The two-time Bathurst 1000 starter joined the KTM Summer Grill to detail the highs and lows of her motorsport career.
At the same time she opened up on her journey with OnlyFans, the subscription service best known for its adult content, and the role it played in her life after her first stint in motor racing.
According to Gracie, the platform holds personal significance, having, in her words, been a mode of survival when her hopes of becoming a professional race car driver faded.
“[OnlyFans is] a part of my story, my journey,” said Gracie.
“I was in motorsport, I loved it, I got kicked out, I was broke, I had nothing to do, I was desperate for money and to survive – and I know that sounds dramatic, but I didn’t have a roof over my head.
“I was bumming off people and living with my manager in Melbourne. I was struggling and I was desperate. I did what I had to do to survive.
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“And some people might have different opinions on what they would do to survive, but it was something that was easy. Couple pictures, 50 bucks here and there. It was enough to pay my bills and put food in my mouth, so I did it.”
After a lengthy hiatus while her OnlyFans career took off, Gracie returned to motorsport this year in GT World Challenge Australia.
She did so with backing from OnlyFans, a concept that Gracie feels was met with skepticism from the wider racing community.
“People didn’t know what to expect, me coming back and having this new career as an OnlyFans creator,” she said.
“I don’t think people knew how I was going to come back. I think people thought it would be some crazy extravagant thing. So many people kept saying, ‘it’s for publicity, it’s for this, it’s for that’.
“And once I did it, people were like, ‘oh, she’s just racing a car like everybody else, and it’s just sponsorship, a sticker on the side’.
“I don’t have OnlyFans models walking around. I don’t have anything crazy going on. I used to say, everyone thinks I’m going to be walking around with dildos hanging on the walls and crazy stuff.
“But it’s not the case. I wanted to go racing [and] I hit up OnlyFans for some sponsorship.”
Promoting the platform through racing is somewhat of a personal crusade for Gracie, with the aim to highlight that it’s not all about adult content.
“It’s a platform that changed my life, and the platform isn’t bad,” she said.
“It’s got a bad rap. There’s so many people who use it for so many different things. There’s a nanna that does knitting tutorials and makes a million dollars a month.
“It’s just got a bad rap because of people like me, essentially.
“I just had a passion to show that the platform is a great platform and it’s changed many people’s lives, men and women. I want to get that point across.
“We can come here, we can have OnlyFans stuff, I can be a creator, I can do whatever I do at home to earn money to pay for all of this, but it’s completely seperate. This is racing, this is what I love doing.
“The stickers on the side of the car mean nothing and I think I ticked all those boxes this year for most people. Some people will never like it, some people will find a way to complain about it. And some people are just going to be offended by it.
“And that’s perfectly fine. But the majority of people have shifted their opinion.”
For more with Renee Gracie watch the full KTM Summer Grill episode.
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