Sara Senske, 21,

of Kennewick, Washington, a Lynx Racing driver is a rising star on open-wheel racing. 

Latest News

She began racing karts at age 7 and won her first race at 8. Early in her racing career, Senske won three karting Grandnational events, and finished in the top five seven times. She won the International Karting Federation Region 6 Gold Cup Championship in 1988 and again in 1989, and was the regional champion three years in a row, 1990-1993 in the Junior II 4-cycle class. After signing with Lynx in 1997, Senske ran the final six Star Formula Mazda races of the season -- and won the pole in her first-ever oval track race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Senske had her first full season in 1998, scoring four top-5 and six top-10 finishes during the 13 race season, and finishing 8th in the championship points battle.

In 1999, she ran a total of 20 races in both the Star Mazda (open-wheel) and Women's Global GT (sports cars) series. She finished 6th in the Mazda series, and 4th in the WGGT series, completing every lap of every race in both series. She won the Portland round of the WGGT from the pole, led every lap and set the fastest lap of the race on her way to a 27-sec. margin of victory over the second-place finisher. In the 20 races, she scored one win, one pole, three fastest race laps, three podiums as well as six top-5 and six top-10 finishes. Senske's hobbies include ice skating, rollerblading, skiing, hiking and writing poetry. She is also a music fan, including contemporary Christian, jazz and classical. Her favorite foods are Thai, Italian and Mexican, and her favorite TV show is "I Love Lucy." She lists among her talents the ability juggle, and if she couldn't be a racing driver, she'd like to be a player on the Olympic Women's Ice Hockey team.

Senske will spend at least two years in the Barber Dodge series before moving up to the Lynx Racing CART Toyota Atlantic team, the final step on the ladder to the CART Fed Ex series. Lynx Racing driver Sara Senske is the fastest-rising female star in open wheel racing-- driving for Lynx Racing, the only championship-winning racing team and driver development program owned by women 
"It's part of a racer's life to develop a mental switch you can throw that allows you to enjoy all these sorts of outside activities but then be totally focused as soon as you step into the car," says Senske, who was chosen for CART's 'Women in Racing' program and tested with the PPI Atlantic team. "And focus is the name of the game. It takes a ferocious amount of focus to get just close enough to the walls to go fast without going that extra inch that instantly transforms speed into a mistake. Lynx Atlantic driver David Rutledge and I were at the kart track a while back and I asked him what racing on a street course was like and he said that for the first few laps it was '...like threading a concrete needle' but after that the walls just fade into the background and you treat it like any other race." 

In 2000, Senske ran the full schedule of Barber Dodge Pro Series races, scoring one top-10 finish and finishing 19th in the championship. She will run in BDPS again in 2001, and during off-season testing has been consistently in the top three. She has also been invited to run in the professional division of the Toyota Pro/Celebrity race at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach and is a candidate to join the CART pace car team.

2000 marked the 10th anniversary of Lynx Racing, one of the most unique organizations in auto racing today. Created and owned by two women, Peggy Haas and Jackie Doty, Lynx is both a championship-winning racing team and a uniquely successful driver development program that focuses on a driver's spiritual and psychological growth in addition to their on-track skills. The Lynx mission is to seek out young drivers with the desire and potential to become champions at the highest levels of the sport and provide them with the funding, equipment and training to take the last step toward realizing that potential, a process the team calls 'destiny by design.' Lynx alumni include CART FedEx drivers Patrick Carpentier, Alex Barron and Memo Gidley.

We at racerchicks.com want to thank Lynx Racing Public Relations Guru, Peter Frey for all his help and we wish Sara the best -- go get 'em tiger...um.. I mean Lynx!!!!