Dorothea Schulz is the CEO and Founder of DAG Management & Consulting, a motorsport management company dedicated to developing and supporting racing talent, with a particular focus on creating opportunities for the next generation of female drivers. With extensive experience in the motorsport industry, she works closely with young talents to help them build sustainable careers both on and off the track.<\/p>\n
Dorothea, you have built your career in the highly competitive world of motorsport. What first drew you to this industry, and what has kept you passionate about it over the years?<\/strong> Women are still underrepresented in many areas of motorsport. From your experience, what are the biggest barriers female drivers and young women entering the industry continue to face?<\/strong> Supporting and developing the next generation of female talent is an important part of your work. What do you believe young female drivers need most today to turn their potential into a sustainable career?<\/strong> As a female CEO and founder, what have you learned about leadership in an industry that has traditionally been strongly male- dominated?<\/strong> Looking ahead, what would you like to see change in motorsport over the next five to ten years when it comes to opportunities, visibility and leadership for women?<\/strong> Dorothea Schulz is the CEO and Founder of DAG Management & Consulting, a motorsport management company dedicated to developing and supporting racing talent, with a particular focus on creating opportunities for the next generation of female drivers. With extensive experience in the motorsport industry, she works closely with young talents to help them build sustainable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":38664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nMotorsport drew me in because it is one of the few worlds where passion, courage, precision and human character are exposed so completely. At the beginning, I was fascinated by the racing itself. Over the years, however, what kept me here became something much deeper: the people behind the helmets and the possibility of helping a young person transform talent into a real future. Today, as the founder and CEO of my own management agency, I carry that responsibility personally. A drivers career is never only about lap times. It is about choosing the right environment, knowing when to push and when to protect, negotiating opportunities, building trust with families and teams, finding commercial solutions and sometimes making decisions that can change the direction of a young persons life. I don\u2019t take that lightly.
\nWhat keeps me passionate is seeing a driver grow – not only becoming faster, but becoming stronger, more mature and more confident. There are difficult days in this sport, many more than people see from the outside. But when a young talent receives an opportunity they have worked years for, or begins to believe in themselves because somebody believed in them first, I remember exactly why I chose this path. For me, motorsport has never been simply a business. It is about people, dreams and responsibility.<\/p>\n
\nOne of the biggest barriers is still the need for women to prove that they belong before they are simply allowed to compete. A young male driver is often first seen as a driver. A young female driver can still be seen first as a girl in racing, and only afterwards as an athlete. That difference may sound small, but over the course of a career it matters enormously. There is also a question of opportunity. Talent needs mileage, the right team, strong technical development, financial backing and people who are prepared to invest for the long term. Female drivers need access to exactly the same quality of preparation and the same serious expectations. Visibility is important, but visibility without a real sporting pathway is not enough. As a woman running my own agency, I have experienced another side of the same issue. In a male- dominated environment, you sometimes enter a room knowing that your knowledge, authority or decision- making will be tested differently. I learned not to spend my energy trying to imitate the men around me. I can be determined without losing empathy; I can negotiate hard without changing who I am; and I can lead in my own way. The goal should not be to create a special corner of motorsport for women. It should be to build a sport where a woman\u2019s competence, talent and results speak before her gender does.<\/p>\n
\nFirst, they need people around them who genuinely believe in their potential – but belief alone is not enough. They need a structure. They need honest management, the right sporting programme, strong coaching, physical and mental preparation, technical education, media guidance and a realistic commercial strategy. A career can be damaged very quickly by one wrong decision, especially when budgets are limited and every season matters.
\nI also believe young female drivers need to be developed as racing drivers first. We should not lower expectations in the name of support.
\nQuite the opposite: give them the tools, mileage and environment to become exceptionally good, and then expect excellence from them.
\nSupport should create strength and independence, not dependence.
\nThis is one of the reasons developing the next generation of female talent matters so much to me. I want a girl entering karting today to be able to look ahead and see a credible road through Formula racing, GT racing or whichever professional path suits her talent. She should not have to wonder whether there is a place for her. Our responsibility as managers and as an industry is to help make that road real – and sustainable beyond one season, one campaign or one headline.<\/p>\n
\nI have learned that leadership is not about being the loudest person in the paddock. It is about being prepared to make the decision when the decision is uncomfortable – and then taking responsibility for it.
\nBuilding and leading my own agency has taught me to trust my judgement. I negotiate with teams, speak with engineers, families, sponsors and championships, deal with difficult situations and protect the interests of the people I represent. There are moments when you stand alone with a decision. That can be challenging, but it is also where you discover what kind of leader you are. Being a woman has shaped me, but it does not define the limits of what I can do. I don\u2019t want to lead like a man; I want to lead well. For me that means combining strength with humanity, ambition with responsibility and strategy with instinct. I know every driver has a family, fears, hopes and enormous sacrifices behind them. Empathy helps me understand that, while leadership requires me to remain clear when emotions are high. Perhaps the most important lesson has been this:
\nyou do not need permission to occupy your place. You earn credibility through your work, your consistency and the way you behave when things become difficult. I want younger women entering motorsport to understand that they can build companies, lead negotiations, make sporting decisions and sit at the table not as an exception, but because they have earned their seat.<\/p>\n
\nIn five to ten years, I would love us to speak less about women being given a chance and more about women having a normal, established place throughout motorsport – as drivers, engineers, team principals, managers, mechanics, commercial leaders and decision-makers. For drivers specifically, I want to see stronger pathways from the youngest levels onward. We need to identify talent early, provide serious development and create continuity. A promising girl should not disappear from the sport simply because the next financial or sporting step was impossible to bridge. And when female drivers succeed, their visibility should reflect their sporting achievement rather than turning their gender into the entire story.
\nI also hope to see more women owning and leading businesses within motorsport. Representation at the top changes what the next generation believes is possible. I built my agency because I had a vision of how I wanted to work with drivers and families, and I was prepared to take responsibility for creating it myself. I want other women to feel that same freedom. My vision is ultimately very simple:
\na paddock in which a talented young girl can dream as ambitiously as a boy, find the same professional structures around her and know that, if she is good enough and works hard enough, there is a genuine place for her. When that becomes normal rather than remarkable,
\nmotorsport will have made real progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"