Courtney Prince

Courtney Prince is an Australian driver who races sportscars and single-seaters.

She was one of her country’s youngest-ever single-seater drivers when she entered a few rounds of the Australian Formula Ford championship in 2016, aged 14. Her car was a Mygale SJ011 run by the Sonic Motor Racing team. That year, she picked up her first top tens, a pair of tenth places at Winton. This followed several years of karting.

Between then and 2019, she competed extensively in the national, Victoria and New South Wales championships, with a best finish of eighth overall in the 2019 Australian series. She was a regular upper-midfield finisher with a best race finish of second, achieved at Phillip Island in 2017, in the Australian championship. In 2018, she scored some further podiums in the New South Wales and South Australian Formula Ford series, driving for the same Sonic team. In her last season of Formula Ford, she came close again, finishing fourth twice on the way to Australian championship eighth.

In 2020 she started racing Porsches, scoring three third places at Sandown in the Porsche Michelin Sprint Challenge. These were her only appearances of the year. Another part-season followed in 2021, where she continued to be supported by the Sonic team who she had been with from the beginning. She was third again in the first race of the year at Phillip Island.

She continued to be competitive and was fourth in the 2022 championship, picking up another third at Phillip Island and another three third places at Sydney Motorsports Park.

In 2021 and 2022, she also competed in Aussie Racing Cars, driving a motorbike-engined Mustang. She did a part-season the first time, before a longer programme in 2022. By the end of her time in the series, she was a top-ten regular and had a best finish of fifth at Winton, which she earned twice.

It was time to move up to the Carrera Cup in 2023. This proved harder and she was 17th overall, managing a couple of top tens. The best of these was an eighth place at Adelaide, in her last race of the year.

She did better in the Bathurst 6 Hours, finishing third in her class with Karlie Buccini and Ellexandra Best. Their car was a BMW. Racing against Karlie Buccini this time, she drove a BMW in the Aussie Production Cars rounds at The Bend. She got her first APC points in the bag with two seventh places, an eighth and a twelfth.

The Buccini team got back together for the 2024 Bathurst 6 Hours, with Sue Palermo replacing Ellexandra Best. They won their class in a BMW and were tenth overall.

The rest of 2024 was divided between Aussie Racing Cars and Production Cars with Team Buccini, scoring top tens in both. She was a class winner in the APC. In November, she joined up with Michael Kokkinos in his Audi R8 for an enduro at Phillip Island. She set a lap record in her first race in the car, and the pair won one race.

Another Buccini entry for the 2025 Bathurst 6 Hours led to a class win, with Karlie Buccini and Tabitha Ambrose. Their car was a BMW 340i and they were 31st overall. Driving a Ginetta with Valentino Astuti, Courtney also did a couple of rounds of the Australian GT4 championship. At the end of the year, she tested a V8 Supercar with the Eggleston Motorsport team, in their Holden Commodore. The aim of this was a possible Super2 programme for 2026.

(Image copyright Courtney Prince)

Nuria Vinas

Nuria in 1968

Nuria Viñas Panades was a double winner of the Spanish women’s rally championship, in 1972 and 1973. She also won the Catalan women's championship in 1969, 1971, 1973 and 1975.

Born in Barcelona, she was from a motorsport family. Her brother Jordi was a rally driver who competed as "Jorge Chi" from the mid-1960s onwards. 

Her first steps in motorsport were apparently in 1962, when she entered the Rally Femina, which was based around Barcelona. Jordi encouraged her, according to an interview in Mundo Deportivo in 1968. The results for this all-female event are elusive, but her car was a Fiat 850, and she competed in the rally several times, possibly winning in 1963 and almost certainly winning in 1971. The rally was organised by Club 600, a Catalan motorsports club of which Nuria was a member. 

Her first rally looks to have been the Rally Invierno in 1963, where she and the SEAT were 36th. Returning to the event, she was 45th in 1964, this time in a BMW. Among her other cars was a Simca 1000, which she used for the Gerona Rally in 1965. She continued to switch between the SEAT, BMW and Fiat in 1966, with the Fiat being the quickest; she was twelfth in that year's Rally de las Tres Cuestas in it. She concentrated on smaller cars in 1967, changing between the SEAT and the Fiat. The Fiat was once again the best car for her, giving her a season's best of 18th in the Rallye Costa Brava.  In the same car, she was 23rd in the Rallye de Invierno, 19th in the Rallye Gerona and first lady in the Trofeo Maite Trepat and the Barcelona-Andorra Rally. She returned to the Barcelona-Andorra event in 1968. With the BMW and her regular co-driver Immaculada Juncosa, she won the Circuito de Llobregat Rally that year. 

