Camilla Antonsen

Camilla Antonsen is a rallycross driver who was the  winner of the North European Zone 4WD Championship in 2010. Her car was a Ford Fiesta ST. This was the first of two rallycross championships she has won.

Rallycross is the discipline for which she is best known, but she began with a mixture of autocross and rallying in the 1990s. Her first car was an Opel Corsa which she used in 1992 and 1993. 

Her first season as a rallycross driver appears to have been in 1998, when she entered the Norwegian series.

She continued to try out different motorsport opportunities in Norway. Between 2002 and 2004, she also made various starts in the Norwegian Touring Car championship, driving a Vauxhall Vectra. Her best results were two podiums in 2003, leading to a seventh place in the series. 

Her name first appears in the NEZ Rallycross entry lists in 2007, driving a Skoda Fabia. She was fourth overall in the Open class at Nysum in Denmark. At the same meeting the following year, she was third in the Open class but also raced a Vauxhall Astra in the Super 2000 class, finishing fourteenth. She later appeared at her home round in Norway and was fifth in Open, driving the Fabia. 

A switch to a Ford Focus brought her a debut NEZ Open class win in 2009, at her lucky Nysum circuit in Denmark. This was followed up in 2010 by another win at Vilkycial in Lithuania, driving a Ford Fiesta in the 4WD class. This was her first of two wins as she also came out on top at Riga, as well as a second place at Nysum.

In 2011, she was second in the NEZ 4WD championship, as well as taking part in the Scandinavian rounds of the European Championship and the top-level Norwegian series. She scored one NEZ win in Lithuania.

She won the renamed Supercar division of the 2012 Norwegian championship, in the Fiesta. This was a clean sweep of wins. She was also seventh in the NEZ 4WD championship after winning the Norwegian round. 

She switched to rallying in 2013, in a BMW M3. Rallying had been part of her motorsport schedule on and off since 2011, when she drove a Volvo in Norway and occasionally, Sweden. The Volvo had been in her possession since about 1999.

The BMW was another car that she returned to over and over again between 2013 and 2019. In 2014, she scored her first top twenty finish, coming 19th in the Numedalsrally. Later, the M3 proved very suited to rallysprint events. The Gardemosprinten in Norway was her best event; she was eleventh in 2017 and runner-up in 2019. This came in the same year as a fifth place in the Mjavannsprinten and sixth in the Kongsvinger Rallysprint.

She rallied a couple of other cars during this time, including a Renault Twingo in 2014 and a Subaru Impreza in 2017, although she was not as successful as she was in her BMW.

Rallycross had not been forgotten either. In 2014, she raced a Ford Fiesta in the European championship for part of the year, in the Touring Car class. She won one round at Buxtehude in Germany. This was the first win for a woman driver in the Touring class and only the second-ever female European rallycross win ever, after Susann Bergvall in 1994.

She was back in the European rallycross championship for 2015, in the Fiesta. Her best finish was sixth in Belgium and she was eleventh in the championship. 

Her 2016 season in the ERC Touring class was an indifferent one and her Fiesta looks to have been sold at the end of the year. She switched to a newer Citroen DS3 for 2017 but was only able to enter the Norwegian round of the ERC. Another new car in 2018, an Audi A1 this time, was a more successful substitution. She was fifth in the ERC Touring championship , with a best finish of fourth in Sweden.

She did not compete in the 2019 ERC and concentrated on rallying the BMW. Her 2020 plans were sent into disarray, thanks to the worldwide disruption of motorsport in 2020 by the coronavirus epidemic, but she did manage the Grimstad Rally in Norway in her BMW. She and co-driver Anniken Storsveen were 22nd overall.

In 2021 she did two rallies in the BMW, including a sixth place in the Kongsvinger Rallysprint, and one in a Volvo 940, the Rally Finnskog. Her first rally of 2022 was also in the Volvo. Apart from the Rally Larvik, she used the Volvo all year, earning a best finish of 16th in the Rally Trogstad. Her co-driver was Anniken Storsveen.

The same car, co-driver and driver combination came ninth in the 2023 Trogstad Rally.

She rallied both the Volvo and the BMW in 2024. The BMW gave her her best result, seventh in the Rally Grimstad Sydsprinten.

Sanna Pinola

Sanna Pinola was a front-runner in Finnish and Nordic Formula 3 during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Born in 1975, she got into motorsport at an early age, and was karting by 1983, when she was eight. Her lengthy karting career took her up to 1992.

At seventeen, she moved up to cars, and gravitated towards single-seaters. She did at least some races in Formula 4 in 1993, and drove in the Finnish Formula 4 Championship for the Sami Pensala team in 1994.

Her activities are less clear for 1995 and 1996. She remained in Formula 4 with her 1994 team in 1995, and had a heavy crash at the Botniaring, which she came through unscathed. The following year, she may have stayed with the same team, and seems likely to have still been involved with Formula 4.

In 1997, she posted at least one win in Formula 4, in the first round at Hämeenlinna. Her final championship position is not forthcoming.

Her final season of Formula 4 was in 1998. She was ninth in the championship. After that, it was time to move on to the next level.

Sanna’s next challenge was Formula 3. Her season in the Nordic championship had a steady start, with an eighth and sixth place at Anderstorp, in Sweden. By the next meeting, also at Anderstorp, she had learned the car, and scored two third places. In August, at the Jyllandsring, she finished on the podium again, and was then second in the second race. Her home races, at Alastaro, were a slight let-down, as she only finished one of them, but she was still a strong fifth overall in the championship.

A move to the Vaisanen F3 team for the 2000 Scandinavian championship did not go completely smoothly, and she missed some races at the start of the season. Throughout the summer, she struggled to reach the top three, until the Hämeenlinna race, which she won. This took her up to fourth in the Scandinavian series, and fifth in the Swedish championship.

In the summer of 2000, she became part of a tiny group of women who have driven modern Formula One cars, albeit not in a standard race setting. She drove a Minardi two-seater in a demonstration run at Kemora.

She stayed with the same team in 2001, and registered in the Finnish F3 Championship. As expected, she was immediately on the pace, and was second in her second race, at Alastaro. The first meeting at Hämeenlinna was underwhelming, but she won again on her second visit, from pole. A pair of DNFs at Botniaring was a disappointment, but she was on the podium again at Alastaro, in second place. A final visit to Hämeenlinna was a damp squib; although Sanna qualified on pole, she could only finish tenth in the first race, and did not start the second. This was only a minor disappointment, however, as she won the Scandinavian championship, and was seventh in the Finnish.

In 2002, she concentrated on the Finnish championship. This year, she was stronger than ever, and won three times, and finished on the podium on two further occasions. She was in the lead for much of the season, and would have won the championship had it not been for a crash involving Jari Koivisto, which allowed Jussi Pinomäki to leapfrog her on the leaderboard. Koivisto was third, just behind her.

After this, Sanna had a race seat fall through on her, and sadly faded from the motorsport scene. She had been set to contest the German F3 series, then the premier European F3 championship, but fraud by one of her managers meant that she lost her funding, and could not take part.

She carried on with some TV work for a little while, having been part of an MTV Finland stunt/prank show since 1999, but then retired from public life completely. She is apparently now working in a field unrelated to motorsport.

Sanna clearly had pace, and the ability to qualify and defend a lead. The ongoing debate over female drivers in Formula One would have been much more interesting, had she been able to progress further.

(Image from http://www.f1-forum.fi/vb/showthread.php?t=31036&page=5)