The first thing you notice in a pit lane is the noise.
Engines screaming, tyres dragging against hot asphalt, radios crackling urgently. Numbers, commands, corrections—all spoken faster than thought. Heat rises from the track in visible waves, blurring the edges of people racing against time to send the driver on his way.
Standing inches away from a car moments before it launches back onto the circuit at the Indian Racing League, Vaishali Sharma barely registers the chaos—or the majority of men—around her. As the number two mechanic for the Kolkata Royal Tigers, she isn’t thinking about representation or visibility. She is thinking about torque settings, tyre pressure, alignment checks—details that determine whether a driver finishes a race or doesn’t. “This is what I dreamed of as a young girl,” she tells me later, wiping sweat and grease from her hands after the race has ended. “Working in the pit lane still feels surreal. But once the helmet’s on and the car rolls in, you’re just another mechanic doing your job.”
With a background in mechanical engineering and experience working with Porsche at Singer and in the US F4 Championship, Sharma entered Indian motorsport unsure whether there truly was space for women like her. Around us, team members gather around Kolkata Royal Tigers owner Sourav Ganguly, conversations swelling into post-race analysis. But Sharma speaks softly, reflecting on the less visible battles behind her own journey. “Motorsport is still male-dominated; being underestimated is almost part of the initiation.” The comments, she says, are rarely loud enough to confront directly. “They’re subtle. Like people asking, ‘Are you sure you can handle the pressure?’ Or being asked to clean the car while more serious responsibilities go to someone else, usually a guy. Sometimes there’s the assumption that you’re here for optics rather than competence.”
In a workspace far removed from the chaos of the circuit and post the engine cooling, Mumbai-based data scientist Sharayu Puranik studies graphs that translate speed into numbers. Since 2024, she has worked within the Indian Formula 4 Championship, helping teams decode what drivers feel but cannot fully explain. “In modern racing, instinct and data complement each other,” she explains. “Driver feel tells you what’s happening; analytics show you why. Thankfully, analytics don’t distinguish or ask whether you are male or female.”