At the same time, she appears in hillclimbs in Catalonia. Her first notable event was the 1964 Circuito Garraf, a hillclimb outside Barcelona. She drove a SEAT 600 and won both the novices' and the women's class. 

She and her brother sometimes entered the same events, althought they never shared a car. Both took part in the 1966 Puig Major hillclimb, both in Fiat-Abarth 850s, but in different classes.

The siblings competed against each other again in the 1967 Montseny climb. Nuria, in a Fiat-Abarth 850TC, was 40th overall, and Jordi was unplaced in his 1000cc Abarth. The following year, he had the upper hand, finishing 28th to Nuria's 43rd. She was driving a SEAT 600 again this time. 

The following year, she was the Catalan ladies' champion in hillclimbs and 32nd in the main championship.

As well as rallies and hillclimbs, she also raced on circuits, and was the first woman to participate in the Barcelona 6 Hours race, held at the Montjuich Park street circuit. Although she never raced single-seaters, she did compete at a Grand Prix weekend at least once, driving a little SEAT in the one-make Copa SEAT that ran as a support in the early 1970s.

She is most associated with a BMW 2002 Ti, and was especially effective in the women-only rallies organised in Spain in the early 1970s, but she first appears in the Spanish Touring Car Championship in it in 1970. She won her class in it in the Puig Major hillclimb, then a round of the championship. She is recorded as the winner of the 1971 Rally Femina in the BMW, and the same year, she did at least two rounds of the Sapnish Touring Car championship, finishing 16th at Montjuich and ninth at Guadalope. Her car was a Group 1-spec machine. She entered the Barcelona 3 Hours and was fifth in class. Hillclimbs were very much still a priority too, and she won her class in the La Rabassada event, after finishing second in Group 1 at Puig Major.

Her first Spanish women's championship win was also in this car. Nuria won the 1972 Rallye Femenina Saibil and the Rallye Primavera, with Maria Angeles Pujol, her regular co-driver in the middle part of her career. 

Her second women's championship in 1973 came off the back of six wins in all-female events, co-driven in the BMW by Ana Maria Garreta. She was more than twenty points ahead of her nearest rival, Marisol Rodriguez Mesa, who had only picked up one class win in the Rally of Spain, in her SEAT. Nuria's only non-win was her eighth place in the Rally Primavera-Las Palmas, which must have been a disappointment after her 1972 victory. As well as rallying, she continued to campaign her Group 1 BMW in Spanish Touring Cars, racing at Montjuich for the 2-Hour National event and finishing tenth.

The women's championship was in something of a decline in 1974, with smaller entry lists and more events running as a class in mixed rallies. Nuria only entered her BMW in one, the Jerez women's rally, which she won in the BMW, ahead of that year's champion, Yolanda. Nuria had to make do with another Catalan women's motorsport championship, which she claimed ahead of hillclimb driver Beverley Pugh.

Hers was a lengthy career, and she was still active in motorsport in the late 1970s, driving a Ford Escort in hillclimbs in Catalunya. She was 22nd in the 1978 Montseny hillclimb, returning to one of her earliest regular events. The following year, she made a last visit to Puig Major, finishing 51st.

She won a final women's rally, the Rallye Femenino Adosinda, in 1979. Her car was the Escort and she was navigated by Ana Maria Garreta, who had sat alongside her for several years. 

She died in 1998. 

(Image copyright Mundo Deportivo)

Helga Heinrich (Steudel)

Helga Heinrich, formerly known as Helga Steudel, is a German driver and motorcyclist, originally from East Germany. 

She started out in motorcycle racing in 1959, aged 20, having learned to ride at thirteen. Six years later, she became the first female rider to win a major race, at the Sachsenring. To this day, she remains the only woman to win there on two wheels. She continued to win at other circuits, usually on a 125cc MZ RE. Despite her obvious talent, women found it very difficult to be granted licenses for international racing by the FIM, so she had to stay within club competition. Her two-wheeled career ended in 1967. 

After her marriage to Dieter Heinrich, she switched to cars in 1970, using a DDR-made Melkus RS 1000 sports racer to begin with. Without a major sponsor, she took on three jobs to affford her racing, including working in a paint factory and on her family's farm.

Being an Eastern Bloc sportsperson, she competed within the Communist countries almost exclusively. Schleizer Dreieck, in East Germany, was her commonest haunt. She achieved many top-ten finishes throughout the 1970s, in the RS 1000, and later, a Spyder and a Formel Easter single-seater. As well as races, she competed frequently in hillclimbs. 

