On Thursday 12th November, Lovecars airs in the UK on ITV4. The six-episode series, hosted by Tiff Needell, stars W Series driver Vicky Piria in three episodes.
Overtake sat down with the Italian racer to find out how she found filming with Lovecars, her views on women in sports broadcasting and motorsport, her view on the W Series Esports League, and her plans for 2021.
I started off by asking Vicky how she got in involved in the project with Lovecars. “I was following Lovecars on YouTube”, Vicky began. “I like watching their videos and I find them really fun – and funny as well. They actually got in touch with me and asked me if I wanted to appear in some features.” Vicky jumped at the chance. “I ended up doing three features for them that are going on the show, and I had so much fun. It was probably one of the funnest things I’ve done.” Vicky does a lot of filming for her work, especially in Italy, but filming with Lovecars was the most fun.
“We all just clicked really well”, Vicky said. “I was working with Tiff [Needell]. He’s amazing. You learn from him every time you’re with him, and he’s just so fun. It doesn’t feel like a job at all, actually, so it was really cool. And I’m happy that the three features I did for them are getting on the show”.
Of course, like much of the year, Coronavirus has played its part, and I wondered if filming the series had been hampered by the pandemic? “We actually did it prior” Vicky explained. “I did some filming right in the middle of the W Series, which was cool: between the first and the second part of the selections they did for W Series. Coronavirus wasn’t ‘corona-ing’ anything yet, so we did everything before all this happened.
But it’s going out now [on ITV4], and I just think it’s cool given the circumstances, to give people a break and see what was it like before all of this.”
As mentioned, filming took place during the 2020 selections for the W Series and I wondered how difficult it had been to balance the demands of both filming and W Series racing. “It was stressful because the selections were very tiring”, Vicky said. “There was a lot of pressure.” Explaining further, Vicky said, “It was actually a good opportunity for me to get out there and do something different and get my mind off it. It’s tiring when you do filming, it’s really tiring. They work so hard. You’ve got a lot of hours involved.” Shooting in Wales certainly was a challenge! “It was so cold, it was unbelievable”, Vicky exclaimed. “But then again, you do something so cool and funny, and you’re just with people that love what you love. They have the same passion, so at the end, it was just so fun.”
It was a chance for Vicky to do something different and learn new skills. “I just think it’s also good as a driver to do these experiences.”
Getting to drive high end motors and unusual cars would be a dream job for many, so I wanted to know what was Vicky’s highlight during her time with Lovecars. “We did a lot of features, but I think my favorite was when we went to Wales in this place called Walters Arena”, Vicky explained. “It is a huge place with so many roads, and we were driving these crazy buggies with, like, over 300 horsepower. Basically, me and Tiff, all day, just going around and getting covered in mud all the time!”
Racing single seaters and being known for racing single seaters, it was something new for the 26 year old Italian. “I race single seaters, it’s a bit different than driving a buggy in the mud in the freezing cold. It was unbelievable and really, really cool. That’s what I like about this show: I think it can transmit the emotions that we were feeling, how cool it was to drive. I just hope that we get home, people can see that and feel that as well.”
Moving on slightly, I wanted to get Vicky’s thoughts on the role women play in sports broadcasting and broadcasting in general. Being someone who does a lot of filming in their line of work, I wondered if Vicky had found it hard in an industry that is perceived to be male-dominated? “I wouldn’t say it’s an issue”, Vicky began. “I don’t like to see it that way, I just feel that it’s something….different where I’m a minority. Sometimes it takes a little bit more for your to get established as a good presenter or a good test-driver. Sometimes it feels like you can’t really make mistakes because it’s less permitted as a girl in a way.”
Speaking to Vicky, it’s clear to see she had a positive attitude and any suggestion that being a woman could hold her back just doesn’t feature in her thoughts. “My philosophy is that, at the end of the day, it’s not the doctor that told me, you have to do this job, it’s something I chose for myself. I would be a hypocrite to think that it’s just going be completely normal for girls, I know that it’s a male-dominated thing, but for me, it’s just not an issue. And I think the first part for me to getting over what could be an issue, is to not see it as an issue.”
It’s a very good point: how could Vicky expect people around her to treat her as an equal if she didn’t consider herself to be equal? “I just go with the flow, keep it simple, keep it natural, and at the end, to be honest, I have no problems with it. I always think that if you know how to drive and you put passion into it and you commit and you work hard, if you got clever people with you, they see you as a driver. They see you as a presenter. They see you as a test-driver. They don’t see you as a woman.”
Looking further afield, did Vicky see equality moving in the right direction for the wider motorsport world? “Absolutely”, said the second year W Series driver. “W Series is the first example for this and the cool thing about it is that it’s all coming in in a natural way, it doesn’t feel forced.”
With more women becoming central figures in motorsport and more of the spotlight on them, Piria feels it’s these positive examples the sport needs to encourage more females to get involved. “The problem is when I was a kid go-karting, I didn’t imagine myself racing cars, not because I didn’t want to or I thought I couldn’t, just because there weren’t any positive examples. So I thought it was something a bit ‘far away‘. We all need examples, and I didn’t have any at the time; it’s definitely moving into the right direction.”
