Melanie Paterson

Between 2002 and 2004, Canadian Melanie was the leading female entrant in the American Le Mans Series. Despite such high-level experience, she had only been racing since 1995, and had only raced sports prototypes since 2002.

Before she took up motorsport, Melanie skied competitively, like Briton Divina Galica. She was the Canadian national champion three times.

1995 was the year that Melanie made her track debut. She took extensive training in a Formula Ford 2000 car, and worked as a mechanic in order to pay for her racing. This also helped her to learn about the car. In her two seasons in club FF2000 she managed to win one race and claim three top-five finishes.

From single-seaters, she changed to Legends racing in 1997. On her fifth start of the championship she won her first Legends race, and finished the season in ninth position.

Between 1998 and 2000, Melanie took part in Canadian Formula Ford races. She did not always have the funding for a full season and her results were mixed. In 2001 she does not appear to have raced at all. However, she made a dramatic comeback in 2002, moving up to the ALMS sportscar championship.

For most of the season, she drove a Lola-Nissan for Essex Racing, partnered by either Ross Bentley or Marc-Antoine Camarand. This car had the reputation for being very fast, but not the most durable. Melanie finished twice, coming sixteenth both times. At Mosport she was second in the LMP675 class and at Trois-Rivieres she was third. For the season finale, the ten-hour Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, she got a ride in a Bucknum Racing Pilbeam, another LMP675 machine. She was 29th overall, third in class, alongside Pierre Ehret and John Olsen.

She returned to the ALMS with a different team the following year, having come eleventh in the LMP675 driver standings of 2002. Her car of choice was a Lola-Millington run by Cooke Racing, which she shared with Ben Devlin and Jason Workman. They suffered a poor beginning to their season at Sebring, when engine trouble prevented them from even starting, but things went better at the first visit of the season to Road Atlanta. They were 23rd, fifth in class. Back at Melanie's favourite track, Trois-Rivieres, they were second LMP675 finishers, 18th overall. The trio did one more race together at Mosport and were 26th, fourth in class.

As happened the previous year, Melanie switched cars for Petit Le Mans, this time for the American Spirit Racing Riley & Scott. She, Tony Drissi and Michael Lewis were tenth in the standings and fifth in class, a career best for Melanie. She finished the year thirteenth in the LMP675 driver points, 29th overall.

Funding was a big issue during the 2004 season, and Melanie only raced twice. She drove the first GT-class race of her career in the Lime Rock ALMS round, coming 20th and tenth in class in a J3 Porsche. Her co-driver was Randy Wars this time. Her next outing was Petit Le Mans and it was set to be a good one; she had secured a seat in the Autocon Racing Riley & Scott, hoping to better her 2003 result. It was also to be her first drive in an LMP900 car, the fastest sportscar class. Unfortunately, she did not get to drive, because one of her team-mates crashed out early on. Away from the international stage, she did some club endurance racing in a BMW at Portland, finishing eighth in the P2 class in the Cascade Sports Car Club’s official enduro. Her co-drivers were John Ladd and Danny Kok.

Since then, Melanie does not appear to have raced and her website has not been updated. She seems to have been working as a driving instructor.

(Image from www.dailysportscar.com)

Divina Galica

Divina at the 1976 British Grand Prix

Born in Bushey Heath in 1946, Divina Galica had an adventurous childhood spent mostly outdoors, in common with many other speedqueens. She proved to be a competent sportswoman at an early age, but it was skiing rather than motor racing that was her first passion. She was one of the best British female skiers ever and had entered three Winter Olympic games by the time her racing career started in 1974, at the wheel of a Ford Escort. By this time, she was the fastest woman on skis, having reached 125mph on a record run. She was invited to take part in a celebrity Escort race at Oulton Park, and surprised many with a second place.

On the suggestion of Brands Hatch and Shellsport race promoter John Webb, Divina took a driving course at Motor Racing Stables, and at the age of 28 became a full-time professional racing driver, in 1975. She raced both a Ford Escort and a Formula Ford single-seater, coming second in the Shellsport Ladies' Escort Championship and scoring some good overall placings in the main Escort series. All this happened in spite of a disastrous start to the season, when Divina wrote off her Escort Special during her second-ever competitive lap in it.

Not content with saloons and junior single-seater action, John Webb and Nick Whiting took the extraordinary step of acquiring a Formula One car for Divina to use during the 1976 season. She entered the Shellsport Formula 5000 championship in a Surtees-Ford TS16 and delivered the goods once again. At the end of the season she was fourth, with one fastest lap at Donington and one "Driver of the Day" award at Thruxton, awarded for a battling performance in the wet.

