Ana Carrasco

She finished her debut season with nine points and ranked 21st in the final Riders' Championship standings.

It was the best finish for a female motorcycle rider in all categories since Tomoko Igata took seventh at the 1995 Czech Republic Grand Prix in the 125cc class.

Ana Carrasco Gabarrón (born 10 March 1997) is a Spanish motorcycle racer, who is contracted to ride in Moto3 during 2022 on a KTM.

Carrasco was born on 10 March 1997 in the Region of Murcia village of Cehegín in Southeastern Spain.

Her family has connections to motorcycle racing: her father Alfonso Carrasco acted as a mechanic for multi Spanish National Champion and 250cc World Championship rider José David de Gea.

Carrasco has cited Valentino Rossi and Casey Stoner as the two motorcycle riders she idolises.

She was educated at Secondary School Ies Vega del Argos and has combined her studies with her racing career and training.

Carrasco played association football, basketball, swimming and tennis during her education years before she stopped partaking in all four sports aged 12 to focus on motorcycling.

Her first competitive race followed in 2001.

Carrasco received early career advice from her father and de Gea though racing was initially her hobby.

The achievement made her the first woman to score points in Grand Prix motorcycle racing since Katja Poensgen in the 250cc category at the 2001 Italian Grand Prix.

Carrasco repeated the feat at the season-closing Valencian Community Grand Prix with a category-best placing of eighth.

She attained her first junior category success when she was runner-up in the Bancaja Championship in 2005, and placed second in the Madrid and Andalucia 70cc Territorial Championships the year after.

In 2007, Carrasco was twelfth in the 70cc Junior World Championship.

She focused on the Murcia 80cc and 125cc Championships in 2008 and was runner-up and third respectively.

She began riding a minibike at the age of three and was successful in the domestic junior motorcycle racing categories with victories in the 125cc Extremeño Speed Championship and the 125cc Murcia-Pre-GP Championship in 2009.

Carrasco became the first woman to win the five-round 125cc Extremeño Speed Championship in 2009 and followed with the six-event 125cc Murcia-Pre-GP Championship title, the first female to claim the accolade, along with the two-stroke Castrol Cup.

She also placed ninth in the 125cc PreGP World Championship.

In 2010, Carrasco was fourth in the 125cc Mediterranean Championship and came fifth in the 125cc Motovast Championship.

She moved to the FIM CEV International Championship in 2011, becoming the first woman to score points in the series, and switched to the CEV Moto3 Championship the following year.

She began competing in the 125cc category of the FIM CEV International Championship in 2011 after reaching the minimum age in order to become eligible to compete in the series.

Carrasco moved to the CEV Moto3 Championship to ride Team LaGlisse's Honda NSF250R for 2012 as preparation for a Moto3 campaign the year after.

There, she achieved another feat in Spanish motorcycle racing history by qualifying sixth for the season-opening round at Circuto de Jerez, the highest attained by a female Spanish competitor.

Carrasco came seventh in the next day's race.

Thereafter, she took two more points finishes with consecutive eleventh and tenth-place results at the Circuito de Albacete rounds to rank nineteenth in the final Riders' Championship standings with twenty points accrued.

In November 2012, it was announced Carrasco would join JHK Laglisse on one of their KTM bikes for the 2013 Moto3 World Championship and was the first woman to take part in the category.

She set herself the objective of scoring points in the season.

Carrasco began competing in the Moto3 World Championship in 2013 for JHK Laglisse.

She was the first woman to score points in the series by finishing fifteenth at the Malaysian Grand Prix and repeated the feat with an eighth at the season-closing Valencian Community Grand Prix.

She was 13th in the Drivers' Championship at the end of the season.

RW Racing announced in December 2013 that Carrasco had signed to ride their Kalex KTM bike for the 2014 Moto3 season.

Carrasco moved to RW Racing in 2014 but her season ended early due to sponsorship problems and had an injury-ridden campaign with RBA Racing Team in 2015.

She stated to the press that she aimed to continue scoring points after having a year acquainting herself with new circuits but knew that it would be more difficult in 2014.

Carrasco raced in fourteen of the eighteen rounds held over the course of the season but was unable to take part in the final four races of the year due to a lack of funding from sponsors.

In September 2015, Carrasco enrolled at the Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia to study a law degree.

Carrasco began riding a minibike at the age of three after her elder sister was given it but did not use it.

Although she struggled to attain consistent good results in her rookie season, Carrasco claimed the first points finish for a woman in Moto3 when she came 15th at the Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang International Circuit.

In 2016, she struggled in the FIM CEV Moto2 European Championship with Griful though a switch to ETG Racing in the newly formed Supersport 300 World Championship in 2017 ended with the first victory for a woman in a World Championship solo motorcycle race, in the seventh round at the Algarve International Circuit.

Carrasco became the first woman to score points in the series by placing 16th at the Circuito de Jerez event.

She won the 2018 Supersport 300 World Championship riding a Kawasaki Ninja 400 with the David Salom Junior Team, becoming the first woman in history to win a World Championship in solo motorcycle road racing.