This year many racing calenders have been disrupted or cancelled, and sadly the W Series was no different. I was keen to know how Vicky had kept sharp during a time of disruption and disappointment. “I think the most important thing is to keep your energy up. I kept on working, kept on doing everything I could to keep my energy up. I focused a lot on my work and I kept training. It’s a pretty bad year for a lot of people so I’m just trying to make the best out of it.”
Vicky has been trying to use her positive attitide to live in the moment and not focus too much on the waiting and take it day by day. “The moment will come that I’ll have my first race date: I know I’ll get pumped up and start working even harder for it.”
It’s still a frustrating experience, as Vicky explains, “What’s hard is the fact that you don’t have, let’s say, a date. If we knew when the first race was, if we knew when the first test day was, you can set yourself in your head. You have a kind of a plan. The fact that you don’t have that, it’s a bit unsettling because, as a driver, you’re really used to working on dates and on timings”.
Vicky recognises she is very lucky to be doing what she does. “I just try to do my best I can do every day”, Vicky says. “I know it sounds like something that you’re just going to say because you don’t know what to say, but it’s true.” It’s important for Vicky to not see lockdown as just something you are waiting to end. “I just try to be creative, and do something that could help you for the future or can help me to be a better person in that moment or better driver, better athlete.”
With the W Series unable to race for real, they created a very successful Esports League. The series was very well received and helped bring the series to a wider audiance. For someone who is not a huge simulator fan, I wondered how Vicky found taking part in it and what she wanted to get from it. “The Esports happened right when Italy was coming out of lockdown”, Vicky explained. “I had a lot of work to do and a lot of things to do. I was traveling a lot for the filming and coming back home just for the race.” This hampered the Italian driver’s practice. “You just have to make a strict decision and say, okay, it is what it is. I can’t do everything. I’m just one person. I’m just going to try and do my best.”
However for Vicky it was a good experience for someone who is not so au fait with simulators, and allowed her to still feel connected and a part of the W Series. “You’re still racing. You still have a commitment in that sense, and it gives you the drive. It helped me definitely be a bit more patient and have a better mental attitude.”
“I know for sure I’m not going to have a bit future as a e-gaming driver”, Vicky laughed. “I think I’m okay with that.”
It’s very clear that Esports are on the rise and not just becasue of the pandemic. I wanted to see if Vicky thought the format was another viable rough for people to get into the sport and looking at the themes of the W Series, for women to get more invovled in the sport.
“I think it’s amazing!” Vicky exclaimed. “Karting is so expensive, and stepping into Formula 3 or W Series, it’s really expensive. There are not many ways to get involved with the sport, but definitely, e-sports is a way, and I’m very happy there is an opportunity for people and for women.”
Leaving Esports behind, what was Vicky’s plans for 2021 in what hopefully will be a year where things will return to a degree of normality? “Well definitely my priority is W Series”, Vicky said. “I’m waiting for everything to get in place and to improve my performance of 2020, 2019 to be a better driver in 2021, to keep on going up in the learning curve.”
After a year off racing, next year’s priority is getting back in the car for Vicky. “I had the opportunity to do a couple of races in Eurocup, Renault, this year, which was really good getting a few laps and a bit of experience in there”, Vicky started. “I’d love to be able to do other experiences, but I know it would help me for W Series not to do another series, but I’d love to do some other races, and some other testing to help me perform better in W Series.”
In 2021, the W Series will be racing at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin Texas and Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City as part of the F1 weekend support races. What was Vicky’s thoughts on this exciting news? “I love it. I did GP3, so we did a lot of European races together with Formula 1, and there’s a different vibe to it”, Vicky explained.
Going a bit further, Vicky said; “it’s really cool racing together with Formula 1 and I feel that also bringing the full female championship and a Formula 1 race together is going to be such a revolution. I’m excited to go to Mexico and Austin, two great tracks, I’ve never raced in them. I’ve never done experiences like that before. It’s going to be overwhelming in a good way, I really want to do my best there.”
With my time with Vicky come to end, I finished with the now-regular final question. If you could race any car with any teammate on any track, what car would you choose, who would be your teammate and what track would you choose? “It’s a very difficult question”, Vicky mused. “I’m getting into classic cars a lot lately, especially the classic Le Mans cars, I just find them so cool, like Steve McQueen’s Porsche, for instance, so I wouldn’t know. I’d love to do Le Mans with an old prototype. I just feel that if you can do that, you’re pretty much a superhero!”
As for the driver? “I know that a lot of people think about the drivers in the past and everything, but I feel that the drivers of today are closer mentally to what I am now, so it would cool to have someone like Hamilton or Verstappen and drive an old prototype at Le Mans. That probably would be pretty cool.”
I pressed Vicky for her track choice. “Oh, there are so many things I’d like to do, but one track I also really would love to do, but I probably would like to do it with a single-seater, a Formula 3 even, is Macau, the street track. I did Monaco, but I haven’t done Macau, and I just think it’s mind blowing, so I’d like to do that as an experience. But then this is what I’m telling you today. Tomorrow, if you ask me, and I’ll probably say Spa. And then after tomorrow, I’ll probably say something different!”
I’d like to thank Vicky and the W Series for their time. Vicky can be found on all the usual social media platforms.
Lovecars airs on ITV4 on Thursday the 12th November.