What was more remarkable was that she was entering Grands Prix in only her first full year of competition. Her Shellsport/Whiting-sponsored Surtees was out of date and well off the pace and she failed to qualify for the British Grand Prix, but it was a brave effort nonetheless. The Italian Lella Lombardi had also registered a DNQ in the same event, making it the only time that two women had entered a Grand Prix in the modern era.

There were no more GP attempts in 1977, but Divina was still racing hard. The TS16 had now been replaced by a TS19 and she returned to Formula 5000 alongside Tony Trimmer. She was sixth this time and her best performances were a second at Donington and a third at Brands Hatch, where she led for a time. She and Trimmer also scored a number of joint fastest laps. In addition to single-seaters, the enterprising Brit was now racing sportscars as well, and she was runner-up in Sports 2000 driving a Lola.

1978 was a very mixed year. Divina was back driving a Surtees TS19 F1 car for selected rounds of the Aurora F1 Championship, and was an excellent second at Zandvoort in the Netherlands. She was also seventh at Thruxton in the same car. However, Formula One proper was beckoning again. She had secured sponsorship from Olympus Cameras and the Hesketh team, which had had so much success with James Hunt previously, provided a car for her. She decamped to South America for the Argentine and Brazilian rounds of the championship. Unfortunately, she failed to qualify for either race. She did manage to start the non-championship Daily Express Trophy at Silverstone, but did not finish, like her team-mate Derek Daly. Hesketh was by this time without its founders, Lord Hesketh and Harvey Postlethwaite, and did not last much longer. This was also the end of Divina's involvement with Formula One, but certainly not the end of her racing career.

Moving north, she tried Formula Atlantic in Canada, and steered her Chevron to fifth overall, then moved back to England for the 1979 season. She stayed with the powerful single-seater racing she loved and acquired a Hart-engined March, which she used for Formula Two competition. Her results were unspectacular apart from one drive in the Hitachi Trophy at Brands Hatch. Despite a one-minute time penalty, she was able to clinch second spot.

Sticking with the same car in 1980, she continued to enter Formula Two races and also took part in some Aurora F1 rounds. This time she was overshadowed by the success of another lady driver, Desiré Wilson, but she was still a respectable sixth at Oulton Park and ninth at Silverstone. F2 was more disappointing; the normally-reliable March suffered tyre trouble during the Marlboro Trophy at Silverstone and put her out of the race.

For the next few seasons, the former Olympian accepted drives in a number of vehicles and championships. She took her March F2 car to Japan for a time, and also took up sportscar racing again, in enduros and shorter races. By 1985, sportscars had become the focus of her competition career. She and Gary Brabham drove a Shrike for TechSpeed Motorsport in the British Thundersports series. Their best finish was fifth at Oulton Park and they came second in their class five times.

After a quieter 1986, Divina returned to Thundersports in 1987, mainly piloting a Fulmar Racing Royale RP42 with Mike Taylor. They scored some good midfield finishes, mainly around the sixth place mark. However, when Divina changed to an Ibec car for the Oulton Park round, she was fifth - her best finish.

Truck racing was Divina's next challenge. She took to the trucks like a duck to water and carried off the British Class A title two years in a row, in 1988 and 1989. She also entered some European truck racing meetings, but the results have proved difficult to find.

Never shy of a change of direction, Divina's next move was pretty extraordinary. After more than fifteen years as a racing driver, she returned to her first love: skiing. At the age of 46, she qualified for the Albertville Winter Olympics in 1992 and went on to set some more hair-raising ski speed records, including a 120mph run that would rival her four-wheeled antics.

After the Olympics, she moved to America and was involved in motorsport administration and training. Along with Don Panoz and Lyn St. James, she was instrumental in setting up the Womens's Global GT Series, a one-make sports-racing series for women which supported the American Le Mans Series. The WGGTS attracted some good drivers from the USA and Europe and was successful in its first year. Divina raced one of the Panoz cars herself and came away with two wins. She entered the WGGTS again in 2000, and at the end of the season, decided to race in the main ALMS draw too. Divina, plus Americans Cindi Lux and Belinda Endress, entered a Porsche into the ten-hour Petit Le Mans race at Road Atlanta. They qualified in 37th and came home 20th overall, sixth in class, to the delight of many female fans.

After the WGGTS was disbanded in 2001, Divina returned to her role as a senior instructor for the Skip Barber Racing School. However, she had never retired completely and still likes to test herself a few times a year, often in historic races. In 2005, she dusted off a March F2 car and pedalled it to third in the Zippo US Vintage Grand Prix. In modern machinery, she raced a new Mini with Julie Allan for DWD Racing, in the Grand-Am Cup.

Despite being in her seventies at the time of writing, Ms Galica shows no sign of slowing down. She still competes in historic races in America on occasion, and is both a director and a writer of iracing.com, a US-based motorsport news site.

(Image copyright Getty Images)