The Heart of Racing All-Female Team Scores First Win at Indianapolis
Indianapolis, Ind. (7 October 2023) – The Heart of Racing all-female team scored their first win at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Friday in GT4 America powered by AWS in the No. 26 Aston Martin Heart of Racing entry.
Hannah Grisham and Rianna O’Meara-Hunt landed their seats as the winners of the Heart of Racing’s female driver shootout in November 2022. The two were picked to represent Heart of Racing from hundreds of applicants around the world.
The Indianapolis win marks a significant breakthrough after the rookie pairing suffered challenging luck through the season. Before this weekend, the duo’s season-best result was fifth at Circuit of the Americas, VIRginia International Raceway and Sebring International Raceway. The win confirmed the growing pace and confidence for the duo, after having scored a strong run in qualifying.
“We’ve had a bit of ups and downs this year,” said Grisham. “Our pace has been so strong, especially the second half of this year. It’s great to finally put it all together. It’s so special to share this moment as a team.”
After a short practice session due to a downpour of rain on Thursday, Grisham and O’Meara-Hunt had a dry qualifying run Friday morning. Grisham was first to qualify to set the grid for Friday’s evening race, she set a fast lap of 1:31.515 seconds to score her second pole award of the season. O’Meara-Hunt was up next, securing a fourth place starting position for Sunday morning’s race.
Grisham was able to control the lead through her stint, which included a caution and restart in the opening segment of the one hour race. The California native passed the Aston Martin over to O’Meara-Hunt with just under 30 minutes remaining. O’Meara-Hunt built up a ten second gap between her and the rest of the AM class. The New Zealand native was able to keep the Aston Martin in the lead all the way to the checkered flag to score the pairings first-ever victory.
“It was definitely a surreal moment,” said O’Meara-Hunt of the victory on hallowed grounds. “Hearing Nate come across the radio saying ‘P1′ as I crossed the line and took the checkered. The last few laps were really hard. I was struggling with pace, but was able to keep on. It was amazing! We’ve shown pace all year but just haven’t had luck. We finally got our podium. It feels really good to finish the season off strong.”
The big result marked one of two victories for Heart of Racing on the day, as the team also celebrated victory with the sister No. 26 Heart of Racing Aston Martin of Gray Newell and Roman De Angelis claiming a victory in the PRO-AM category to open the weekend at the Brickyard.
The Grisham / O’Meara-Hunt duo, as well as the Newell and De Angelis pairing, will be back in action Sunday morning at 10:35am ET for the second race of the Indianapolis weekend.
