Female Drivers Around the World: Korea

Kwon Bo Mi

This page has been created to document the increasing numbers of women racing cars in Korea. It will be expanded but the profiles below have been split off from Circuit Racers from Southeast Asia.

Kwon Bo Mi – Korean driver who races saloons in her home country. She began senior competition in 2011, after some years of karting. She only started karting to get herself out of depression due to her music career faltering. Her first season was interrupted by her car catching on fire during her first race, and broken ribs from a crash in a subsequent one. In 2014, she raced in the Veloster Turbo Cup in Korea, as well as acting as a coach to younger drivers. This is a Hyundai one-make series. As well as racing, she is a motoring TV presenter.

Min Jin Lim - Korean driver who races in the GR1 class of the Super Race championship. She has been involved with the series since 2018 and drives a Cadillac 6000 for the One Racing team. Her best result in 2019 seems to have been a tenth place towards the end of the season. Language barriers have prevented further information about her and her career being accessible, although she did make an apperance in the 2021 championship at Everland Speedway, finishing 20th in a spec Toyota Supra. She was part of the ONE Racing team for the 2022 championship.

Hyemin Moon – South Korean driver who competes in the TCSA (Touring Car Series Asia). She started out in 2015, racing a Toyota GT86 in a one-make championship. 2016 was her first season in the TCSA. Her car was a Honda CL7, and she did a full season, with at least one Independent class win, at Motegi. In 2017, she was second in one round of the TCSA. Unfortunately, language barriers have prevented any further effective research into Hyemin’s activities.

Sabina Park - South Korean driver who races sportscars. She won the Superrace Sports Prototype Cup in 2022, driving a Radical. She won two races outright. This was her second season of motorsport, having begun in the same championship in 2021, when she was 39. That year, she was second. It is unclear whether she raced again in the following seasons.

(Image copyright rpm9.com)

Zenita Neville

Zenita Neville  raced in the USA and Canada in the 1920s. She was one of IMCA’s earliest “Champion Woman Drivers of the World”.

IMCA (International Motor Competition Association) was America’s leading promoter of oval racing from about 1910 up until WWII. Many female drivers competed in their events after the “official” US competition board, the AAA, banned women from taking part in sanctioned races and trials. Zenita Neville was one of its earliest female stars.

In 1920, she won her first race, at Combination Park in Massachusetts. The track was a half-mile dirt oval. A couple of weeks later, she won again at Fitchburg Fairground, also in Massachusetts. Her car was a Hudson and this was her regular car between 1920 and 1922. During this time she won at least nine races, all in the northern states and mostly on the East coast. 

In 1922, she also raced a Peerless and an Essex. She travelled to Canada this year, appearing at tracks in Calgary and Edmonton, where she raced against Sig Haugdahl. Photographs show her with a Peugeot at Daytona, but I have been unable to find any results for her in this car. A Canadian paper (the Leader Post from Regina) claims that she won a long-distance race “the Florida beach” the year before. In 1921, Zenita herself claimed to have driven “close to 100mph on the beach at Daytona”. News reports local to Daytona itself make no mention of her at all.

Her normal racing venues were fairground tracks, and she often competed against a driver called Bill Endicott. Their match races would sometimes be preceded by a public disagreement in the local press, usually with Endicott in his capacity as IMCA’s “Dean of Racing Drivers” wishing to bar women from competing and “Miss Neville” defending herself and other women drivers. It was a less well-known fact that “Wild” Bill Endicott, previously known as “Farmer Bill”, was Zenita Neville’s husband.

She was described as the “Champion Woman Driver of the World” and IMCA publicity sometimes claimed she was the only professional female driver in America. 

It is hard to assess how good a driver she actually was. IMCA and other dirt-track promoters were not above stage-managing their events to create more drama and column inches. There are no records of Zenita crashing her car; she seems to have been competent in her handling of it. She often took part in speed trials as well as races, these were harder to influence and may prove a better way of assessing her talent. She won one of these trials at Combination Park, Medford, in 1921, completing two half-mile laps two seconds faster than her nearest rival and appears to have got the better of Endicott over similar distances.

After 1922, she disappears from the entry lists. Her post-motorsport life remains a mystery but we do have some clues as to her previous occupation. Newspaper articles from 1911 talk of a young actress with the same name. The Marshall County News-Democrat described her as hailing from Chicago when she played the lead role in “The Wyoming Girl”. A year later, she crops up in Iowa in the Denison Review, playing the trombone in the Aulger Bros Band. 

(Image copyright Minneapolis Star)

Veronika Cicha (Jaksch)

Veronika Cicha is a Czech driver who races a GP2 car in the BOSS and MaxxFormula championships in Europe. 

She began her career in hillclimbs, driving Mitsubishi Lancers. Between 2011 and 2014, she competed extensively around central Europe in both a Lancer Evo IV and a WRC05 Lancer. In 2014, she also had a go at rally co-driving in a similar car, sitting alongside Karel Stehlik in the Rallye Liberec. 

