At twelve years old, Alana Gurney has already done something most drivers spend careers chasing — she’s won on the international stage, broken barriers at home, and caught the attention of the FIA in the same season.

EARLY YEARS

Born around 2012–2013 and based in Victoria, Australia, Gurney got her start the way the best origin stories tend to go — informally, on family property, behind the wheel of a dirt kart at age four. No track, no officials, no timing gear. Just a kid who wanted to go fast and a family willing to let her. By age seven, that backyard enthusiasm had evolved into something more structured: her first official competitive appearance at Stony circuit, where informal laps gave way to real racing against real competitors.

OTHER INTERESTS

The available record on Gurney’s life outside the kart is thin — not unusual for a twelve-year-old whose public profile is still being written. What is documented is her participation in the Speaker Slam program, which helped her develop public speaking skills and confidence in front of an audience. For a young driver navigating media appearances, sponsor obligations, and high-profile development programs, that kind of training turns out to matter almost as much as lap times.

EARLY SUCCESS

Gurney’s competitive record began taking shape during the 2022 Australian Kart Championship, where she raced in the Cadet 9 category and started building the kind of consistent results that get noticed. By the end of 2023, the Victorian karting community had seen enough to name her the Victorian Karter of the Year in Cadet 9 — a recognition that confirmed she wasn’t just promising, she was delivering.

The step up to Cadet 12 didn’t slow her down. In 2024, she took home the Oakleigh Club Championship and repeated as Victorian Karter of the Year, this time in the new category. At the national level, she finished fourth from a field of seventy-six drivers in the Karting Australia Championships — a result that sits quietly on a résumé but speaks loudly to anyone who understands what that field looks like.

The breakthrough that made headlines, though, came at the GoPro Summer Series Finale, where Gurney won the Gold Medal in the Cadet 12 Feature Race. She was the first female driver in the event’s history to do it. Karting Australia’s own report noted the milestone plainly: a breakthrough win, a first for women, a line drawn in the results sheet that won’t be erased. Auto Action, Kart Sport News, and Karting Australia’s official site all ran the story — which tells you something about how the broader motorsport media read the moment.

In early 2025, she carried that momentum into the opening round of the SP Tools Australian Kart Championship at Port Melbourne. Competing in Cadet 12 against seventy-four entries, she didn’t just win her first AKC race — she won two of them in a single day, landing toward the top of the points order before the championship had even found its rhythm.

The culmination of the 2025 season was the FIA Girls on Track – Rising Stars Junior Championship, where Gurney was selected from nine finalists drawn from a worldwide pool of eligible junior female drivers aged twelve to sixteen. The FIA announced her as the Junior Champion, citing her “exceptional consistency, maturity, and ability to learn fast under pressure both on and off the track.” That last phrase — on and off the track — is the part worth underlining. The program doesn’t just clock lap times. It watches how drivers handle pressure, feedback, and the weight of a room full of expectations. Gurney handled all of it.

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

• 2022: Competed in the Australian Kart Championship, Cadet 9 category — the documented start of her formal racing career.
• 2023: Named Victorian Karter of the Year (Cadet 9), recognising season-long excellence across the state’s competitive calendar.
• 2023: Competed in the Victorian Kart Championship at Albury-Wodonga in the Cadet 9 category.
• 2024: Named Victorian Karter of the Year (Cadet 12), demonstrating consistency after moving up a category.
• 2024: Won the Oakleigh Club Championship.
• 2024: Finished fourth from seventy-six drivers in the Cadet 12 category at the Karting Australia Championships.
• 2024: Competed in the SP Tools Australian Kart Championship Round Two in Cadet 12, racing an FA Kart with Vortex engine, supported by Driver Dynamics and Raceline MR.
• 2024: Became the first female driver to win a Gold Medal at a Summer Series event, taking the Cadet 12 Feature Race at the GoPro Summer Series Finale.
• 2025: Won the Ladies Trophy, awarded to the top-scoring female competitor across the karting season.
• 2025: Won two races on the opening day of the SP Tools Australian Kart Championship at Port Melbourne in the Cadet 12 category from a field of seventy-four entries.
• 2025: Selected for the FIA Girls on Track – Rising Stars program, chosen as one of nine finalists from a global pool of eligible junior female drivers.
• 2025: Named FIA Girls on Track – Rising Stars Junior Champion, selected by the FIA for her exceptional consistency, maturity, and ability to learn under pressure.
• 2025: Selected for the Karting Australia and Formula One Australian Grand Prix Team of Tomorrow program, providing inside-paddock access to the elite level of the sport.

