Saudi women on fast track after end of driving ban

RIYADH — Donning a helmet inside a pearl silver sports sedan, Rana Almimoni skids and drifts around a park, engine roaring, tires screeching and clouds of dust billowing from the back of the car.

For Saudi Arabian women, such adrenaline rushes were unimaginable just weeks ago.

Speed-crazed women drivers are bound to turn heads in the kingdom, which overturned the world’s only ban on female motorists in June as part of a liberalization drive led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Almimoni, 30 and a motor racing enthusiast, is defying the perception — or misconception, depending on who you ask — that only dainty cars in bright colors are popular with women drivers.

“I adore speed. I love speed ... My dream car is more than 500 horsepower,” said Almimoni, slamming the accelerator of her silvery sleek Kia Stinger inside Riyadh’s Dirab motor park.

“It’s a myth ... that Saudi women only choose pink and cute cars.”

Almimoni said she was awaiting an expected government decision that would permit women to obtain a “racing license”, which would allow her to hone her passion in motor sport competitions.

That includes drifting — oversteering the car to slip and skid or even spin, and other high-speed daredevilry — which is illegal in public but tolerated in the controlled environment of Riyadh’s Dirab park, whose private owners insist on safety.

Author Pascal Menoret’s acclaimed book Joy Riding in Riyadh described the highoctane Saudi obsession for drifting, long seen as a symbol of revolt among legions of restless youth, as all “about being a real man”.

Now newly mobile Saudi women are embracing what was previously deemed a male entitlement — speed.

“Most of our enquiries (from women) are about drifting — how to learn drifting, which cars can they train on, how long will it take them” to drift, said instructor Falah al-Jarba as he watched Almimoni zip around the park.

Many new drivers seek inspiration from Aseel al-Hamad, the first female member of the kingdom’s national motor federation, who got behind the wheel of a Formula One car in France in June to mark the end of the driving ban.

Clad in skinny jeans and Harley-Davidson T-shirts, a handful of women are also training to ride motorbikes at a Riyadh driving school.

Transport authorities have rolled out racing simulators to help first-time women drivers get a feel of being behind the wheel.

“I don’t feel I’m in Saudi Arabia anymore,” said Nagwa Mousa, a 57-year-old university professor in Riyadh.

“But I don’t expect to see many women in Saudi Arabia overtaking and speeding in the streets anytime soon.”

FAYEZ NURELDINE / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Rana Almimoni, a 30-year-old Saudi motor racing enthusiast, gives the thumbs-up in her car on the track in Dirab motor park, on the southern outskirts of the capital Riyadh.