Sarah Kavanagh

After her first trip to watch the Le Mans 24 Hour race, Sarah Kavanagh's only ambition was to be a professional racing driver. The 18-year-old art student, who was then living in Brighton, bought herself a racing kart and announced herself on the scene with a second position in her first ever race. After a year of kart competition, which yielded some excellent results, she decamped to her native Ireland in 1992 and entered the Irish Formula Ford championship. Her best finish was sixth. She learnt the art of handling a full-size car quickly and moved up to Formula Opel the following season, where she competed on and off for the next three years. Her only full season was 1994, when she picked up some top-ten finishes. Formula Opel was Ireland's top racing formula at the time, and Sarah was the only woman to have raced in the series, which brought her to the wider attention of the Irish press.

Although it was the roar of sports prototype engines on the Mulsanne Straight that first enticed her to the tracks, Sarah's ambition was now clear. She wanted to drive in Formula One, and in 1995 she moved back to England to climb another rung of the junior formula ladder. In Formula Vauxhall she was up against some future stars, including Formula One star Juan Pablo Montoya, and sports and touring ace Peter Dumbreck. The Irishwoman managed to hold her own in a tough field, and it is said that Montoya congratulated her on her prowess. She raced in the 'B' class with Wayne Douglas's team, which had won the B title the year before.

Ever-ambitious, Sarah acquired a much more powerful Reynard-Cosworth 95D for the 1996 season. With this car she entered the British Formula Two Championship. Her lack of funding meant that she only started two races: a gearbox failure put her out at Silverstone, but she was sixth at Donington. The starting grid was not brilliant though, and seeking better competition, Sarah started looking abroad for driving opportunities. The Reynard was eligible for the Japanese Formula Nippon series, and she completed another two races in Japan in 1997. She was fourteenth at Suzuka and did not finish at Mine. Competition for established team seats was fierce, and Sarah's sponsorship problems let her down again.

Staying with the Reynard for another season, she tried her hand at the new EuroBoss series in 1998. This European-based championship was for older, but not historic, F1 and F2/F3000-spec cars, and Sarah entered some rounds in the F3000 class, supported by E-Merge Racing. Her race results have been very difficult to track down, but it is known that she achieved class lap records at the Brands Hatch Indy circuit and at her home track of Mondello Park.

She was showing more signs of her early promise at last, and now had the support of E-Merge, so it was on to better things in 1999. The team bought a Jordan-Cosworth 193 from 1995 and Sarah got her first taste of F1 power for some of the 1999 EuroBoss rounds. After a few trial runs, she was ready to attack the championship in 2000, scoring at least one top-ten position at Donington, and earning some very quick lap times at the same track.

2001 was Sarah's best year yet. There was enough funding to tackle the whole EuroBoss schedule and she was familiar with the Jordan by now. A the end of the season she was ninth in the championship, with two ninth places, a seventh and a superb third overall at Mondello Park. The 28-year-old was now a motorsport news story and her exploits attracted attention from various sources, not least the McLaren F1 team. The British outfit invited Sarah for a performance assessment, and she was judged to be fit enough to tackle F1 competition, to her delight. She now had another string to her bow and this strengthened her claim on a seat in F1 proper.

Unfortunately, nothing came of the McLaren exercise. Although she was linked to drives in F3000 and later, GP2, these did not materialise either, and Sarah did not race competitively for several years. Behind the scenes, she and her manager were trying to put together sponsorship packages and find racing opportunities, but these never came to fruition. In 2004, after more testing and physical assessments, she was said to be close to signing a four-year testing and development deal with the Jaguar Grand Prix team, which could have led to a race seat. However, contractual issues intervened at the last minute, and she spent 2004 on the sidelines again, working as an instructor and motoring journalist.

Sarah's manager has come up with a number of theories as to why her racing career has failed to take off as it might have done. Lack of finances, an issue in itself, has meant that she has rarely completed a whole championship. Despite several years of racing she is still relatively inexperienced, although she has shown flashes of brilliance and clearly has aptitude for driving powerful vehicles. Her perceived reluctance to prove herself in the lower formulae has also worked against her. There are accusations of press negativity in Ireland too which may not have helped her cause.

For 2006, Sarah intended to return to EuroBoss with the Jordan, for as much of the championship as possible. This did not happen. It is a shame that her single-mindedness to succeed as an F1 driver may also be her downfall; if she had opted to prove herself in the more cost-effective fields of GTs or touring cars, she may have had much more of a career by now.

