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. In 2024, she raced in Super 6000 for ONE again. She was tenth in the championship. She stayed with the team for another go at Super 6000 in 2025.

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)

Diane Teel

Diane Teel  raced in the NASCAR Nationwide (now Xfinity) Series in 1982 and 1983 and was one of its most successful female drivers. 

In 1982, she scored her first top ten finish, an eighth place at Hampton in a Pontiac. This was one of four races she entered that year, with three of them leading to finishes. She was 26th at Martinsville and 15th at Richmond, but did not finish at South Boston, her last Nationwide race of the year.

She followed this up with a tenth place at Martinsville in 1983. Martinsville was her home track, and it was here that she made her Busch Series debut in 1984, the first woman to race in the series. Unfortunately, it was a one-off, and her Pontiac overheated fairly early. 

She had one more try at the Busch Series, as NASCAR’s second-tier championship had become known, in 1986. She finished one race at Hampton, in 21st place. 

She had begun racing in 1976, when her NASCAR crew chief husband Donald Teel and Langley Park promoter Joe Carver entered her into a local race as a publicity stunt to promote a local car parts business. She spun off near the end of the race, her car dumping water on the track. 

In 1977, she moved into the Limited Sportsman division and was on the pace very quickly. Her best finish was second, one of three podium finishes. Her first-ever race in her Chevrolet Chevelle stock car gave her an eighth place; she had run as high as fifth but spun on sand and water at the edge of the track going for fourth. At the end of the season, she was runner-up in the Langley Limited Sportsman rookie standings, with 16 top-ten finishes from 19 races, half of them top-fives.

As a competitive female driver, Diane gained considerable media attention. In July that year, she won a match race with Langley’s other regular woman driver, Bonnie West, who raced in a different division. Diane finished several laps in front and picked up a $100 prize. A series of profile interviews syndicated in local papers took pains to point out her commitment to her role as a wife and mother and disassociate her from any feminist activity.

She won the championship the following year and became the first woman to win an official NASCAR-sanctioned event in the process. Her first win was at Langley Park, the scene of her less-than-successful debut. As well as winning her local title, she took the next step up the NASCAR ladder to the Grand National series. Naturally, she found higher-level competition hard-going and was not always able to qualify. She was one of ten drivers who did not make the cut for the 1978 Dixie 500 and she did not start for the Martinsville Grand National race in 1979 either, finishing one place below the required eighth place in the qualification race. 

She continued to be a force to be reckoned with at Langley Speedway, winning races in its Limited Sportsman category in 1980 and 1981. In 1981, she tried again at Martinsville in a Late Model Sportsman car. Daily Press journalist Bob Mings was scathing about her efforts, pointing out that she was running 18th out of 19 cars when she had to stop near the end. Several of the paper’s readers wrote in to criticise his treatment of Diane, whose car had suffered a clutch problem requiring a lengthy pit stop and dropped her down the order.

By the time of her 1982 Nationwide debut, she had mostly silenced her doubters. Her name appears on entry lists, not in opinion columns. She and Donnie spoke directly to their local paper, the Virginia Daily Press, in 1983, explaining how the rising costs of competing at the next level, coupled by Nationwide races promised at local circuits which never happened, had affected her career. Later, in 1986, the Newport News reported that she had raised some funds for her racing through hosting a series of seafood suppers, which she cooked herself.

Following her retirement in 1986, she continued her work as a school bus driver, a career she had followed alongside her racing activities. A couple of months before her on-track debut, she had won her class in a School Bus Rodeo.

(Image copyright South Boston Speedway)

The W Series

(For a more detailed discussion of Speedqueens’ stance on W Series and a review of the TV show, click here.)

The inaugural W Series championship ran in the summer of 2019. It was billed as the first-ever all-female single-seater championship. (The Esso All-Ladies Formula Ford race in 1985 was actually the first.)

Eighteen drivers were chosen to race Formula 3 Regional cars, with two “reserve” drivers who were intended to deputise for injured colleagues and only took part in a few actual races.

There were six championship races of roughly half an hour each, plus one non-championship race which ran using a reverse-grid format. The series acted as one of the supports for the DTM in Europe.

