Samantha Tan blazes the trail for Asian women in racing

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Samantha Tan is a racing driver. Last year, she and her team piloted a BMW M4 GT4 racer to the championship, never finishing worse than second and dominating in the points standings. This year, moving up to the faster GT3 class, she gave the brand new BMW M4 GT3 racing chassis its very first racing win, at the 12 Hour Mugello race in Italy. It had been a ten year drought for BMW in this particular endurance racing series, and now a Canadian racing team with two Canadian drivers stood on the podium as “O Canada“ played.

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Even the motorsports illiterate can get behind this kind of moment. Endurance racing sports cars look like the kinds of cars you actually see on the street, and the skill and endurance required to run them for 12 or 24 hours at full tilt is the kind of effort that needs no further explanation. To be successful in this arena, you need skill and focus and drive, and also the ability to protect your machine and get it to the finish line.

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To see a privateer team waving the maple leaf from the top of the podium feels good. To be watching a young Canadian racing driver on a career trajectory that is likely going to require building an extension on to her rapidly filling trophy cabinet is certainly worth cheering about. But Tan is also a trailblazer in this sport, and the change she brings has been a long time coming.

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“I have my own personal goals,” she says, “But I also want to be the role model I never had.”

Earlier this year, NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin stirred up some controversy when he tweeted a old clip from the show Family Guy after a crash involving competing driver Kyle Larson. The clip, from 2011, involved a joke on the stereotype of how bad Asian women drivers are. Larson has Japanese ancestry, and while the two drivers are friends and NASCAR occasionally has a bit of a boys-will-be-boys attitude, Hamlin soon apologized.

The incident is less about what was said by whom, and more how prevalent the stereotype of the unskilled Asian woman driver still is. You’d think Tokyo-born Takuma Sato winning the Indy 500 twice would have begun to unravel misconceptions about Asian drivers in general, but they’re still out there.

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Generational change is long overdue, but it’s coming. To the more than 100,000 fans who follow her on Instagram, Samantha Tan has already proved that a female driver of Asian ancestry can not just compete with other elite drivers, but win. More than just driving, she’s also managing her racing team, recruiting drivers, dealing with sponsors, and up until recently, handling all of the branding efforts required for any modern racing driver.

Tan’s racing career began at 16, learning the secrets of preserving momentum in a modestly powered Honda Civic. Even before that, though, she was riding to school in her dad’s E36-chassis M3, picking up a hereditary love of going fast, and becoming a bit of a BMW fangirl. Her personal car is still the 1M she got as a hand-me-down when she turned 18.

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“I also want to be the role model I never had.”

“I learned to drive manual in that car,” she laughs, “And did my first racing school with it! It was the car that introduced me to the car community.”

The 1M is something of an enthusiast secret handshake car. Very rare in Canada — just 220 were made — it looks like a 10-year-old 1-series to the uninitiated, but is considered by many BMW fans to be one of the best M-cars ever built. Quite valuable these days, it could easily be swapped for something more conventional, like a Porsche Cayman. But Tan loves her little orange hooligan car.

It was the car that she took with her to university when she moved to California, to study economics. Tan kept racing while she was there, balancing studies, social life, and lapping at the track. That all changed in 2017.

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“I had a really bad crash at Road America. I went into the wall at 100 mph,” she says, “It was a real wake up call.”

If you were to try to pin down the point at which a motorsports enthusiast is differentiated from a racing driver, this would be it. Tan had the ability to walk away or pull back, build a career, maybe start collecting some of her other dream cars, perhaps compete occasionally in club-level racing.

Instead, she refocused. Back in the saddle a week after the crash. Seat time became a priority. Training five days a week to have the physical ability to withstand the sustained g-forces of endurance racing. Mental discipline. The goal: to stand atop the pinnacle of endurance racing.

This past Car Week at Monterey, Tan joined other groundbreaking female racers on-stage at the Quail Motorsports gathering. There, she chatted with the likes of Lyn St. James, one of just nine women to ever qualify for the Indy 500, and the only woman to win the Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year, in 1992.

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The Indy 500 is the peak of American open-wheel racing, but Tan has her sights set on the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Her usual racing number, 38, is the number of corners at the Circuit de La Sarthe. She has a racing road map to get there, focused on testing and practice, building consistency, and moving up into the IMSA and WEC racing series.

“I still get very nervous before I get in the car,” Tan says of her pre-race ritual, “I try to find someplace quiet and draw if I can. But I’ve pushed through the self-doubt over the past few years. From failure we succeed.”

ST Racing recently competed in the 24 hour race held on the weekend of September 9th to 11th in Barcelona. You can follow the team on their Instagram, as they look to find the same success in the GT3 class as they did with GT4.

And should you happen to be at a race, you’ll find Tan in the paddock, chatting strategy with her co-drivers and team, walking the track, or getting suited up to drive. She had to navigate her way here on her own. But Samantha Tan is a racing driver.