Nicole hoping for sponsorship for her sports car racing career

The former Carleton Community High School student is continuing to make a name for herself in motor sport after first arriving on the the UK and international karting scene four years ago as a 16-year-old.

Since then, she has completed two years of junior 100cc two-stroke 60mph outdoor karts, followed by two years in senior 125cc two stroke 65mph outdoor karts. She has also competed in two kart world finals in Italy, one in junior class and the other in senior class.

Nicole has now entered sports car racing in the Ginetta GRDC Championship for the last two rounds of this year.

She showed great promise by finishing in the top 10 from a starting grid of 24 cars in her first two races.

Nicole had the benefit of pre-race testing and coaching from her boyfriend Luca Hirst whose father Andy runs the Raceway Karting track in Pontefract.

She has also received help from Ginetta factory drivers Mike Simpson and Charlie Robertson and professional racing coach Jamie Stanley.

After achieving excellent school results at Carleton Community High, Nicole studied mechanical engineering at York College.

She then joined Ginetta Cars, whose national base is in Garforth, as an apprentice CAD designer. She has recently completed her apprenticeship with Ginetta while working there as junior design and development engineer.

She came out of her apprenticeship with two engineering college cup awards from local technical training supplier Kirkdale Industrial Training Services Limited to add to her kart racing trophies.

As well as her daily role at Ginetta, her work there has also taken her outside the UK to race destinations such as Spa Francorchamps, Le Mans, Paul Ricard and Estoril circuits working as a data engineer for GT3 teams. She has recently moved on to continue her work in CAD for local company Optalysys, currently with technical offices based in Hemsworth.

Her chance in sports car racing came at short notice from Ginetta. She had prepared herself for such an opportunity by passing her race driver’s licence test at Silverstone.

This involved prior training at the Porsche Experience Centre, which is also based at Silverstone and then taking her racing test. Both of these were gifts for her 18th birthday and for Christmas from her father Peter who was her mechanic during her karting years.

Nicole is now hoping for sponsorship to continue her racing in 2017. Any local or national business willing to help should contact her management on 01977-658780 or text/call 07859 806867.