W Series was launched with a huge media drive, with former Formula 1 driver David Coulthard acting as one of its public figureheads. He was also one of the judges for the initial driver selection events. Lyn St. James, who had previously been pivotal in the similar Women’s Global GT Series, was another. 60 racers from all round the world were assessed; through a combination of elimination and voluntary dropping-out, this was whittled down to 20. All 20 selected drivers would have all of their expenses paid for the summer racing season and would receive a share of the $2m prize pot.

There is nothing especially innovative about an all-female racing series but W Series did introduce some relatively novel concepts, including the no-cost nature of entry. Drivers were made to swap cars after every race and worked with a different team of mechanics every day. This was ostensibly to prevent the more mechanically-minded among them from gaining an advantage. Prohibitions were also placed on testing and competing in F3 cars during the W season. No driver was permitted to take part in an F3 race on any of the six circuits the series visited, unless she was fully signed up for that championship. Testing was not allowed. Drivers were allowed limited sessions on a simulator to prepare prior to a race weekend. There were no competing teams; all cars were run centrally by Hitech Grand Prix on behalf of W Series itself.

Many were critical of the whole idea, chiefly Indycar driver Pippa Mann and European F3 racer Sophia Floersch. Both drivers, along with others, considered it a step towards sex segregation in motorsport and believed that the money involved would have been better spent supporting female racers in existing championships. Some of this criticism died down but a few concerns arose during the season about safety and standards of car preparation. Jamie Chadwick, Alice Powell and others experienced difficulty downshifting under full steering lock in some of the Tatuus FRegional cars, for example. 

Early indications were that W Series was intended as a reality TV-style competition. The first set of driver assessments took place in the unlikely setting of a frozen track and used road cars, not a situation likely to arise in an F3 championship. Announcements of who had made the cut and who would have to “fight for their place” had a distinctly X Factor flavour. However, the races themselves proved popular with spectators as a sporting contest and W became more of a serious competition than when it started. The organisers attempted to mix things up a little by dropping a struggling Megan Gilkes to reserve status after a free practice session where she had been relatively quick, but this proved highly unpopular and was not repeated.

Jamie Chadwick was the first champion, winning two of the six races. This was not unexpected as she was the entrant with the most notable and recent successes on her CV. BMW junior driver Beitske Visser was second. Alice Powell, winner of the final round at Brands Hatch, was third although she could have finished higher had she not encountered a series of car problems. The other races were won by Marta Garcia and Emma Kimilainen. Megan Gilkes won the reverse-grid non-championship race from pole.

2019 Standings

1. Jamie Chadwick
2. Beitske Visser
3. Alice Powell
4. Marta Garcia
5. Emma Kimilianen
6. Fabienne Wohlwend
7. Miki Koyama
8. Sarah Moore
9. Vicky Piria
10. Tasmin Pepper
11. Jessica Hawkins
12. Sabre Cook
13. Caitlin Wood
14. Gosia Rdest
15. Esmee Hawkey
16. Naomi Schiff
17. Vivien Keszthelyi (Reserve)
18. Shea Holbrook
19. Sarah Bovy (Reserve)
20. Megan Gilkes

The top twelve 2019 drivers were automatically invited back for the 2020 season. Any of the eight additional 2019 intake were permitted to reapply for 2020, alongside 15 new drivers. The season was cancelled due to coronavirus.

The 2021 championship was won again by Jamie Chadwick. Eighteen cars started each race, with a rotating series of reserve drivers sharing one of them. The series was now on the F1 support bill and ran for eighth races.

1. Jamie Chadwick

2. Alice Powell

3. Emma Kimilainen

4. Nerea Marti

5. Sarah Moore

6. Fabienne Wohlwend

7. Abbi Pulling

8. Beitske Visser

9. Irina Sidorkova

10. Belen Garcia

11. Jessica Hawkins

12. Marta Garcia

13. Abbie Eaton

14. Miki Koyama

15. Bruna Tomaselli

16. Caitlin Wood

17. Ayla Agren

18. Gosia Rdest

19. Vicky Piria

20. Sabre Cook

The third W Series season was intended to be a ten-round championship, with double-header rounds at the US and Mexican grands prix. A planned race at Suzuka was substituted for Singapore. In an unusual move, the usual W Formula Regional cars were not transported to Catalunya and the similar cars from the Toyota Racing Series were used instead. This was repeated at Singapore. The Singapore race ended up as the least of the season, as money problems meant that the last three races were cancelled.

A team system of sorts was introduced. All cars were run centrally, but pairs of cars carried branded liveries.

