Sarah Moore is a British racing driver whose career spans multiple continents and categories, and who has quietly collected a set of firsts — in W Series, in the Indian Racing League, and in LGBTQ+ visibility — that would make for a very full résumé even without the lap times to back them up.

EARLY YEARS

Born on 22 October 1993 in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, Sarah Claire Moore didn’t so much choose motorsport as get born into it. [1] Her father Simon runs Tockwith Motorsports, and her brothers David, Nigel, and Edward are all racing drivers in their own right — Nigel Moore being a former Ginetta Junior and G50 champion. [2][3] The family operated out of an airfield that doubled as their personal karting circuit and race team base, which meant the gap between “watching” and “doing” was essentially nonexistent. [4] She was behind a kart at age four and competing in earnest by eight. [5][6]

Her first documented competitive outing came in 2007, when she entered the Rotax Mini Max class of the Stars of Tomorrow National Championship, finishing 24th. [1] It wasn’t a result that made headlines, but it was the beginning of a methodical progression through the junior ranks. By 2009 she had moved into car racing, making her Ginetta Junior Championship debut — a series her brother Nigel had already made his mark in. [7] In 2011, she was competing in the Intersteps Championship, continuing to build experience across different single-seater and saloon formats before eventually finding the platforms that would bring her wider recognition. [8]

OTHER INTERESTS

Athletics has run alongside the racing throughout her life. Moore competed in track and field at the University of New Hampshire, where she was listed on the women’s track and field roster as part of the Wildcats program. [9] The discipline required of a collegiate athlete and the physical demands of racing are not entirely separate skill sets, and the dual commitment speaks to someone who doesn’t do things halfway. Beyond sport, she has been an outspoken voice on LGBTQ+ representation in motorsport, channeling that advocacy into writing and public engagement through her personal platform at sarahmooreracing.com. [10]

EARLY SUCCESS

Moore’s path to prominence ran through the Ginetta Junior series and British endurance racing before the formation of W Series gave her the stage to become more widely known. Her 2009 Ginetta Junior campaign introduced her to circuit racing’s competitive realities, and in subsequent years she accumulated experience across multiple categories including the Britcar Endurance Championship, where she raced a Smart Forfour alongside Rob Baker. [11] These weren’t marquee results, but they were the kind of miles that matter — late-night stints, mechanical attrition, shared driving duties, all of it forming the practical foundation for what came later.

The launch of W Series in 2019 was the inflection point. Moore was selected for the inaugural season, which was itself a competitive achievement given the caliber of the field assembled. She raced through the season, and while the championship was won by Jamie Chadwick, Moore showed enough consistency to cement her place in the series going forward. [12] The 2019 round at Hockenheim gave results-followers a reference point for where she sat in the competitive order during that first year of the series. [13] She returned for the 2021 season — the series having skipped 2020 due to the pandemic — and that campaign would produce the moment that most people who follow women’s motorsport know her for.

At the 2021 W Series round run as a support event to the Formula 1 Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring, Moore finished second behind Alice Powell. The result was celebrated not only as a podium but as a historic one: it was the first podium scored by an openly LGBTQ+ driver at an F1 support event. [14][15] Moore spoke publicly about the significance, making clear that for her, the visibility mattered as much as the result — possibly more. That combination of competitive performance and deliberate representation is something she has carried consistently through her career.

Her most recent landmark arrived in the Indian Racing League. Racing in the 2023 edition of the series, Moore became the first woman ever to win a race in IRL competition. [16][17] The result was the kind of factual, unambiguous historic first that doesn’t require context or qualification — she crossed the line first, and no woman had done that before her in that series. For a driver who had spent years building toward this kind of moment through junior categories, endurance racing, and W Series, it represented the clearest possible answer to any question about her pace.

