Natacha Gachnang is as talented as she is beautiful. Since 2009 she has been in 16 races. Her best one yet was when she finished at 23rd place in 2009, making her an extremely accomplished female racer. Gachnang is also the cousin of former Formula One driver, Sébastien Buemi. Perhaps car racing is in the genes.
At age 22, Gachnang found herself the victim of a traumatic car accident when attempting to qualify for the inaugural FIA GT1 World Championship race at Abu Dhabi. Fortunately, she didn’t need any surgery and recovered quite fast. That same year, she became a member of the world’s first all-female crew, and raced at the Le Mans 24 hours in 1991 and again in 2013.
Erika Monforte - Abarth 500 Italia Contender
Erika Monforte was born in 1989 in Zoppola, a commune in the Province of Pordenone, Italy. She displayed great promise as a racing driver from a rather young age and made her first attempt to compete in the amateur tracks more than 1o years ago Her father, Maurizio Monforte, was also a professional racing driver and retired back in 1998.
The Italian race car driver got herself into a few serious races over the years, including the Abarth 500 Italia as well as the Mugello Circuit and the Superstars GT Sprint Championship with a Porsche 997. In mid-2014, Erika Monforte made her NASCAR debut and placed 9th, winning the female category. She’s also the proud mother of two daughters, Sofia and Matilde.
Ethel Mobley - Legendary Flock Family
One of the first female NASCAR drivers in the world, Ethel Mobley competed in over 100 NASCAR events throughout her long and successful career. She showed great promise from the very beginning, and would often end in the top ten. One of her best-known achievements was coming 8th at the Daytona Beach Road Course.
Ethel was part of a legendary Flock racing family, with three of her brothers: Tim, Fonty, and Bob Flock making her one of the pioneers in NASCAR. According to Tim Flock, one of Mobley's NASCAR racing brothers, Ethel was actually named after the gasoline her father used for his car. In 1949, she became the first female racing driver to ever compete against male drivers in the state of Georgia.
Chrissy Wallace - Hickory Motor Speedway Contender
Chrissy Wallace's racing background begins with her family. As the daughter to Mike Wallace, the successful NASCAR driver, and also the family member of Rusty, Kenny, and Steve Wallace, Chrissy has been strongly rooted in the racing culture right from birth. In 2007, she became the first female driver to get a victory at the Hickory Motor Speedway race in North Carolina.
Her NASCAR debut occurred in 2008 when she competed in their Craftsman Truck Series and finished in the 18th place. Since then, Wallace has managed to achieve other victories and record braking accomplishments, such as being the first woman to win an American Speed Association Late Model track championship at the Lebanon I-44 Speedway.
Natalie Decker - Rookie of the Year
Thanks to their Drive for Diversity program, in 2015, Natalie Decker joined NASCAR. She began at age 9 as an avid go-kart racer, and by age 11 she had already won 4 championships. Decker began racing 4-cylinder modified stock cars as early 12 years, already on a winning streak. In 2013, she took home the Rookie of the Year award by finishing third in the competition.
At the young age of 22, she is already shaping up to be a promising and award-winning racer and even has a much better record than her two cousins. Since then, Decker has participated in three ARCA races for Venturini Motorsports (Elko, Toledo, and Pocono), and finished eleventh on the lead lap.