Victoria Blokhina

 

Victoria Blokhina races junior single-seaters in Europe. She currently competes under an Italian license although she is Russian.

She made her single-seater debut in 2022 aged 16. She entered the UAE F4 championship with R-ace GP and did 16 of the 20 championship rounds, sitting out the last meeting at Yas Marina in favour of Maksim Arkhangelsky. She usually finished, but struggled for pace and had a best finish of 19th at Yas Marina, early in the season. Her final championship position was 32nd. This was followed by a season in Italian F4 with PHM Motorsport, which yielded a 34th place, driving for PHM Racing. Her best finish by far was a twelfth place at the Red Bull Ring.

She also did three Spanish F4 races at Catalunya, finishing 28th twice. 

The UAE championship runs over the winter season and Victoria returned at the end of 2022, driving for the R2Race Cavicel team this time. A single outing in the non-championship Trophy race gave her a sixth and eleventh spot, her best of the year, driving for the Xcel team. Her season with R2Race was more of a challenge, and two 22nd places in the final meeting at Yas Marina were her high points. She was 44th in the championship.

Although she was eligible, she decided against entering the all-female F1 Academy and signed again for Italian F4. She rejoined the PHM team as part of a four-car squad. The early part of the season was more promising for her and she finished 15th at both Imola and Misano, one of three top-twenty finishes. Her year took an unwelcome turn at Spa, where she had a frightening crash in Race 1 which destroyed her car. Neither she nor Guido Luchetti, who sent her car flipping over into a barrier, were injured. She returned for the Monza round. At the end of the season, she was 35th in the championship and second the three-driver women’s championship.

Prior to her F4 debut, she competed in karting internationally in 2019 and 2020. She was a finalist in the FIA Girls on Track competition in 2021.

(Image copyright PHM Racing)

Sybil Lupp

Sybil Lupp was New Zealand’s first female racing driver. 

Her interest in cars began on the engineering side in the 1930s, and she was one of New Zealand’s first female mechanics, taking a job at JG Ingrams garage in 1938. She started racing after her second marriage, in 1947. She took part in the first hillclimb organised by the Otago Automobile Club.

Initially, she only drove in hillclimbs, scoring several wins in MG cars. She had learned to drive aged eleven and her first car was an MG M-Type, bought for her by her father three years later. The Australian Women’s Weekly reported in November 1948 that Sybil had won her second Otago hillclimb championship in succession, and that she held their circuit’s track record. Her records included the full hillclimb for her class and for the standing quarter-mile sprint.

Circuit racing was quite slow to get going in New Zealand after the Second World War, having been quite sporadic before that anyway. In 1949, she entered the first road race held in the country, the appropriately-named Road Racing Championship. The event was a 105-mile circuit, consisting of 50 laps of an aerodrome. She drove an MG TC and was fifth on scratch, fourth on handicap.

In 1950, she was second in the same race, driving the TC, and first on handicap. She had made considerable progress from twelfth on the grid.

After a year when she does not appear to have raced at all, she returned with an MG TD in 1952. She was seventh in both the Lady Wigram Trophy and the CWF Hamilton Trophy. The RRC’s original organisers had switched their attentions to another track and the Lady Wigram Trophy was its replacement. Her Wigram result was another run from the back of the grid. The CWF Hamilton event was held at the 4km Mairehau circuit, run over 40 laps. Sybil had been given a substantial ten-minute handicap.

In 1953, she changed from an MG to a Jaguar XK-120. In this car, she was seventh in the CWF Hamilton Trophy, driving with “HR Brown”, who was a Dr Bruce Hay driving under a pseudonym. Driving solo, she was seventh in the fifth RRC, now held at Dunedin. 

As well as racing, she was one of the founder members of the Otago Motor Association, and ran a series of garages and car dealerships. Her first marriage ended when Jack Lupp died in 1945; two years later, she married his brother Percival. They divorced in 1961. After 1969, when she married Lionel Archer, she was known as Sybil Archer. They had been partners in a Jaguar garage.

Despite her choice of occupation, Sybil always distanced herself from “women’s lib” and claimed that a woman should be led by her man, although she also bragged about being quicker than her husband early in her career.

She died in 1994, aged 78.

(Image copyright Wellington Evening Post)