Mazda MX-5 Racing’s Shea Holbrook Has What It Takes

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that women in sports — hell, women in everything — have it harder than their male counterparts. Race car driving is, of course, no different, and maybe even worse. That’s where Amazon Prime’s new docushow, First to the Finish, comes in. It follows the Mazda MX-5 Cup and, in particular, the women of the races. One such woman is Shea Holbrook, a famed race car driver herself, and now owner of BSI Racing, a team in search of the podium.

She’s a mom of two — she had her daughter, Olivia, in 2020, and her son, Cooper, in 2021 — holds a Guinness World Record (more on that in a bit) and is married to a man she describes as looking like Mr. Incredible. The show closely follows Holbrook as she navigates owning and running a team in a high-stress, male-dominated field. It’s a really fun watch if you’re curious about racing, believe in girl power, or just want an adrenaline rush.

Scary Mommy caught up with Holbrook while she was at the race track — I spoke with her on the eve of her first race back in the driver’s seat in five years — and got to chatting about what it takes to be a woman leader in her field, her Guinness World Record and mothering on the track.

Scary Mommy: You seem to have done a lot of different racing in your career. What’s been your favorite?

Shea Holbrook: Well, I mean my favorite is running an MX-5 Cup. I've never worked harder in my life than on an MX-5 Cup program. The days are really long. You fail more than you succeed. And that's just how it is. But those learning experiences are really what makes our drivers, our car chiefs, myself as a business owner, that really is what makes us who we are. And then when we do excel and we do win, I mean, it's a big-time celebration... I wouldn't say I loved everything that I've ever driven, but I had some really cool experiences. Like I'm in a Guinness Book of World Records for a paced bicycle landscape record.

SM: What does that mean?

SH: What was really cool about this is it wasn't really about me. I was a part of something; I feel pretty strongly that we were probably the only people in the world doing what we did. Denise Mueller is a champion cyclist, and she's incredibly fast on a bike. She's an incredible athlete, and she called me through recommendations. She wanted a female race car driver to be the drafting vehicle for her for this paced bicycle land speed record that we did at the Bonneville Salt Flats out in Utah. That's where all the land speed records are held because of the distance on the salt. And they groom the salt to try to make it as smooth and flat as possible, but it's still very abrasive. Over the course of four miles, she went 184 miles an hour on what is a normal pedal bike. It's a purpose-built bike, but it's a normal bicycle with a really low gear ratio. She was drafting behind the car that I was driving, which was called a dragster for drag racing, and we created a fairing off the back so we could create this drafted vortex. It was the most dangerous thing that I, in my opinion, have ever been a part of. Because if I made the smallest mistake, it could honestly result in her death. I mean, if you're going to fall off a bike at 184 miles an hour, you're probably going to die.

SM: That is very cool. What's the best piece of advice you've gotten from other women in sports, in particular race car driving or otherwise? And how do you pay that forward?

SH: Lyn St. James, a retired professional race car driver, had been a mentor of mine. She was in the Indianapolis 500 seven times. She was a driver in an era of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, a time when there weren't even female bathrooms at racetracks. She grew up in that era, the "I have to be one of the boys, but I'm also feminine and I'm a woman." The juggling act of that, I think, had to make her really stern and very forward. She always told me things to benefit me, even if it hurt my feelings. I just had an immense amount of respect for the fact that she cared to tell me things through her experiences. Not like a right and a wrong way of doing things, but through her experiences.

So, as I work with drivers like Heather and other female drivers, I like to share my experience. I mean, I've just always worn my heart on a sleeve, and that has gotten me places. Sure, there were people who didn't like how authentic I was, or how raw I was, or how unorthodox I had to do things and... But you know what, though? That was such a small percentage, and I'm like, "Screw them." I just didn't care. I lived, I did what I needed to do professionally. Of course I needed to be marketable and be mindful of it, but I really stayed authentic to who I felt like I was becoming. And you don't know who you are when you're 16 or even 19 or 20. You learn more about yourself when you're 30. … I don't ever want a driver to dim their light. It's funny, I even say in the show like, "I'm not your mom, I'm your boss." But the funny part of that is I am everybody's mom.

SM: It's the nature I think of being a woman, right?

SH: Yea, exactly the nature of being a woman. The best advice that I would give is find out what ignites you and don't dim your light. Just channel more into that. Because people, at the end of the day, our industry is very performance-based, and results matter. Period. But we're also in an industry now, in a world, where the human interest in liking who you do business with or liking who you support has always been and even more so now is important. When your career is over, what do you really want to be remembered for? People are going to remember you as a champion and a winner and this and that, but that's not what they're going to talk about in your funeral.

So just staying very, very authentic and true to yourself and doing it in an unapologetic way as long as you have a good moral compass too. Because I think, especially in our industry, you can be forced to do things because you think it's the right thing for the time. I could have gotten further in my career if I was a little bit more risque, if I allowed sex to sell for me, and the reason why I never did it was because it's just not who I am at my core, authentically. So I just stayed true to those colors for me, and that worked.

