Kashfia Arfa made history last month when she took the wheel in round two of the Asia Auto Gymkhana Championship 2024, held in Vietnam from September 27-29.

On the 28th, the 20-year old became the first female racer from the country to compete in an international FIA motorsport competition, Automobile Association of Bangladesh’s director of sport, Syed Ahrarul Hossain confirmed this to Dhaka Tribune.

AAB was founded in 1953 and has been a member of the FIA (International Automobile Federation) since 1970.

AAB is the FIA’s national sporting authority for motorsport in Bangladesh, and responsible for issuing FIA racing licence for Bangladeshis.

“Kashfia is the first Bangladeshi woman to compete in an international FIA motorsport competition,” stated the director of sport via an AAB official in a text-file reply.

“Kashfia and Tanzila Mahbub are the only female FIA racing licence holders from Bangladesh, with Kashfia the only woman to hold our highest grade, the National Race Licence,” Barrister Ahrarul added.

National motorsport team captain Avik Anwar informed that three other female racers – Syeda Shirhana Haque, Maeesha Zarin Khan and Snigdha Rahman – competed in a national competition previously.

Shirhana and Maeesha were the only female racers at the 2nd Nitol-Tata Rallycross Championship 2014 held at International Convention City in Bashundhara, Dhaka.

Shirhana and Snigdha took part in the following edition in 2015. Shirhana emerged as the winner in both.

“Nationally there were three before.  They didn’t have the license. Kashfia is the first one to get license and compete internationally,” said Avik.

Debut races

Kashfia was the least experienced among the participants.

She was at least 10 years younger than all other racers, according to a report by director of sport on Kashfia’s performance, but she showed determination and improvement across the event on her debut FIA race.

Auto Gymkhana, known as Auto Slalom in Europe, is a grassroots motorsport discipline but difficult to adapt to for the uninitiated.

This was Bangladesh’s very first participation at an Auto Gymkhana competition of any kind – and it was the international Asia Pacific regional championship.

Kashfia competed in the female solo and mixed doubles categories. The challenge was a steep learning curve for Kashfia with little time to adjust on the track.

Each competitor gets only 15 minutes to learn the track layout. Any error in the layout results in an immediate black flag.

Kashfia described her first solo experience. She told Dhaka Tribune: “We got a softcopy of our track layout 15 minutes prior to the race. We had 15 minutes to memorize the layout from ground level. Everyone around me was 15-17 years older with minimum 10+ years of experience. Most of them had at least 5/20 years of experience so it was much easier for them. I was very nervous during the first lap.”

She however overcame a difficult first lap to set a “respectable” second and “competitive” third and final lap.

She defeated the Malaysian and Vietnamese entries to place ninth in the female solo event.

By the time of the mixed doubles, Kashfia had some valuable experience of the BYD car and the track layout, and was able to show “some very good pace” alongside her teammate Rasel Rahman to finish sixth out of 11, defeating much more experienced nations’ teams.

“Kashfia’s accuracy – except on her first female solo lap – was excellent. Unlike the majority of her competitors, she did not receive any time penalties on any of her laps, in either the female solo or mixed double categories,” opined AAB’s director of sport.

Upcoming endeavors

Kashfia’s next major competition will be the FIA Motorsport Games in Spain later this month, where she will be led by team captain Avik, manager Asif Hossain, and coach Affan Sadat, the holder of Bangladesh’s second highest FIA racing licence after Avik.

The team will be competing against 85 other countries in four different events.

As a final warm-up, Kashfia is planning to compete in another race titled Malaysian Festival of Speed on October 17.

Avik informed that they have two other female racers in training – Tanazzul Ayman Purny and Tanzila Mahbub – the upcoming road mistresses.

Tanzila holds a junior grade of national racing licence.

“Both (Kashfia and Tanzila) worked very hard to achieve this, competing against men and boys,” said the AAB’s director of sport.

Ahrarul also added that a few more women and girls have competed in Bangladesh in official FIA national motorsport competitions, with the youngest being 15 years old.

Several of them are working towards earning their first racing licence to follow in Kashfia’s footsteps.

From the debut Gymkhana competition, the director identified two key areas for improvement – memorization of the track layout and analysis of other competitors’ performance, which he is certain would be acquired with more experience on racing tracks.

The AAB director of sport concluded: “The experience she (Kashfia) gained in this event will be invaluable for her participation along with the rest of the national motorsport team of Bangladesh.”