Jamie Chadwick dominated once more, with Alice Powell and Beitske Visser picking up one win apiece.

1. Jamie Chadwick (Jenner Racing)

2. Beitske Visser (Sirin Racing)

3. Alice Powell (Click2Drive Bristol Street Racing)

4. Abbi Pulling (Racing X)

5. Belen Garcia (Quantfury W Series Team)

6. Marta Garcia (CortDAO W Series Team)

7. Nerea Marti (Quantfury W Series Team)

8. Emma Kimilainen (Puma W Series Team)

9. Jessica Hawkins (Click2Drive Bristol Street Racing)

10. Fabienne Wohlwend (CortDAO W Series Team)

11. Sarah Moore (Scuderia W)

12. Bruna Tomaselli (Racing X)

13. Abbie Eaton (Scuderia W)

14. Juju Noda (W Series Academy)

15. Bianca Bustamante (W Series Academy)

16. Chloe Chambers (Jenner Racing)

17. Emely de Heus (Sirin Racing)

18. Tereza Babickova (Puma W Series Team)

19. Ayla Agren* (Puma W Series Team)

*Ayla Agren stood in for Tereza Babickova at Singapore after she injured her back in a Formula Regional Europe race.

This proved to be the last W Series season, as the championship ran into serious financial difficulties and went into administration.

(Image copyright Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)

Janina Depping

Janina (left) with Ina Schaarschmidt

Janina Depping was one of Germany’s foremost female rally drivers of the early 2000s. She is most associated with the Mitusbishi Lancer.

She took part in seven World Championship rallies during her seventeen-year career: three of them were the 2004, 2007 and 2011 editions of the Rallye Deutschland. The best of these for her was the 2011 Rallye, when she finished 38th overall but ninth in class, driving a Lancer Evo IX. Her earliest WRC experience was in 1997, when she was just nineteen. She competed in the Rallye Sanremo and the Tour de Corse in a Ford Escort and Skoda Felicia respectively. She would revisit these two rallies once more, finishing the 1998 Sanremo event in a Mitsubishi Carisma.

Earlier, she had been eighth in a pre-WRC Rallye Deutschland, in 1999. Her car was a Ford Escort RS Cosworth; she would have one of the best seasons of her career in it. That year, she was also fifth in the International ADMV-Pneumant-Rallye and seventh in the Van Staveren-Zuiderzeerally, as well as recording top-ten finishes in five other rallies. She was eighth in that year’s German championship.

The early success she experienced in her career came from having started young. Janina grew up around rallies: her father Bernd Depping competed in the 1980s when she was a child and her uncle Dieter Depping was a multiple German champion in the 1990s, sometimes with Janina’s aunt, also called Janina, as co-driver. She began rallying herself in 1996, at 18. Her first event was the Baumholder Hunsruck National Rally, held on the same military range as Rallye Deutschland. She drove the Escort, although she quickly switched to a Suzuki Swift for the rest of the year and some of 1997. 

Her only outright win came in 1999. She was the victor in the Hunsruck Junior Rallye, driving a Proton Wira.  

In 2008, she was runner-up in the Group N class of the European Rally Challenge, after a string of strong finishes. She competed in the Netherlands and Belgium that year as well as Germany, driving a Lancer Evo VII, a car she used for five seasons, including a second one in the ERC in 2009. Her best finish that year was a tenth place in the Lausitz Rallye. Sadly, her events in the Netherlands and Italy led to retirement. 

After a year off in 2010, she returned to the stages in 2011, and was 38th in the Rallye Deutschland in a new Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX. Later in the year, she was seventh in the ADAC Rallyesprint.eu, against 59 other drivers.

In 2012, she used the same car in a mixture of German championship rallies. She was second and fourth in the two ADMV Wedemerk Rallye events, ninth in the Sachsen Rallye and eighth in the Rallye Erzgebirge. This represented a return to form after a couple of years spent more on the sidelines.

In 2013, she continued to compete in German events, recording an eighth place in the Sachsen Rallye and a class win on the Grabfeld Rallye, twelfth overall.

Sadly, she died following an accident on the Wartburg Rallye, in which her co-driver Ina Schaarschmidt also perished. Janina’s Lancer Evo IX had hit a tree at high speed and caught fire. Ina died at the scene and Janina succumbed to her injuries four days later. The pair had been working together since 2011.

(Image copyright Sascha Dorrenbacher)