SOPHIE'S CHOICE IS INDYCAR
Don’t be fooled by the petite statue, sweet smile and the luxuriously flowing blonde locks, Sophia Floersch is an outspoken and hard-edged racer who wants to take a sledgehammer to the final glass ceiling for women in motorsport.
In 2025 the young German driver is embarking on a quest to become only the second female racer – after Danica Patrick –to break into one of the world’s two premier open-wheeler categories with a full-time IndyCar ride.
And she wants to do it on merit, not just because she has the X chromosome.
Floersch has turned her back on the male-dominated world of European racing, and any hope of eventually riding the career elevator into F1, and has instead signed up for IndyCar’s NXT feeder series in ‘25 with HMD Motorsports.
Her two-year goal is to make it into the IndyCar main game.
She sees the US as the best chance of giving her the chance to do what she loves the most- racing open-wheelers - but obviously doesn’t want to depart Europe without one last parting shot.
“The United States is more open to embracing a female racer, so this makes me very excited and optimistic about the things to come,” she said.
“The sport, the racing, the cars, and the tracks are real and pure. It’s great to be welcomed so positively and friendly.
“My aspiration has always been to race with the best of the best.
“From the beginning of my career, I’ve worked very hard with my team daily towards that goal. I’ve raced in different categories in most of the racing markets in the world.
"It was only natural for us to try the US now, as it is the biggest racing market worldwide,” she enthused after her first test recently at Barber Motorsport Park.
While still quite young, Floersch has a reasonably strong racing pedigree, having raced in the FIA Formula 3 championship, DTM and the European Le Mans series.
She’s also raced in the LMP2 class in the Le Mans 24 Hours three times with a fifth place in class being her best result.
Unfortunately, Sophia is best remembered for one of the worst days of her life, but one that has scored millions upon millions of hits on YouTube. https://youtu.be/P3m-VJ1ZZ3w
In 2018, while contesting the legendary F3 race at the Macau Grand Prix, Floersch had the crash of all crashes. The kind of crash when even the most seasoned racers go 'holy shit'.
On the fourth lap of the race, the car in front of her suddenly hit the brakes and she gave it a Dallara enema. The front suspension of Floersch’s car collapsed and, at warp speed and totally out of control, she arrived at the Lisboa Bend sideways to slam into another car.
But it was not over yet. That impact sent her car flying skywards, this time backwards, straight through the catch-fencing (which didn’t work as advertised) and into a photographers' stand at second-storey height – before it slammed back to earth.
One of her team was filmed in the pitsa saying “Motherf . . .ker” before turning his back and walking away, obviously fearing the worst.
Floersch had fractured her spine, and underwent 10 hours of surgery before she was cleared of any permanent damage, but the road back to racing was a long and often painful one.
That’s all behind her now, although she still has some surgical scars on her back, as the career blip of 2018 is all but forgotten with her attention turning to a real shot at smashing that annoying glass ceiling.
While we has to be incredibly careful in these days of rampant political correctness, the fact that Floersch is a very-photogenic 24-year-old blonde is not something that will go unnoticed by potential sponsors and IndyCar teams looking to hit the headlines.
Ironically, one of her team-mates this year will be another female IndyCar hopeful, Californian gal 23-year-old Hailie Deegan. She contested the 2024 NASCAR XFinity series and was, err, umm, crap.
Now she’s going to try the NXT open wheeler series, which may suit her 'talents' better. If her special talent is being slow, she’s picked well.
In a recent 22-driver NXT young driver test on the road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Deegan was not only last, but last by so much that her shadow was quicker.
So it looks like Sophia Floersch gets to keep her grip on that glass ceiling smashing sledgehammer for a while to come.