SM: One of the parts of the show that struck me was when they're talking about your pack that you draft with and how the groups work. It was interesting to watch the dynamic play out, and to me, it was like, am I supposed to think that that's a very boy club kind of situation and the girls have to fend for themselves a little bit? Is it as male-dominated as it seems? Are changes happening?

SH: It's definitely changing, but I will say that it's changing in the paddock and in our industry, but I don't think it's changing as much on the race side. We've made huge gains. But I do think that there is kind of still a good old boys club when it comes to when the helmet comes on and the visor drops down… I mean, shoot, I've been out of a car for a very long time, and I happen to be in a car right now this weekend. And even I'm experiencing some of that. It's not so much because I'm a woman... These kids that I'm racing against right now, they're conditioned for this and they've been training for this for years, and I'm just jumping back in the seat.

For women, I think still to this day, though, it's like a little bit of a double standard and a double-edged sword because when women are exceeding somebody's expectations, they're put on a pedestal. They're the greatest. But if they're anything less than that expectation, then they suck. And that's not a fair standard. Because I remember, for example, there was a year where I finished fourth just off the podium, like race after race after race. some negative press came out about me because of it, and I'm like, That's freaking unfair. Like nobody's talking about fifth, sixth all the way down to 25th, and those guys, they were all guys. Nobody's talking about how much they suck, but they're talking about how bad I suck because I'm finishing 4th. So, that can be really tough on a female athlete.

SM: So what is this race you're doing?

SH: I'm just in another series of ours. It's the beginning of our season. I can relate a little bit because, you know, I'm not doing as well as I used to. Not at all, not anywhere near. But I don't care. Like for me right now, I'm not here to perform and be on podium. I'm one of the only quasi-retired female race car drivers who became a mother that decided to get back in the seat, and I have a totally different perspective and an expectation around it. I'm doing it because I want to and I want to have a good time; I want to challenge myself athletically. I haven't challenged myself in five years athletically. I want to kind of show other mothers in the industry like, hey, don't give up on your dreams. Don't give up on your passion. Don't give up on why you started something. It's OK to come back, and it's OK if your expectations change around it too.

SM: How old are your kids?

SH: I had Olivia in '20 and Cooper in '21. My daughter traveled with me during Covid on 12 round-trip flights as an infant. I raised my daughter at the racetrack.

SM: How cool.

SH: This is obviously a male-dominated space, but the boys raised my daughter with me. I mean, there were times where we would have to leave and one of the guys, the tire guy, would stay back and he would walk Olivia while she slept, or feed her a bottle or burp her or console her, walk her in the stroller, or whatever. I would pass my daughter off to the people that I trusted frequently. Anytime I went somewhere, she was either on a carrier with me or in a stroller, and I had a headset on. It's just me doing my job just with my baby in tow. And that is completely uncommon to see in our industry.

SM: I was going to ask you what you did in your downtime, but in speaking with you, I don’t think you have any downtime!?

SH: It's very uncommon that we have downtime because I guess the hard part, though, kind of the balancing and juggling act is the balance between being a mother, being a parent, being a wife, and then running the business. And I think with, because racing is, it's not a 9:00 to 5:00... I mean listen, 26 weeks out of the year, I'm gone on multiple different racing programs of ours. As owners, things never stop for us because of the partnerships that we have, the customer base. When I refer to customers, customers are drivers. We're growing in scale, so we have a lot going on. So the balancing act is really tough. When I go home, if I'm with my kids, I really try to be invested in my kids 100%. Cooper, the other night was kind of talking in his sleep, not fully awake, and he said, "Mommy, please don't leave me."

SM: Oh god.

SH: I'm like, "I'm right here." And I realized, wow, he's not even really awake. He's subconsciously dreaming about this, and he knows I'm going to be leaving soon. Then another thing he said within the next 20 minutes, he obviously was dreaming. He said, "Mommy, put your phone down." I mean, we're sleeping, in the middle of the night sleeping... And I went, "Oh my God! I'm a shitty mom, I'm a shitty mom!" And you never have enough time. It's hard no matter what, however you slice it and dice it, it's really difficult. So I'm just trying to have grace with everything…

Heather, in an interview we were doing together recently, said basically that I was the “most masculine female leader” she’d ever encountered. I looked at her, and I was like, "Is that a compliment? What does that mean?" And she's like, "It's a compliment because you have a masculine approach in that nobody's going to fuck with you. You're methodical in what you say and how you say it, and you say it with intent and purpose and meaning. And there's a little bit of, like, shock factor. But then I need to know more, and I'm going to follow Shay because she's going to lead us." But I do it in a way where it comes from a compassionate side and with empathy because I'm a woman, and that's just a natural trait that we have. So, I really try to blend both of those worlds to be successful, and I think that I have been successful because of it because I took the masculinity of our sport but also the femininity of who I am at my core and blended those together to be able to be relatable and ultimately be successful in my career and then the teams that I've worked with.

SM: It seems that way to me just from watching it too.

SH: People will literally come up to me because they're like, "She'll get it done. If there's anybody that's going to get it done, Shea is going to get it done." And it's never been a female dominance or a male dominance thing for me; it's just I want to be the best at what I do. I never want to be outworked.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.