
Doriane Pin is 19 years old and has already competed in two out of four of the world's major 24-hour races, won one of them and finished on the podium in the FIA World Endurance Championship. Meet endurance racing's newest rising star.
Pin has rocketed up through the ranks of the sport in recent years. It's a statistic that's a little hard to believe, but she is currently in only her fourth season racing cars. Her rate of progress has been so sharp that she's a European Le Mans Series and 24 Hours of Spa race winner just two years after she moved out of Renault Clio Cup competition.
Doriane Pin was born on January 6th 2004 in the Ivry-sur-Seine suburb of France's capital Paris. Like many a racing prodigy, she started out in karting at an early age. Nine years old, in this case. After becoming the female French karting champion in 2019, she stepped up to the aforementioned single-make Renault series the following year. She remained there for just a single season before she formed arguably the most important alliance in her racing career.
By 2021, Iron Lynx Motorsport Lab was already a force to be reckoned with. Founded four years earlier by Andrea Piccini, Sergio Pianezzola, Claudio Schiavoni and Deborah Mayer out of the Italian city of Cesena, the team had rapidly developed into a powerful organization competing in European Le Mans Series, Michelin Le Mans Cup and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

A key part of Iron Lynx' operation is an offshoot team named Iron Dames. Spearheaded by Mayer, it was created with the aim of supporting women in motorsport at all levels. The initiative has its roots in the 2018 Gulf 12 Hours, where the all-female trio of Rahel Frey, Sarah Bovy and Michelle Gatting first teamed up. The trio still forms the core of Iron Dames' driver crew to this very day.
After just a single season in the Clio Cup, Pin was picked up by Iron Lynx and presented with a significant step up. From racing a Renault, Pin was moved straight into a Ferrari GT3 car in the Michelin Le Mans Cup, which supported the European Le Mans Series and 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was the right move at the exact right time. Pin joined as Iron Lynx was on the brink of evolving into an international powerhouse.
While Pin and Iron Dames co-drivers Sarah Bovy and Manuela Gostner laid down an impressive campaign with five consecutive podiums, the sister car won the Le Mans Cup title for a second straight year. Elsewhere, the team captured the GTE title in ELMS and Michelle Gatting became Ferrari Challenge Europe champion. The absolute crowning achievement came that summer, when a stunning late-race pass by Alessandro Pier Guidi ensured victory in a rain-soaked Spa 24 Hours.
For Pin, however, it would be the following year that really turned heads. For starters, she became Gatting's successor with a dominant title run in Ferrari Challenge Europe. That, however, was merely the start. Halfway through the European Le Mans Series campaign, teammate Rahel Frey announced she would step down from the lineup to concentrate on the FIA WEC season. In her place, Pin partnered with Gatting and Bovy. After a near-miss at Spa-Francorchamps, victory came in the season finale at Portimao. Oh, and she also joined Gatting, Bovy and Frey to take the Gold Cup class win in the Spa 24 Hours. On debut.

At the time of writing, it appears Pin is being fast-tracked for a career in prototype racing. The timing is anything but surprising. In late 2022, Iron Lynx and Lamborghini officially announced a long-rumored partnership to compete at the highest level of prototype competition. As part of the deal, Iron Lynx will run Lamborghini's currently-under-development LMDh car in WEC and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
The new alliance has already seen the entire Iron Dames squad (Bovy, Gatting, Frey and Pin) compete in a Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 at the Rolex 24 at Daytona. For Pin specifically, however, her main focus lies in WEC's LMP2 category.

After first sampling the Oreca 07 Gibson at WEC's Bahrain Rookie Test last November, Pin is now set for a full-season campaign with Prema in the globetrotting championship. Her co-drivers are famously rapid Lamborghini factory star Mirko Bortolotti and former F1 driver Daniil Kyvat. Placing her alongside co-drivers of that caliber, in a team as famously successful as Prema, is a pretty clear signal of the trust placed on Pin's shoulders at this still very early stage in her career. Oh, and then there's the small detail that Prema will play a key part in Lamborghini's 2024 LMDh effort, for which Bortolotti is a confirmed development driver. Writing on the proverbial wall? Perhaps.
With everything listed so far, it really should come as no surprise that Pin has already claimed her first WEC podium. During the season opener at Florida's Sebring International Raceway, the No. 63 Oreca was a frontrunner throughout. Bortolotti led the race late on, but a fuel stop with mere minutes to go demoted them to third. The WEC season continues next week with six hours of racing around Portimao.
Given her track record so far, it's safe to say Doriane Pin is definitely one to watch for the future. But, as fate would have it, there is another young French female racer currently climbing the sport's ladder at an impressive rate.
The Ferrari ace

