Umbrella Girls: Casting Shade on Women’s Place in Motorsport

Last Update: 28 September 2025

After watching Valentino Rossi battle Dani Pedrosa in a nail-biter finish — Rossi snatching the lead in the final laps for his fourth podium of the year — I decided to keep the TV on for the next program. It happened to be the AMA Superbike finale at Laguna Seca, California.

During the Supersport race, Josh Hayes went down in a nasty crash, prompting a red flag. While the track crew worked to clear things up, the broadcasters filled the downtime with a segment they’d been teasing: Ben Bostrom, a long-time favourite of mine from his Ducati World Superbike days, would demonstrate the “skills” of an umbrella girl.

Back at Bostrom’s pit, he wasted no time repeating — not once, not twice, but three times — that umbrella girls:

1. Look good.
2. Look good.
3. Look good — and, yes, keep the sun off the rider baking in leathers on the start grid.

To illustrate his point, Ben enlisted his girlfriend Nicki, who wasn’t dressed like a typical umbrella girl but rather in smart, stylish attire. She stepped in with an umbrella to shade the “rider” — who turned out to be none other than Fabio Lanzoni, the romance-novel cover icon.

Yes, Fabio.
In the Laguna Seca paddock.
Sitting on Ben’s race bike.

Nicki gamely followed him around, umbrella in hand, trying to provide shade for the muscle-bound celebrity as he climbed off the bike. The whole scene was equal parts absurd and entertaining.

Ben wrapped the segment by once again reminding viewers that umbrella girls “look good” and are “useful to the rider.” A cheeky moment of levity in a day otherwise defined by crashes, competition, and championship pressure. And only in California could you stumble across Rossi’s brilliance, Hayes’ heartbreak, Bostrom’s humour — and Fabio holding court in the pits.

From Umbrella Girls to Pit Studs: Flipping the Script

As women continue to make their mark across every level of motorsport, they’ve also flipped the script on grid traditions. What’s “good for the goose is good for the gander,” after all. Enter the male counterpart: the umbrella boy.

I’ll admit, I was proudly guilty of this myself. Before races, I often had “umbrella boys” shading me on the grid. I even gave them a name — Pit Studs — which, to my mind, carried the right masculine edge for the role.

And one woman who truly took it further was Katja Poensgen — the only woman to ever score MotoGP points. At the 2003 MotoGP race in Sachsenring, Germany (a race I was fortunate to attend), Katja readied herself on the grid accompanied not by an umbrella girl, but an umbrella boy. And not just any “pretty face” either — it was her own dentist, fit, handsome, and charmingly poised, shading her with confidence. It may well have been the first time in MotoGP history, and it certainly made a statement: the tradition could look just as sharp, if not sharper, from the other side.

In the many race venues I’ve attended across Europe, the UK, and North America — whether as a racer or a spectator — umbrella girls are a constant presence. Nearly naked, armed with their trusty umbrellas, they’ve long been part of the paddock backdrop.

But what will it take to move beyond this “look good” narrative — and reshape how women see their own place in motorsport? Too often, when an attractive woman walks through a paddock, the last thing people assume is that she’s the one piloting a race bike. Yet in reality, countless women have already traded in umbrellas for handlebar grips, proving their skill on the track.

A Rider Doesn’t Need A Grid-Side Umbrella Girl To Win

The truth is, a rider doesn’t need a grid-side umbrella girl to win. Starts will still be strong, races will still be fought hard, and podiums will still be claimed. The tradition exists for one reason only — because “they look good.”
And maybe it’s time the sport recognised that riders, not props, are what truly make racing shine.

---