Nicole Drought

Motorsport

Once there was a girl called Nicole, who loved helping her dad with his car. He was a rally driver who raced all over the country and Nicole loved nothing more than watching him in action. After each race, Nicole’s job was to check the car and tell him what needed to be fixed. Her dream was that someday maybe she could race cars too.

Nicole had her first driving experience when she was eleven years old. It was a ride-on lawnmower in her grandparents’ yard, but she treated it like it was her own racing car, going up and down the lawn at speed!

All Nicole wanted was her own rally car and she finally bought one when she was twenty, after saving up her money for years. This allowed her to race at the famous Mondello Park in April 2015. As qualification for her first race came around, Nicole was nervous with excitement. She was scared too, but she closed her eyes, took a deep breath and told herself she was good enough to do this. She raced with all her might and qualified on the front row.

Nicole’s rise in motorsport was rapid – a year later, she became the first woman to win a race in the Irish Touring Car Championship. Nicole knew it was a big deal, but she also knew it was only the beginning. When offers came to drive Formula One cars, Nicole couldn’t believe it. As a child she had dreamed about racing the world’s fastest cars and now she was sitting in them for test-drive events around the world.

When Nicole finished runner-up in the Britcar Endurance Championship in 2020, it was a sign of just how far she had come. In the space of five years, she had gone from her first race on a track to taking podium finishes on the world stage. Nicole became an ambassador for Formula Female, an initiative which helps young Irish girls get into motorsport. Now that she’s blazing a trail as Ireland’s top female racing driver, she hopes she can inspire more girls to follow in her footsteps.