Making Classic Formula Ford more female

For International Womens’ Day 2024, what better to talk about than the three-car, three-girl team about to make its debut in Classic Formula Ford?

I spoke to the founder, manager and chief mechanic of Ballpark Motorsport, Ian Parkington, about starting them young, sisterhood and making good use of old things you have stashed in your garage.

Ballpark is built around Parkington’s elder daughter, Grace, who raced a Crossle in the BRSCC Northern series in 2023, aged 16.

“Grace obviously was always going to go racing,” says Parkington. “She did the karting and fancied moving up to Formula Ford.”

This obviously inspired younger sister Murron, who had grown up around motorsport supporting Grace and her dad, but only started karting later.

Grace will be the first driver to take to the track, as Murron does not turn 16 until the seventh of April. Her ARDS test is booked in for as soon after her birthday as she could get, on the twelfth of April. She will not be racing straight away, however.

“I’m not having her take her test, then throw her into a race car as that’s not fair, so I’m going to do what I did with Grace. Track days, test days, then wean her into some races, middle or towards the end of the year.”

With one driver ready and another on the way up, most teams would then be considering cars, but this wasn’t a major problem for the Ballpark team.

“We’ve got five Formula Fords in the garage at home,” says Parkington. “It made sense for them to move up to something we already had.”

There was some practical reasoning behind the decision as well, after a rather bruising experience in the world of karting.

“It’s not a financial thing, but if you buy a Classic or a Historic car, you can run them for two or three years, and then if and when you want to sell them, you either get your money back or you might have made a bit of money.

“With karting, it was just a bottomless pit. You buy a kart for x and you sell it six months later for y, and it’s a downhill gap, not an uphill gap.”

With five cars to choose from, there was room for more, and that’s where third driver Isla Mackenzie comes in. She was a friend of a historic karting associate of Parkington’s who had asked his advice on what racing series to choose.

“There was some documentary that had been done a year or two ago, I think BBC, that she’d got some sponsorship and she’d got to the point of going racing, and for whatever reason, it all fell down for some reason. The car never appeared apparently at a race at Silverstone.

“I suggested it because the other two girls were doing a bit of testing.”

Mackenzie bonded with Grace Parkington over engineering; she works for Mercedes, while Grace studies motorsport engineering at Myerscough College. This led to an invitation to a test day at Anglesey, and the team in its current form was born. Everyone around the Parkingtons thought it was a great idea and Classic Formula Ford’s Stuart Kestenbaum was keen to get them involved, given the age of their cars.

Mackenzie has commitments with the Mercedes F1 team so will not be running a full season either.

“She says she’s going to do the Silverstone round, definitely, but she’s hoping to build on that.

“It’s not three girls, full season. It’ll be one girl, full season, and the other two will do as much as they can.”

Having two sisters, fairly close in age, taking each other on at 100mph might be daunting, but Parkington isn’t worried, even though switching to a single-seater car from a kart isn’t that straightforward.

“They’re like chalk and cheese. Or fire and ice. She’s going to hate me for saying this, but Grace is quite fiery and Murron’s very very chilled. When they go karting together, there’s only tenths between them. Murron’s quicker, but she’s having trouble at the moment with changing gears. That was the big stumbling block with Grace as well. Grace did a track day at Blyton once in my mum’s BMW, because it was the only car we had with manual gears.”

He is interested to see how his daughters’ driving styles develop. With her background in karting, Grace was strong last year on wet tracks. Murron and Mackenzie are more of an unknown quantity.

The Classic Formula Ford season begins at Snetterton on the 21st of April. Grace Parkington will be in action. Mackenzie joins for the next round at Silverstone in May.

(Image courtesy of Ballpark Motorsport)