Schleiz was the scene of her first major race result, a fifth in the 1971 Bernauer Schleife race for Melkus RS 1000 cars. Ulli Melkus, from the family who had created the cars, was the winner. The following year, she seems to have competed outside Germany for the first time, taking the Melkus to Most in modern Czechia, then the Soviet Republic of Czechoslovakia. She was eighth at Most and then seventh at Piestany, in modern Slovakia, before returning home to come sixth at Schleiz.

For 1974, she switched to the Spyder Krug, another sports prototype made in the GDR. She continued to race in Czechoslovakia, although she does not appear to have visited other Eastern Bloc countries to compete. The Spyder does not seem to have been the most reliable of cars and she rarely finished this year. It was more successful in hillclimbs, with a best result of fifth at Bautzen in the GDR. That said, she had her fair share of non-finishes in speed events as well.

Another season in the Krug was mostly spent in hillclimbs. Her best result was fifth again, this time at Torun in Poland. By now, she had a sponsor, Malimo knitwear. She only used the Krug for half of the season in 1976, switching between it and a Spyder Scharfe. The Scharfe was the better car and she was third at the Annaberg hillclimb in the GDR in it. It was a car she would return to over and over again until 1980, although she did score two more third places in a Spyder Tschernoster in 1977, at Annaberg and Schwarzenberg. In hillclimbs, she also used a Lada and a later Melkus MT77 on occasion.

Her circuit racing appearances became more sporadic towards the end of the 1970s. In 1979, she was twelfth in a race at Ostrava in Czechoslovakia, driving the Spyder Scharfe. 

She first retired in 1984, only making one more appearance in 1992. However, in 2007, she came out of retirement again, initially for historic events, but more recently, in modern single-seaters. 

In 2013, she raced a Formula Renault in the ESET Eastern European championship, at the age of 75. Prior to this, she had won a hillclimb championship in 2010. The year before, she competed in a GDR-built Formel Easter Estonia 25 in the GLP Pro Series. She had raced in this Soviet single-seater championship more than 20 years earlier, when she was the only woman to take part.

Although she does not appear to have raced since 2016, she still remains Germany’s oldest female racing driver, having been active until the age of 75. Her last races were in the Carbonia Cup at the Slovakiaring, driving a Formula Renault.

(Image copyright Helga Henirich)

Aurelia Nobels

Aurelia Nobels is a Brazilian-Belgian driver born in the USA, who began racing in Danish Formula 4 in 2022, when she was fifteen. She has competed under both a Belgian and Brazilian license.

Her first race in the Danish championship at Jyllandsringen gave her a seventh place, which she improved to a sixth the next day. In an unusual move, she also entered the Brazilian F4 championship, picking up a twelfth place as her best finish at Mogi Guacu. Back in Europe, she joined the Spanish F4 series for its Spa away round, but was not competitive, only managing one 23rd place.

In July 2022, she was selected as a senior driver for the FIA’s Girls on Track initiative. This led to a run in the Italian F4 championship in 2023, along with its related Euro4 championship, for Prema. In addition to this, she was signed by the Ferrari driver academyShe was unplaced in both series. Her best finishes were two eleventh places, one in each series, at Imola and Catalunya. In Italy, she had to miss some rounds, including two of the Misano races. She had an accident in the first race and had to sit out the rest of the weekend.

In 2024, she joined Sainteloc Racing for the UAE F4 championship, in preparation for a season in F1 Academy. She was linked with a Ferrari-backed seat. Her UAE races didn't go brilliantly, with a 19th at Yas Marina her best result. She then did some Saudi F4 races and earned one third place at Losail. This was enough for eleventh in the championship.

Most of 2024 was taken up by F1 Academy, where she was twelfth for ART Grand Prix, despite several top-ten finishes, including a fifth at Zandvoort. She also found time for guest spots in Eurocup-4 and British F4, at Monza and Zandvoort. Her best finish at Zandvoort was 16th, and Monza, fourteenth.

Like many of her F1 Academy rivals, she did the 2025 winter season in Spain, competing in the Eurocup-4 winter series. ART Grand Prix ran her and two other F1 Academy drivers for a part-season. She was the best of the three, finishing 28th overall, with a best finish of fourteenth. Later in the year, she did the Mugello rounds of the Euro4 championship for AS Racing, finishing 23rd twice and 33rd once.

Her F1 Academy season, supported by Puma, was up and down, beginning badly with two DNFs at Shanghai, but ending with her first podium, a third place at Las Vegas. She was thirteenth overall and this was her last season of F1 Academy.

She left the Ferrari Driver Academy at the end of 2025 and her future plans are unknown.

(Image copyright Aurelia Nobels/Ferrari)