A former Miss England finalist shares her story of growing up in the world of competitive tractor-pulling - and says the motorsport is family-friendly and inclusive.
Ellie Pacey, who was crowned Miss Northamptonshire in July 2020, drives a light modified tractor as part of the On The Limit team.
She says: "It's a motorsport, so there are more men but I've never been treated any different because I'm a girl".
Watch Ellie in action as she competes at the UK Truck and Tractor Pull 2025 in Scorton, Lancashire.
00:00So I actually started tractor pulling when I was like seven, almost eight, so 16 years I've done this for, and next year it'll be 10 years of driving this modified.
00:14This year is with my dad's 40 years in tractor pulling, so I literally went to my first tractor pulling event at two weeks old, so I've basically just been raised in the motorsport and it's all I've known all my life.
00:24It's just such an unexplainable feeling when you're driving, there's so much adrenaline, like obviously before you go to drive I always get a bit nervous, but I feel like that's part of the thrill.
00:36If you don't get nervous it doesn't excite you, so.
00:38The woman on the wings, it's probably our most iconic one, but it wasn't planned.
00:51Dad always knew he wanted the man on the wings of On The Limit, so the idea was On The Limit, the man's spent up, he has basically spent all of his money.
00:59So we actually designed the guy on the right, and then, because they're all hand-painted, the guy that we sent them to, he said, oh I think you should do a woman on the other wings.
01:09And we were like, well it's family orientated, so we don't want anything too risky, so we said, oh we'll do Jessica Rabbit, she's quite iconic.
01:16So yeah, now I suppose that's probably the most iconic bit of the tractor.
01:20There is obviously more men, it's a motorsport, it will always be slightly more male-dominated, but there's still plenty of girls involved in the motorsport.
01:31And honestly, tractor pulling is one of the most inviting, friendly atmospheres you've possibly been in.
01:37It is like a massive family, everybody will always help you to get going, they always want to see you on the track.
01:42Like, if we have an issue, like, we've had issues in teams where we'll be like, here, come and lend this, or everybody tries to come and help you, and they always make you feel included.
01:52So with being a girl in the motorsport, I've never even grown up thinking of me as any different to anybody else.
01:58So it's really nice the fact that everybody's so supportive, whether you're young, old, female, male, it really doesn't matter, everybody is included and everybody wants to get on the track and see everybody win.
02:12Truck and tractor pulling is a competition with all these beautiful machines around us that compete on a clay sand mixture track with pulling a weight transfer sledge, which the further you pull it down the track, it gets harder to pull, and it's the guy who pulls it the furthest that wins the competition.
02:31The weight, the sledge itself, I think it weighs about 16 tonnes, and then they put weight in the transfer box to put ground pressure on to make it harder to pull, and at the end of the track, the ground pressure might be up to 80, 100 tonnes of ground pressure.