In 2015, she started competing in the BOSS series, in a GP2 car from 2005. This car ran in the Formula class, alongside that of her Top Speed team-mate and partner, Wolf Jaksch. She was eighth overall in her first season, with a best finish of fourth in class at Assen. 

In 2016, she only did a part-season and was 18th. This was partly due to a string of non-finishes mid-season and Monza and Assen. Her best result was sixth in the Formula class at Hockenheim. 

She struggled with reliability again in 2017, but has also managed two seventh places and one ninth. She was fourteenth overall. Mid-season, she changed teams from FXtreme to H&A Racing and also changed cars, from a 2005 to a 2008 Dallara GP2.

2018 was a better year; she was seventh in the championship and earned one second place at Assen, back in the 2005 car that she knew best. 

At the end of 2018, she was announced as one of the 55 initial candidates for the all-female W Series. Despite her experience in handling very powerful single-seaters, she did not make the initial cut at the first selection event. She did not seem overly concerned and concentrated on her new venture for 2019, a debut season in the MaxxFormula championship. This series is very similar to BOSS. She also married Wolf Jaksch and began racing under the name Veronika Jaksch.

She continued to use the GP2 car and was rewarded with two second places at Zandvoort to start her season, having qualified fourth. These were her best finishes, the next best being several fourth places.

Maxx Formula managed a short season in 2020 and Veronika was part of it. Her best finishes again were fourth places at Monza. She was also sixth twice at Most.

Three more sixth places were her best results in 2021, in the same car. She was eleventh in the championship and third in the Prestige class.

(Image copyright BOSS GP)

Marie-Odile Desvignes

Marie-Odile Desvignes was a rally driver and one of the original members of the all-female Team Aseptogyl as well as one of its longest-serving. 

She began her rally career with the team in 1971, alongside her twin sister, Anne-Marie, as a complete novice. Aseptogyl founder Bob Neyret selected the sisters not only due to their experience with Alpine mountain roads, achieved through their jobs in ski resorts, but also because blonde identical twins were a handy media draw. Anne-Marie was only part of the team for a very short time, but Marie-Odile proved herself to be one of Aseptogyl’s most effective members.

For major rallies, she usually acted as a co-driver for Claudine Trautmann, until she retired in 1975, but she was also a decent driver in her own right.

Her first year in the navigator’s seat was spent next to Claudine Trautmann at the wheel of either an Alpine-Renault A110 or for rougher events, a Renault 16. The two Frenchwomen were particularly skilled on very difficult, car-breaker rallies and finished third on that year’s Bandama event, held in the Ivory Coast.

Throughout her career, she was often partnered by Francoise Conconi. Christine Rouff and Brigitte Carrier also sat beside Marie-Odile in 1971 and 1972, in the Chataigne, Bayonne and Rallye de l’Ouest events, plus more on the French calendar. One of Marie-Odile’s biggest events of 1971 was the Criterium des Cevennes, which she entered with Francoise. Marie-Pierre Palayer sat beside Claudine.

She also had a short but successful partnership with Annick Girard, another of the original Aseptogyl team. They were eighth in the Antibes Rally and fifth in the National section of the Alpine Rally. 

Marie-Odile and Francoise were entered into the 1972 Paris-St. Raphael Rally and were third in the National standings. The same year, they won the Coupe des Dames in the Criterium des Cevennes. Marie-Odile did her first Neige et Glace Rally as a driver, having co-driven for Claudine Trautmann the previous year in one of their earliest events together, finishing twelfth. She encountered more snow on the Lyon-Charbonnieres event and seems to have finished, although the result is not forthcoming.

Although she is mainly associated with Aseptogyl, Marie-Odile did drive for other teams and in other cars. She did some French rallies in an Alfa Romeo 2000 and finished the 1973 Rally Mistral in 54th place. She also sampled a Porsche 911 for the 1973 Tour de France, assisted by Brigitte Carrier.

In her Aseptogyl Alpine, she entered the Ronde Giraglia in Italy.

1973 to 1975 were mostly spent in the navigator’s seat. As Claudine Trautmann wound down her career, Marie-Odile shared co-driving duties for Christine Dacremont with Francoise. She usually took on the rougher events, as before. She and Claudine were fourth overall in the 1974 World Cup Rally, which took a very circuitous route via the Sahara desert between London and Munich. Only 19 out of 70 cars finished, and Claudine’s Peugeot 504 was the second of three Aseptogyl entries. Co-driving in a non-Aseptogyl 1800 Alpine-Renault, she helped Michel Alibelli to a win in the 1974 Bayonne-Cote Basque Rally.

After 1975, she seems to take a step back from motorsport. One of her latest events seems to have been the 1975 Rallye Côte-Côte, driving a Peugeot 504 with Yveline Vanoni. A reference on the French “Forum Auto” is made to a serious accident on the Rallye Antibes, which may have something to do with it.

She was part of a later iteration of the Aseptogyl team in 1976, driving an Autobianchi A112. She entered the Monte Carlo Rally with Jacqueline Perrin on the maps, although they did not finish. 

Much later, in the 2010s, she came out of retirement to do some historic rallies in an Alpine A110. 

She died in October 2023.

(Image from the “Team Aseptogyl” Facebook page)