due to the numerous tracks that Brands Hatch have in England.
Like all drivers without sponsors, she would not be able to compete as motorsport is very expensive. She is one of the lucky ones who gained sponsorship from an “amazing sponsor . . . I wouldn’t be where I am without them.” Paul’s Enterprises Limited is her sponsor and uses her to market their Lucky Horseshoe brand.
Even though she loves speed and is so caught up in motorsport generally, she has a preferred genre.
“Driving-wise it would have to be circuit racing; they tried to get me into rallying but I don’t have the mental capacity. If they let me go ten seconds after the first car so I can catch them and pass, then I can rally.”
This comes from her love of the chase – she said that when she is at the pole position, she wonders if she should let some pass her so she could chase them down and overtake them.
“Women come up to me and say, you’re doing it for the girls, you’re making us so proud . . . and I am like, why don’t you all come out and drive? and they say, ‘not me – I don’t want to come last’.”
Farnum, like Shannon Kirton and a few others before her, has proven that women can in fact compete and defeat the men in motor racing.
However, women are scared – Farnum thinks “they still have it stuck in her head [that men go] oh, women drivers . . . and a lot of women drivers are very nervous behind the wheel”.
For Farnum, though, the main setback for woman is stereotyping. When she started competing, drivers and spectators alike never thought she would be a threat. After winning in her second race meet, they realized she meant business and their opinion towards her changed. However, she believes that women now coming in would find it difficult, as it’s not that popular in society.
