McLaren’s First Female Driver On Crashing At 120km/h – And Getting Back In | Emma Gilmour

Video Description from YouTube:

In 2016 Emma Gilmour became the first woman to win a round of the New Zealand Rally Championship, and in 2022 she became the first woman to drive for McLaren Racing, racing electric off-road buggies in Extreme E. She has rolled at speed twice and been knocked out twice: at Whangārei in 2007 and in Sardinia in 2023. She still races, and runs her family’s car dealership in her hometown of Dunedin.

In this conversation we talk about walking away from horses as a teenager, what she tells herself on the start line now, the countdown she runs in the last sixty seconds before a race, leaving a relationship that was also her business, and why her fear of regret beats every other fear.

Hunger & Heart is a podcast about the intersection of wild ambition and fierce compassion, hosted by Kaila Colbin | Raw Conversations with sports legends.

A huge thanks to Celebrity Speakers for supporting this episode. If you want to book Emma Gilmour for a keynote and leave your audience hungry for more, visit celebrityspeakers.co.nz.

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YouTube Timestamps:
0:00 Episode Trailer & Introduction
1:32 Emma Gilmour Joins Hunger & Heart
3:05 A Jaguar in the Garage and a Speeding Ticket With Mum and Dad
4:32 Quitting Horses: “I Didn’t Wanna Get Back on Him”
10:40 Motion Sickness Tablets and the Life of a Rally Co-Driver
17:41 Her First Race: Dad as Co-Driver and Sixth Out of 100
23:15 Airlifted After the 2007 Crash, Racing Again Weeks Later
28:32 The Extreme E Crash: The Rear of the Car Is Still Rotating
33:25 Getting Back in the Car: “I Had to Tell Myself That I’m Safe”
40:12 The Pressure of Racing for McLaren on Live TV
50:10 Walking Away and Buying Out the Rally Business
53:27 My Fear of Regret Is Greater Than the Fear
57:58 “You’ve Just Turned Into a Bulldog”
1:00:56 I Wouldn’t Say It to an Enemy: Changing Her Self-Talk