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

• 2019: Selected for the inaugural W Series season, competing across all rounds of the first all-female single-seater championship. [12]
• 2021: Finished second at the W Series round at the Red Bull Ring, becoming the first openly LGBTQ+ driver to stand on the podium at an F1 support event. [14][15]
• 2023: Became the first woman to win a race in the Indian Racing League, making history in one of India’s top motorsport series. [16][17]
• 2024: Selected as part of the More Than Equal coaching and development cohort, working alongside Jordan King as a performance coach for the next generation of female racing drivers. [18]

INSPIRATIONS

Moore has spoken about growing up surrounded by the sport through her family, which inevitably shapes what “inspiration” means in her context — it wasn’t a single driver or a televised race that pointed her toward a career, it was an environment in which racing was simply what people around her did. [4] Her father’s involvement as a team principal and her brothers’ careers meant she had close reference points for what the sport demanded at a serious level. [1][2]

Her public advocacy around LGBTQ+ representation suggests that the absence of visible role models in that specific dimension was something she felt acutely. Writing on her website about progress and challenges for LGBTQ+ athletes in motorsport, she has positioned herself as part of the change she would have wanted to see earlier — which is its own kind of statement about what inspiration, or the lack of it, does to a person. [10] She has referenced the importance of visibility for young drivers who don’t see themselves reflected in the sport, and her actions in speaking publicly after the 2021 Red Bull Ring podium were a deliberate extension of that position. [14]

REPUTATION

Within W Series, Moore was regarded as a consistent, experienced presence — someone who brought genuine single-seater background to a field that ranged widely in experience levels. Her multi-year involvement in the series gave her the kind of institutional knowledge that younger drivers were still accumulating. Outside the series, her endurance racing background and her ability to adapt across categories — from British club racing to Indian open-wheel competition — marks her as a driver whose range is wider than any single result might suggest. [11][16]

Her transition into coaching through the More Than Equal program has extended her reputation in a different direction. Alongside Jordan King, she has worked with the 2024 cohort of female drivers identified as having the potential to reach the top levels of the sport. [18] The role suits someone with her breadth of experience — she has been a junior karting competitor, a single-seater racer, an endurance driver, a championship series competitor, and now a historic race winner. That range makes her an unusually credible voice in a development context, and the program’s philosophy aligns closely with the kind of advocacy she had already been doing independently. [19]

As a public figure in motorsport, Moore occupies a particular position: she is competitive enough to have won races and stood on F1 support podiums, and outspoken enough to have made her identity and advocacy part of her public narrative rather than separate from it. That combination is still relatively rare in the sport, and it has made her something of a reference point for conversations about what inclusion in motorsport actually looks like in practice rather than in press releases. [10][14][15]

FUTURE GOALS/PLANS

Moore’s involvement with More Than Equal signals an ongoing commitment to shaping the next generation of female racing drivers, and her coaching work through her own platform — sarahmooreracing.com — suggests that developing talent is now a parallel track to her competitive career rather than a retirement plan. [20][21] She has continued to pursue racing opportunities alongside coaching, and her ability to win races as recently as 2023 makes the competitive dimension of her future anything but theoretical. Whether her next chapter produces more firsts as a driver, more development of drivers coming up behind her, or both, the infrastructure she has built around her name suggests someone thinking well past the next season. [16]

References:

Wikipedia: Sarah Moore (racing driver)
Racecar.com: More success beckons for Moore family in Ginetta Junior
Sarah Moore Racing: About
National Motor Museum: Sarah Moore Racing Driver
Females in Motorsport: Sarah Moore — To Be on the Grid Is an Amazing Achievement
USA 50 Racing: Sarah Newberry Moore
Wikipedia: 2009 Ginetta Junior Championship
DriverDB: 2011 Intersteps Championship
UNH Wildcats: Sarah Moore — Women’s Track and Field
Sarah Moore Racing: LGBTQ+ Representation in Motorsport — Progress and Challenges
Alamy: Rob Baker, Sarah Moore — Britcar Endurance Championship
Wikipedia: 2019 W Series
Motorsport.com: 2019 W Series Hockenheim Results
ESPN: Alice Powell Wins W Series Opener — Sarah Moore Celebrates LGBTQ+ Racing First
Autosport: Moore — W Series Result Even More Special as First LGBT GP Weekend Podium
Racers Behind the Helmet: Sarah Moore Becomes First Ever Female Race Winner in Indian Racing League
Wikipedia: 2023 Indian Racing League
More Than Equal: MTE 2024 Cohort Press Release
Sports Illustrated: More Than Equal — A New Era for Women in Racing with Coaches Sarah Moore and Jordan King
Sarah Moore Racing: Racing Coaching
Sarah Moore Racing: Driver Coaching
Wikipedia: 2021 W Series
Motorsport Week: Exclusive — More Than Equal’s Sarah Moore
W Series Wiki: Sarah Moore