The 2024 WorldSBK season will be historic for the inaugural season of the Women’s Road Racing World Championship (WorldWCR) that will take place as a support category, if for nothing else. We are still a couple of months out from the first round, but the entry list has now been published.
24 riders feature in an entry list which is certainly geographically diverse, with 18 nationalities represented.
The UK is included in that, thanks to Lissy Whitmore, who will compete for the newly formed Sekhmet team. Whitmore has taken part in the British Championship classes in the past, including Junior Supersport. Whitmore’s teammate is the American Mallory Dobbs, who has previously competed in the MotoAmerica Supersport and Super Hooligans categories, and for whom WorldWCR will be a first step into international competition.
The most notable name on the entry list is that of Ana Carrasco, whose team, Evan Bros Racing, is certainly more established than the aforementioned Sekhmet, and hints at the level of performance the championship could reach, since the team was the leading outfit in the Supersport World Championship before the return of Ten Kate Racing in 2021. Carrasco, of course, has notoriety of her own, having become the first woman to win a solo motorcycle FIM World Championship title in 2018 in the Supersport 300 class.
Carrasco has spent the last two seasons in the Moto3 World Championship, where her Grand Prix journey ended last year at the Indonesian Grand Prix, in which she broke her leg in a sizeable high-side.
Beatriz Neila will compete in 2024 with the Pata Prometeon Yamaha team. Both names may sound familiar, and that is because Neila has history in the WorldSBK paddock having competed in the Yamaha R3 bLU cRU Cup and in the WorldSSP300 class, and has won the European Women’s Championship (which runs as part of the Italian CIV series) on four consecutive occasions since 2020. As for Pata Prometeon Yamaha, it is - you may be aware - the factory Yamaha WorldSBK team that won the title in 2021 with Toprak Razgatlioglu and which will try to do so again in 2024 with Jonathan Rea, and its participation is possible thanks to the WorldWCR being a single-bike series using the Yamaha R7.
So, that’s the US, UK, and Spain all covered, but other nations that are set to be represented this year include France, Australia, Israel, Colombia, Germany, Czech Republic, South Africa, Norway, Austria, Japan, Ukraine, Mexico, Italy, and China. Finally, WT Racing Team Taiwan will field Chun Mei Liu, who will be the country’s first representative in an FIM motorcycle road racing world championship.
The full 2024 Women’s Road Racing World Championship entry list is below.
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