In Greek mythology Ares is the god of war, who destroys all rivals without distinction. In gravel rallies, Ares Lahoz is the goddess in the Spanish competition, the only woman who has been able to beat men in the absolute category in an official Spanish championship. She did it when she was 20 years old, and now, at 23, she is one of the few warriors who dares to stand up to male rivals in the CERT, the Spanish Gravel Rally Championship: last year she was the only female driver and now They are just a couple among 70 men in the various categories.
It is not new for Ares Lahoz (Mollerussa, Lleida, 1999) to fight with those of the male species. He has been doing it since he was 15, when he started in the specialty of car-cross with a second-hand car that his father, the former driver Delfín Lahoz, five-time winner of the Spanish autocross championship, prepared for him so that he could participate in some tests in Mollerussa.
“I tried it and I liked it, and then I was quite good at the first race of the Spanish championship, at the age of 16, in Motorland,” recalls Ares, who admits that as a child she was reluctant to follow in her father's footsteps in motorsport, so Dolphin's disappointment. “I didn't want to race in a car, I preferred to practice rhythmic gymnastics or horse riding.” Having to compete with children eager to emulate Fernando Alonso repelled her; He felt like a weirdo among so much testosterone.
“Little by little they have been accepting me,” says the Mollerussa pilot, who had to suffer the aggressiveness and even the lack of sportsmanship of some opponents who could not stomach being surpassed by a girl. “If they couldn't overtake her, they would take her off the track,” explains her mother, Marlene Rubio, “the sufferer,” as Ares calls her.
But perseverance and passion for driving kept Ares full throttle, until she obtained the prize of success: in 2020 she was the Spanish autocross champion competing alone against men, in a single-seat rear-wheel drive buggy with an engine. 600cc and 120 HP, weighing only 300 kg. A projectile.
“I didn't believe it, I didn't quite assimilate it. For me, the title of Spanish champion is a source of pride, it is a way of contributing something to society: it is difficult for there to be girls in motorsports, and by winning the championship I was able to be a reference for girls who are starting out, I was able to help them They encouraged me to drive, because it was difficult for me to find female models. Since I didn't have any, my reference was Carlos Sainz, whom I know personally. He seems to me to be a great driver, a fighter, as he has shown in the Dakar.”
The Dakar is precisely the great goal that Ares Lahoz sets, although to reach the legendary rally he knows that he has to go through many previous stages. The first is to “make hands” in her second year in the Clio Trophy, the single-brand competition within the CERT in which, being the only woman, she aspires to be “in the top 5 of the 10 participants, finish all the tests (they are 5) and improve.” In the first race, the Tierras de Altas de Lorca, last weekend, she was 7th in the Clio and 42nd overall in the rally, out of 80 cars entered.
In addition, this season he will compete in the European autocross championship (10 races; the first in May in Germany), and will make a selection of casualties "as the first steps to reach the Dakar."
Competing in the legendary rally is planned on a not-too-distant horizon, “4 or 5 years from now – although it could be more – that will give me time to have at least two off-seasons. I hope it doesn't debut too late, before I'm 30, and it works for me when I'm young. It is a dream that I see becoming more and more possible.” His idea is to run it initially with a side by side, “because the budget is more affordable and because the driving is more similar to that of an autocross.”
It is in the Dakar where Ares has found the reference to turn racing into his way of life. “It's hard to find an example, but now I would say Cristina Gutiérrez, for all the years she has been fighting,” praises the driver from Burgos, who has signed for the official Dacia team along with Nasser Al Attiyah and Sébastien Loeb.
What Ares does not doubt is that competitive motorsports will be his professional career path. Aware that “it is a complicated world, in which it is difficult to live,” Lahoz combines his passion with a job in the family business – Speedcar, which designs and manufactures autocross competition vehicles. “If I can't be a pilot, at least I want to be in this world, wherever it may be, with my father's company, or in the Federation, or teaching classes at the RACC safe driving school” – where she works as an instructor. Or even return to your initial vocation. “If I weren't a pilot I would be a teacher in a school, which is what I studied for,” says Ares, who has a degree in Teaching and Primary Education in English.
