Twenty-year-old Doriane Pin is perhaps the most charming and charismatic member of the F1 Academy paddock, with a mile-wide smile that matches her driving talent. After absolutely smoking everyone in the 2022 Ferrari Challenge Europe series and taking a class win at the 24 Hours of Spa, she’s been a hot commodity in the driver market, and has ambitions of making it to F1. For 2024 she has joined Prema Racing and the Mercedes Junior Program for the all-women F1 Academy series, where she’s fighting for the title. Ahead of this weekend’s double-header in Las Vegas she stopped by “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and used her Frenchness to diffuse a bit of his ignorance about the sport.
“Is the ultimate goal to race against the men?,” asks a somewhat oblivious Kimmel. Here Pin’s response is one of enthusiasm for her future in the sport, “Obviously, and to go to Formula 1.” That’s the kind of drive that someone who started in karting at nine years old would have. This is a life-long obsession with speed and racing.
She later says Road Atlanta is her favorite race track in the U.S., “because it’s kind of like roller coaster, it’s super. Like, the organs is going up and down. Yeah, I really like that.” That’s how you know she’s a real racer, because Road Atlanta kicks ass. She had an impressive run at that track for the Iron Dames Lamborghini team at Petit Le Mans last year.
This interview still shows some of the cracks in the facade of acceptance for women in racing, perhaps to be expected from someone who owes his career to co-hosting “The Man Show” with Adam Carolla. The right time to ask an international motorsports star if she “knows how to parallel park” or if “women drivers get out of the car and fight” was never.
If you didn’t know who Doriane Pin was before, you definitely do now. Keep an eye out for her in major endurance sports car races and open wheel events, perhaps even Formula One, in the near future.
