Her mother brought her up to be “prim and proper,” but fate, or better yet passion, took its due course in the life of Elysse Menorca Adriano, president and chief executive of EFA Neo Industries Inc. which she put together with husband Francisco Adriano IV.
Having taken up International Studies at an exclusive university in Metro Manila, Elysse’s mother had envisioned her hija unica to pursue a more sedate career in foreign service, but that is all water under the bridge now.
Elysse instead chose to go after her own vision of life in the fast lane—driving race cars at breakneck speed.
Her addiction to car racing was rooted to video games featuring electronically-simulated racing scenario.
Cutting to the chase, Elysse and her then boyfriend Francis IV found themselves competing with some 20,000 like-minded youngsters in a national motorsports competition on video machines at popular shopping malls across the country.
That was in 2016. Elysse and Francis, along with four other competitors, emerged on top of the leader board. Apart from the trophies, they were sent to the United Kingdom for a showdown versus virtual racers from multiple other countries across the globe.
Before the Filipino team realized the full import of what they were into, they found themselves doing the real thing on an actual race track. They have morphed into real-life race car drivers in the fashion of the movie Gran Turismo.
Back home, to say that her mother Angelie was shocked or surprised to know for the first time that her sweet and dainty daughter was in car racing was an understatement. “I freaked out,” says Angelie who came along to the interview over coffee at the posh Shangri-la Hotel at the Fort in Bonifacio Global City with grandson Francis V, six months old.
The racing bug had genuinely bitten right into the lovers’ bones and psyche. Somehow, they kept their footing on the ground even at the cost of P30,000 a day for car rental, fuel and all other incidentals.
Still, they wouldn’t let money matters get in the way of their pursuit of a vision. Hence, they decided to go into the motorsports business which in effect enabled them to sustain an endeavor and earn some dough on the side.
“I started racing in 2016. I competed and won as the first and only female of the Nissan GT Academy in the UK. I was part of the six finalists of the Philippines,” Elysse recalls.
A year later, 2017 Ribbon Arc Motorsports was born, initially meant to help gamers transition into real racing,
Elysse continued racing—either with her own money or through sponsors—and won several events including the popular Vios Cup series.
Last year, the husband-and-wife tandem started looking at the potential of attracting foreign drivers to the Philippines, while drumming up awareness about the local motorsports community.
“And when we became successful in finding drivers to come here, we finally bought the Formula V1 as part of our race cars collection that has been used for rentals,” she says.
This year, EFA Neo Industries Inc. came into existence, with three smaller companies under its wings; Ribbon Arc Motorsports, Reel Memoria PH which is in video and photo services and the NU Com Digital PH that specializes in graphic designs.
“These three brands of ours have been utilizing the same group of talented people with multiple roles from racing to events like weddings and birthdays. We actively train them and enhance the potential we see in each of them so they can apply their skills to the operations of our companies,” she explains.
Elysse plans to expand her team and continue racing abroad, with she and Francis literally at the driver’s seat.
Meanwhile, Ribbon Arc rents out cars to racing enthusiasts, including a Formula V1 high-end machine. Since race cars have extremely raucous engines, they are not meant to go around roaring in the thoroughfares of urban centers.
One can only use it on actual race tracks. Unfortunately, there are only two such facilities in the country; one in Clark, Pampanga and the other in Rosario, Batangas, Elysse says.
“Filipinos are inherently talented, but they have to be trained into world-class sportsmen,” she says. “To do so would need a substantial amount of support, notably state assistance which is essentially nil or zero at the moment.”