INSPIRATIONS

No specific drivers or figures have been named in the public record as direct inspirations for Gurney. What can be said is that her entry into motorsport came through family — dirt karts on a family property at age four is not a story about stumbling into a sport, it’s a story about being raised in proximity to one. Whatever spark ignited her competitive drive, the environment that sustained it was built at home before it was built on a circuit.

REPUTATION

Within Australian karting, Gurney is widely regarded as one of the nation’s leading junior female motorsport talents — a descriptor that appears in Motorsport Australia’s own communications, which tend to choose their words carefully. The FIA’s assessment goes further, identifying qualities that extend beyond speed: consistency across conditions and formats, psychological maturity under competitive pressure, and a demonstrable capacity to absorb coaching and apply it quickly. These are the attributes that development programs look for when they’re trying to identify drivers who will still be relevant in five years, not just five rounds.

Her Summer Series Gold Medal victory drew coverage from Auto Action, Kart Sport News, and Karting Australia’s official platform — a level of media attention that reflects how the industry read the significance of the result. Being the first female driver to win that medal in the event’s history is the kind of milestone that tends to attach itself to a name permanently, regardless of what comes next.

Kart Sport News has described her as a “Junior karting sensation” — the kind of label that can be dismissed as promotional language until you look at the results table and realise it’s just accurate. Two Victorian Karter of the Year awards in consecutive categories, a nationally recognised Summer Series breakthrough, a global FIA program win, and a Team of Tomorrow selection in the same season is not a coincidence of fortune. It is a pattern.

FUTURE GOALS/PLANS

Gurney has confirmed she will contest the full three-round FIA Arrive & Drive Asia-Pacific Championship, marking a deliberate expansion of her competitive scope beyond Australian domestic karting and into international competition across the Asia-Pacific region. The commitment to all three rounds — rather than selective entries — signals a serious seasonal campaign at the international level.

Her participation in the Team of Tomorrow program is expected to continue into 2026, with the Formula One Australian Grand Prix once again providing the setting. Karting Australia’s communications referenced Gurney and fellow participant Sammy van Vuuren as having “continued to excel both on and off the track,” suggesting the program regards their 2025 experience as the foundation for ongoing involvement rather than a one-time placement.

The longer arc of her career — what comes after karting, which single-seater pathways open, and whether the FIA Rising Stars recognition translates into Ferrari Driver Academy or similar elite development opportunities — remains to be written. The structure of the programs she has entered is explicitly designed to build bridges toward Formula Three and beyond. Whether those bridges lead somewhere depends on what she does next. Based on the available evidence, the expectation is that she will make that an interesting question to follow.

References:

Driver DB – Alana Gurney Profile
FIA – Winner of 2025 FIA Girls on Track Rising Stars Junior Announced
Kart Sport News – Gurney Makes FIA List
Motorsport Australia – Gurney Named Girls on Track Rising Star
Wikipedia – FIA Girls on Track – Rising Stars
Kart Sport News – Victorian Karters of the Year 2023
Girls Torque – Racer Profile: Alana Gurney
Grand Prix – Team of Tomorrow Returns to Fuel Junior Dreams in 2026
Kart Sport News – Alana’s Asian Adventure
Speedcafe – Karting Australia and AGPC Launch Team of Tomorrow
Karting Australia – 2024 Australian Kart Championship Round Two Final Entry List
Karting Australia – Breakthrough Win for Fast Female at Summer Series Finale
Karting Australia – Italian Star Dominates Australian Kart Championship Opening Day
FIA Official – Winner of 2025 FIA Girls on Track Rising Stars Junior Announced
YouTube – How Speaker Slam Helped Alana Become a Fearless Communicator
Kart Sport News – Gurney’s Gold at Summer Series
Karting Victoria – State Champions Crowned at Albury-Wodonga for the 2023 Victorian Kart Championship
Auto Action – Gurney Headlines Summer Series Finale
Speedcafe – 2026 Team of Tomorrow Karting Australian Grand Prix Program Returns