Marina Duñach: The key woman behind Rally Spain

I’d like to set you a challenge. If you can find anyone that is more passionate, enthusiastic and dedicated to their home round of the World Rally Championship than Marina Duñach, then you can have my next pay packet.

Duñach is the deputy clerk of the course of Rally Spain, and has been intrinsic to the running of the event ever since its WRC debut in 1991. As a rallying fan you might not know much about her, but if you’ve competed in the world championship over the past three decades you certainly will.

“I have been responsible for entries for all the 30 years of the World Rally Championship in Catalunya, every time I was the contact person for all the teams, all the drivers,” Duñach tells DirtFish.

And she’s done far more besides. In fact, she’s done “everything”.

“For this reason everyone knows me and I know everybody!” she says.

“My motorsport career has been involved always with RACC and I am very grateful because I was starting on the first step and I was developing all of my career here always with the agreement and help of my bosses, the directors and presidents of RACC, who have made it easy for a woman to finally be deputy clerk of the course.

“I’m also an FIA steward in the WRC and have been for six years. Part of my job is working closely with the FIA and WRC Promoter, taking care of agreements, official documentation of the rally, entries, sponsorship – I’m part of the team who takes care of different aspects of the rally.

“For example in our small events compared to the WRC, I don’t mind not being clerk of the course. I can be general secretary, I can be competitor relations officer, I do whatever is necessary. I have the global acknowledgement of everything.”

Rallying needs people like Duñach. Organization, paperwork and regulations are seen as a necessary evil to some in the rallying world, but she loves it. Really, truly, loves it. She never had aspirations to be the next Carlos Sainz or Luis Moya.

“I suppose for these kinds of things you need special kinds of people who love it,” she says. “Normally when you talk to rally people everyone wants to be on the road but I am on the other side.

“I’m a very methodical and organized person, qualities that you need to be able to take care of and produce the official rally documents. First we produce the rally supplementary regulations and rally guides that are the official documents that teams and officials need to prepare for the rally. And during the rally I’m in race direction in order to follow and know what is happening, ready to prepare any document that needs to be presented to stewards, FIA or competitors, that’s my job.

“It’s a very stressful job because it depends on a lot of things, but I love it. When I’m not stressed, I’m bored. I love activity,” Duñach expands.

“It’s true that motorsport is a passion and it’s addictive. I remember my first rallies, when the rally finished I used to start to cry. Cry, because the rally was finished! The rally week is the most stressful of the year but also the happiest.

“The work of the officials is very important and stressful during the rally week. We make very good friends in motorsport that maybe you will never meet in your life [elesewhere]. We share the most stressful moments of the year but also the nicest. It’s a mixture of emotions, responsibility and pleasure at the same time. Especially in rallies there is a lot of teamwork, all officials of any kind working together, and thanks to the volunteers who make it possible.

“Working on something that you love is a privilege.”

In short, Duñach can’t get enough of it. She repeatedly mentions how extremely lucky she feels to be in the position that she’s in – but she shouldn’t feel this way as she’s earned that privilege, she’s worked incredibly hard to earn her role.

It’s equally clear that the working culture the RACC has created helps Duñach, and all of her colleagues, feel at ease and feel valued. Inclusivity is a massive part of that.

“The RACC has set a very good example because in our event our communications manager is a woman, our medical chief officer is a woman, two of the chief stage marshals are women,” Duñach says.

“We have a lot of women in our organization and we are proud and happy with it.”

But has Duñach ever been troubled, disadvantaged or been subject to lazy prejudice because of her gender?

“I can say it’s true that sometimes it was not easy to be a woman here but if you prove that you are a professional and you do things very well, there is no difference between a man or a woman. On the organizing side anyway, maybe for drivers it’s another thing, I can only talk about my own experience.

“It’s true that in my first year when I was talking with some team managers or some drivers and they say to me ‘you are the only person I can talk to?’, I say ‘yes, I’m the contact person with drivers, I know very well the regulations and I’m able to help anyone in all their preparations for the event’.

“It’s true that my boss was very helpful with it, because he always told teams and driver to deal with me for all rally matters. My first years it was like an exam, but once you prove you are professional and that you know what are you talking about, there was no difference between being a man or a woman.

“But equally I never have had a problem being a woman, not for me. If you are good, it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman. In this world we can all be the same and doing the same job, and for me personally I have never found any problems with this issue.”

It’s reassuring to hear that even when societal culture was less fair towards women as it undeniably was in the early 1990s, Duñach never ran into any true difficulty. But the fact still remains that there are fewer females within motorsport than males.

As a woman in a high profile, visible position, Duñach can hopefully help redress that balance. But while she would “be happy” to be seen as a role model she says the subject must be tackled at its roots and not from the very top.

“I think that a lot of women don’t know that they are able also to do it,” she explains. “Generally, in society, motorsport is still a man’s world, but I am sure from my experience that there are plenty of women that have just not discovered this world.

“I think that we need to show them and make them believe that they are able to be there. They still associate motorsport with men. We need to tell the families that when they go to spectate the rally, also bring their daughters.

“We need to show to the girls from the beginning that there are plenty of jobs in motorsport that they, as women, are also able to do: engineers, mechanics, team managers, but also as officials, starting from marshalling to clerk of the course. We need to make girls discover this fantastic world and help them to achieve their dreams.

“In general society, not just motorsport, we need to tell the girls that they can also do it. Maybe they don’t know these things exist. I think we are far away from women, we need to show them what we are doing.”

Duñach is happy to play her part in that process too: “I’m always open to help anyone that wants to access this motorsport world,” she confirms.

“I’m very modest and I’m the kind of person who prefers to be in the back stage, but I would be happy to mentor girls who want to access motorsport as a career.We need to make sure girls understand that there is no limit to their dreams: just hard work!”

Speaking of hard work, Duñach’s never doing anything but. When DirtFish calls she’s in the middle of a hectic schedule dealing with all the admin required to run an historic rally next month.

But you can sense that Duñach simply wouldn’t have it any other way.