6th June 2013

Bendigo's go-karting girl - From the Weekly Times

(http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2013/06/05/571945_country-living.html)

Top marks: Emma Dorrington tears about the track at her local Bendigo Kart Club. (Pic: Weekly Times/Andy Rogers)

EMMA Dorrington is a rare competitor in the go-kart world.

Among the Pauls, Todds, Aarons and Williams that make up the leader boards of Victoria’s go-kart competitions, is a name that is destined to stand out: Emma Dorrington.

Until just recently, the 23-year-old was the only female member of her local Bendigo Kart Club, in a sport that remains distinctly a bloke’s game.

What’s more, she can hold her own on the track, having racked up many club wins over her 16-year career and a fifth-place finish at her first state titles last year.

The club regulars know her well and respect her, but Emma still finds herself butting up against that age-old prejudice that men are better drivers than women.

“I think some of the guys that don’t know me get a shock when I go to the open meets,” she notes.

“They think they can push me around on the track and I will yield, but I just push them right back.”

It is most pronounced, she concedes, among middle-age competitors.

“When I went up to the senior category and I was 16, I was passing blokes who were in their mid-40s,” she says.

“A lot of their friends would pay them out, saying they had been beaten by a teenage girl. That didn’t go down so well.”

For the most part, however, Emma’s male comrades are overwhelmingly supportive of her, not least of which is her No. 1 fan, father and chief financial officer, Bruce.

Her Dad was a skilled motorbike rider in his day and applies his mechanical nous to keep Emma’s Arrow kart, and its 125cc engine in top working condition.

“I think my Dad tried to turn me in to the son he never had,” laughs Emma, who is an only child.

“I grew up on the side of a motorbike track, and was a bit of a tomboy growing up, with the best collection of Matchbox cars.

“Dad introduced me to karts when I was seven, and it took me a while to get the hang of racing lines and the fact that I needed to win not just finish.

“But once those competitive juices kicked in, I loved it.”

In her first year at the Bendigo Kart Club, Emma took out the club championship, and she was a regular sight at the track until she hit her late teens, when she took her foot off the pedal to focus on her school work.

Once she gained a place at university, and settled in to her dentistry course at La Trobe University, she resumed her place in the Sportsman Restricted Light class (minimum 160kg kart and body weight) with a relish that surprised her.

“I got back into it about three years ago, and I thought I would just ease my way into it, but I became very competitive very quickly,” she says.

Emma will give the state championships a miss this year to devote herself to the year-long Golden Power Series.

She finished third in the most recent round in Morwell and was the only female in the class. Not surprisingly, she says she has had a hard time coercing her female friends into a kart.

“And when they do give it a go, they  are a lot more hesitant than my male friends who will go really hard on the
gas,” she says.

“That can work in women’s favour, though. Sometimes it’s better to be cool-headed.’’

But is also helps to know when to act quickly, and by far the most challenging aspect of go-kart racing, according to Emma, is not the race lines, but seizing openings. “Committing to a passing move is the real challenge,’’ she says.

“You can’t sit and think about it, you can’t hesitate. You see an opportunity and you have a split-second to make a move.’’   She would love to race Formula One or V8s (“or even production cars’’), but would need to find a sponsor first.

“Go-karting is a pretty cheap form of racing compared to other events,’’ Emma says. “To step into Formula Ford or even Formula Vee you need a lot of financial backing behind you.

“To be honest, I can see myself racing go-karts in 20 years’ time.”