AJ Racing is the UK’s first all-female owner driver kart team, welcoming girls and women of all abilities and experience levels. Based in the Midlands, we offer hire in our team karts as well as storage, preparation and transport of customer karts. For both options, AJ Racing provides awning space and support at many circuits across the UK. While motorsport has seen a rise in female participation in recent years, the numbers remain low. According to More than Equal in 2024, only 13% of karters are female, with that figure dropping to 7% in formula and GT racing.

Our all-female team aims to bridge the gap between entry-level rental karting programmes, like F1 Academy's Discover Your Drive and the Jamie Chadwick Series, and elite-level initiatives such as Iron Dames Young Talents, More than Equal, and F1 Academy. Our mission is to produce strong candidates for these elite-level opportunities by focusing on racecraft, data analysis, mechanicing and engineering knowledge. With it being 30 years since a woman has competed in a Formula 1 race, producing a clear pathway of initiatives that support girls as they climb the motorsport ladder is crucial to prevent this number from growing any further.

Our mantra, “Driving Female Success”, goes beyond winning kart races and collecting trophies. Success, for us, means ensuring that each driver reaches her full potential while enjoying their motorsport journey. Stepping up from rental to owner driver karting can be daunting but AJ Racing exists to make this transition smooth and accessible for female drivers. We’ll help you choose the most suitable class for you or your daughter based on experience level and budget, while teaching you the important bits at the start of your exciting adventure. We’re not just passionate about increasing the number of female drivers in motorsport, we are also dedicated to inspiring more girls and young women to pursue careers in engineering and STEM fields.

With women representing only 15.7% of the UK’s engineering workforce, our team offers trackside work experience for aspiring female mechanics and engineers. Whenever possible, any additional mechanics required for our busier events will be women. While supporting female mechanics, this approach also helps create a welcoming atmosphere for drivers who may be intimidated by typically male-dominated kart team awnings. In the future, Ami plans to offer work experience at the team workshop where she will be able to provide further support to future STEM talent and mentor those who wish to follow in her footsteps as an F1 engineer.

Ami started karting aged 8 at her local indoor track before moving to owner driver karting at 13. Being a dad and daughter team meant Ami did a lot of work on her kart from a young age which helped shape her career aspirations of becoming an engineer. Throughout her teens, she raced in Easykart UK where she picked up a win in the senior lights class as well as several podiums. She then began racing 125cc Superkarts on long circuits aged 18 just as she started studying Bioengineering at the University of Sheffield. In 2022, she moved up to the 4-stroke 450cc class where she picked up several wins in the British Superkart Championship but, after missing the smell and the smoke of 2-strokes, has decided to go back to KZ2 short circuit karting for 2024.

Ami joined the university kart team in her 1st year and became captain at the start of her 3rd year. Ami grew the club, which was struggling to make a 4-driver team in the 2020 season, to have 5 teams competing in the championship in 2023 when she graduated. This was a tough but highly rewarding challenge which taught her marketing, coaching and organising teamwear, entries, and team finances. Ami was the first female to race for Sheffield Motorsport but thankfully is no longer the only woman in the team. Ami collaborated with other universities to organise all-female kart races for students which welcomed drivers of all abilities to race in a supportive environment. Some drivers who tried karting for the first time in these events now race competitively in the BUKC and other championships!

As if Ami couldn’t get enough motorsport in her university life, she was also a member of Sheffield Formula Racing who compete in the annual IMechE Formula Student UK competition at Silverstone. Formula Student is an engineering competition where student teams showcase their car which they have spent the academic year designing, building and testing. As well as being a driver, Ami was a member of the electronics sub team. Skills gained from Ami’s karting and Formula Student experience impressed the interview panel at Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 leading to a 13-month placement at the team. Between the 3rd and 4th year of her master’s degree, Ami worked at the factory in Brackley as an Electronics Engineer which involved designing PCB’s, testing sensors and other electrical car components as well as monitoring data during race weekends.

In 2022, Ami returned to Sheffield to complete her degree. She collaborated with Mercedes for her dissertation and graduated with a First Class Degree in Bioengineering in summer 2023. Now 24, Ami still works at the factory but on the teams largest non-F1 project: INEOS Britannia’s entry to the 37th America’s Cup. Her role as an Electronic System Test Engineer involves testing the yacht hardware and fault finding both in the UK and occasionally at the sailing team base in Barcelona. Looking to take on her next challenge, Ami has decided to pull learnings from the above experiences together to create the UK’s first all-female owner driver kart team.