Sara Price

 

Sara Price races for the Chip Ganassi team in Extreme E. She has won multiple titles in motocross.

Her motocross career began when she was eight, in about 2000. By 2010, she was competing professionally, winning medals at the X Games and a string of women’s titles.

She switched from two wheels to four in about 2012, winning a championship in Terracross in 2015, an extreme rallycross series for SxS (UTV) vehicles and quads. Her vehicle was a Polaris UTV which she worked on herself. She also travelled to Morocco for the Rallye Aicha des Gazelles, a female-only navigational rally raid. She was seventh in the UTV and Quad class and won the First Participation Challenge rookie award.

Her next challenge was Trophy Trucks. She began in the Stadium Supertruck series founded by Robby Gordon and was its first female participant when she took to the track in Ontario. Soon, that was upgraded to the first woman to lead laps. The series is active in the USA, Canada and Australia and Sara travelled to the other side of the world for the final round. She was second. Her best American result was a fourth place at Costa Mesa in California.

This was in addition to another Terracross win, the first of two in 2016 and 2017.

She continued to race Trophy Trucks in 2017, but this year, she branched out into longer Baja events. Her first event was the Laughlin Desert Classic and she was second overall. At the end of the season, she returned to the stadiums at Storm Stadium.

Her other big development in 2017 was winning the female section of the Hoonigans Wanted Driver Search, run by Ken Block’s Hoonigan organisation. She got to compete in both asphalt and off-road hillclimbs, including a run in a Fiat 124 in the Mount Washington Climb to the Clouds.

She took another step in her off-road journey by making her debut in the 2018 SCORE International championship, a series of Baja races held in the desert of Mexico. Her vehicle was her Trophy Truck, which she ran in the Spec TT class. She was eighth in the class championship, with a fifth place in that year’s Baja 500 and a second in the Desert Challenge, the third round of the championship. 

After learning the courses successfully in 2018, she won the 2019 TT class championship.

In 2020, the coronavirus crisis limited some motorsport activity, although Sara managed to do some Baja events in both a UTV and a Trophy Truck. She also competed in Australia again in her Stadium Trophy Truck.

When Extreme E made public its decision to have male-female teams in all cars in 2021, Sara was the first driver to be announced for the championship. Her partner at Chip Ganassi Racing was Kyle LeDuc. They were one of the most stable partnerships, with both drivers completing all five rounds. The Chip Ganassi car was a standard Odyssey electric SUV with custom Hummer bodywork.

The team did not take the easy way through from the start. Kyle LeDuc was docked a point from their first-round total for causing a collision with Claudia Hurtgen’s ABT Cupra car during the Desert X Prix, leaving them eighth and last. Their best event was the Island X Prix in Sardinia, where Sara and Kyle were fourth, having qualified fifth. Sara, the more reliable driver, was seventh in the championship.

The Price/LeDuc pairing was retained by Ganassi for the 2022 season, although LeDuc was replaced for the final round in Uruguay by RJ Anderson. Sara won her first X Prix in Italy, although it was her only podium. She helped her team to fourth in the 2022 championship. This was her final season in Extreme E, as both drivers were replaced. LeDuc died of cancer in 2023.

She returned to baja events in the USA for 2023, winning rallies in California and Mexico as well as the Mint 400. Later, she moved into rally raids in a Can-Am, in preparation for a run in the 2024 Dakar. She won her class in the Sonora Rally in Mexico and was second in the Rallye du Maroc. Her car for the Dakar will be a Can-Am run by South Racing.

(Image courtesy of Extreme E)