In a 2014 interview, Sarah described herself as "retired". She lives in France.

(Image from www.motorsport.com)

Jodie Hemming

Jodie with the Jordan

Formula Honda (now Jedi) is a well-supported budget single-seater formula in Britain. Former karter Jodie started racing in the series in 2002. In her debut season she was the first-ever female Formula Honda driver.

She began in the 600cc class, and scored top-ten finishes from her first race. Mid-season, she sustained a broken wrist in an accident, which put her out of several races, but she soon bounced back. Even with the enforced break, she finished the season twelfth out of twenty-three drivers.

Still with the 600cc Jedi car, Jodie returned to Formula Honda in 2003, and was a permanent fixture in the upper reaches of the top ten. Her best finishes were two second places, and she won the Scholarship Trophy for 600cc cars. She also tried out a few Monoposto races, a multi-marque single-seater series, and raced well, against much more powerful machinery.

For 2004 she secured sponsorship from Sywell Leisure and continued in Formula Honda, which was now renamed Formula Jedi. Now fully conversant with the 600cc machine, Jodie dominated her class completely, winning every race she entered (fifteen out of fifteen) and beating a number of 1000cc competitors in the process. The opposition was no pushover either, with as little as half a second between the top six.

After her stellar season was over, as well as collecting trophies from the BRSCC and the British Women Racing Drivers' Club, Jodie took part in some exciting testing. She had a 160mph run in a Jordan F1 car at Silverstone, with a view to racing in the EuroBOSS pre-2001 F1 series in 2005. Unfortunately, this deal did not come off, so she returned to her trusty Jedi Mk4 instead, after pondering a move to the 1000cc class and deciding against it.

2005 was something of a let-down for the Northants girl. She was unable to catch eventual champion David Hodgson and only scored one win, at Pembrey. Her five second places were enough to secure second place though, as no-one else could catch Hodgson either.

Over a year after her initial Formula One test, Jodie got back into a top-flight car again in 2006. She had secured enough sponsorship to compete in at least the British round of EuroBOSS. Her car was a Jordan fitted with a 3.5 litre Judd V10, as its original engine was too difficult to source parts for. At the first meeting of the season at Brands Hatch, she was fifth in the first race and a strong third in the second, equalling Sarah Kavanagh's previous best position. She was determined to take part in more rounds and a win was touted as a possibility.

As well as her post-historic antics, Jodie signed a deal to run in some rounds of Formula Renault too, entering the championship at Croft. Her start to the season was not good, marked by a couple of retirements due to gearbox troubles. She managed a 15th and a 20th place at Donington, and was 23rd and 21st at Silverstone. This left her well down the final points table.

She managed to enter five EuroBOSS races in 2007. A blown engine put her out of the first meeting at Hockenheim, which should have been her first European race meeting, but she was back on track at Donington. She was third again in the first race, but did not finish the second due to car trouble. The story was reversed at Snetterton: she was unable to start the first race after gearbox problems in qualifying, but did start the second. Unfortunately, she spun off. At the Champ Car meeting at Zolder, she was back on the pace and finished fourth. However, the Jordan proved unreliable again at the Ronda Superprix, and she did not compete at all. She also had to sit out the season finale at the Nürburgring. Despite her trials with the car and its engine, she was tenth overall.

In 2008, she intended to do some more EuroBOSS races, but these did not happen. Instead, she competed in Formula Palmer Audi for the whole season. Despite her expertise in single-seaters, she never really got to grips with the FPA car and she was not particularly competitive. Her best result was eleventh, at Oulton Park. She was 22nd in the final standings.

Although Jodie was linked with more EuroBOSS drives, these did not happen. The EuroBOSS series itself is now defunct. In 2009 and 2010, Jodie returned to Formula Jedi for a few races, but was far from being one of the frontrunners.

Her activities between then and 2013 are unclear. She did not race at all, and at some point, she  became a mother, to two girls.

In 2013, she reappeared on the scene, as a driver coach, and as an occasional driver. She did a couple of Formula Jedi races, but was not quite up to her former pace.

She made guest appearances in the 2014 Renault Clio Cup Road Series in the UK, alongside one of her mentees, Jessica Hawkins. She was fifth and fourth at Oulton Park.

At one point, in her day job, this Northamptonshire resident drove bulldozers and diggers on a construction site!

(Image from www.facebook.com/jodiehemmingracing)