Lilou Wadoux-Ducellier is two years Pin's elder at 21 years old. She was born in Amiens, the same northern city that produced France's reigning head of state Emmanuel Macron. Similarly to Pin, Wadoux currently competes in the FIA World Endurance Championship. Not unlike Pin, her rise through the ranks has been supported by some pretty significant figures. And just like Pin, her rise to the top level of endurance racing has been nothing short of remarkable.
Even though her father previously competed in rallying, Wadoux' early years were spent on a tennis court rather than a race track. It wasn't until the relatively late age of 14 that she first ventured into karting, making the leap into circuit racing two years later. After two years of competing in single-make Peugeot championships, Wadoux stepped up to TCR Europe in a Peugeot 308 TCR, racing for Julien Briché's JSB Compétition. Briché had previously aided Wadoux in her move from karts to car racing and himself piloted the team's second car. Sadly, a nasty crash at the third round at Spa-Francorchamps cut Wadoux' season short.
Not through a fault of her own making, Wadoux ended the opening race of the weekend upside down in the gravel at Courbe Paul Frere. Qatari driver Abdulla Al-Khelaifi clipped her car after a run through the gravel at Stavelot, sending Wadoux hurling through the air and landing on her roof before sliding into the gravel and rolling over multiple times. She was unharmed, but financial difficulties meant her season was essentially over. Apart from a one-off appearance in the Clio Cup France, that was effectively it as far as 2019 was concerned.
A year later, she made a career move that, in hindsight, laid the groundwork for her ascension into endurance racing. Wadoux stepped back into one-make racing, competing in the Alpine Elf Europa Cup. After a cautious debut season, she broke through in 2021 with seven podiums and a race win at Portimao. It was enough to get her noticed.

As it just so happened, the Alpine brand that she was now aligned with had been a longtime presence in the FIA World Endurance Championship through Philippe Sinault's Signatech organization. On top of that, Signatech also ran an Oreca 07 Gibson for the Richard Mille Racing Team (RMRT) operation, whose mission statement it was to promote female driving talent in the sport. While Wadoux was tearing it up across Europe in an Alpine A110, RMRT had fielded the trio of Beitske Visser, Tatiana Calderon and Sophia Floersch in the world championship series.
At the end of the year, the big invite came. Wadoux was to drive the team's LMP2 car at the post-season Bahrain Rookie Test. Alongside her, W Series stars Jamie Chadwick and Alice Powell also received the call to come to the test. Out of the three, Wadoux got the nod for the next season. In just three short years, she'd gone from an aborted TCR Europe campaign to teaming with rallying superstar Sebastien Ogier and reigning LMP2 champion Charles Milesi in WEC.

It's not unfair to say that LMP2 at that point in time was one of the most fiercely competitive racing categories anywhere in the world, stuffed to the brim with world-class talent. With that in mind, a top-ten finish in class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans is no mean feat, especially considering both Wadoux and Ogier were Le Mans rookies. After Le Mans, the rally star stepped away and in came veteran racer Paul-Loup Chatin. Chatin, Wadoux and Milesi were in the mix for an LMP2 podium at the next race at Monza until Prema's Robert Kubica collided with Chatin, damaging the gearbox.
Wadoux's debut season landed her another Rookie Test invite. This time, it was a big one as she was lined up to pilot Toyota Gazoo Racing's GR010 Hybrid Hypercar, less than 24 hours after the car had won the world title.
Surprisingly enough, the young Frenchwoman then moved away from prototype racing for 2023. Instead, Ferrari picked her up and announced Wadoux as its first-ever female factory driver. She was placed in the WEC's GTE Am class, piloting a Ferrari 488 GTE Evo alongside Luiz Perez Companc and Alessio Rovera. Sadly, Wadoux didn't get to taste any racing action at the season-opening 1000 Miles of Sebring. Four laps into the race, Perez Companc lost control of the car out of turn 1, sliding into the tire barrier and rolling over. The car was out of the race on the spot.

So, there you have it. Doriane Pin and Lilou Wadoux. Two drivers to definitely keep an eye on when the WEC season gets back underway next week. Two young French drivers, now both with the power of a major Italian organization behind them. Is the sky the limit? Only time can tell.
Comments