As the first woman to win the IMSA WeatherTech Championship and a key figure in the landmark all-female crew of Heinricher Racing with Meyer Shank Racing, Danish driver Christina Nielsen’s impact in motorsport extends beyond her podiums and wins. We recently had the chance to talk to the champion about her racing journey, the evolving media landscape, and her new calling in sports psychology. Here is what she has to say.
All photos © Christina Nielsen
Christina’s father, Lars Erik, has been an accomplished driver, being on the LMGT2 podium of 24 Hours of Le Mans three times in a row from 2006 to 2008. Though motorsport ran in the family, Christina wasn’t led into motorsport by her father. But when she found the passion herself, her father was more than happy to guide her further in the journey. “One day, I went to a karting track with a friend of mine, and I just loved driving. When I went home, I asked my dad, ‘can we go do this?’. He was on board because it was a passion of his as well.”
My dad didn’t introduce me to it, per se. But when I came to him and said I would really like to try this, he encouraged me to go and do it and has been my biggest supporter ever since.
When Christina first started karting, and later when she moved into sports car, her father’s network was always there to help her connect the dots. “When I first started, my dad set me up with one mechanic, and we were travelling around Europe for quite a few years. We were in a van together, with the go-kart in the back, and this was how we went racing. My dad’s background was in endurance racing, so naturally, that was a normal path for me to take as well. I really fell in love with the endurance racing world. You’re sharing a car with another person. Multiple championships are happening at the same time during the races. You had to be good at understanding traffic, navigating traffic, and working with your team and your teammates. One of the most unique things about GT3 is that you can do it all over the world. There are so many different championships around the world.”
Racing is essentially very much a team sport. While the drivers get the spotlight, there’s also the part with the strategy, the pit stops, and the driver changes. It does take the effort from a team to succeed in endurance racing.
Racing around the world, Christina found one of her favorite places to race – the US. “In 2013, my friends in Europe were going to race in the ‘Petite Le Mans’ at Road Atlanta. I went with them. That was my first race in the US. To this day, Road Atlanta is still my favorite racetrack in the world. My first full year in the US, 2014, I did the Porsche Carrera Cup and some endurance races. It was a good way to get familiar with the race tracks. In 2015, we moved up to the IMSA WeatherTech Championship, which was also my first full season in the championship.”
Road Atlanta is old school in the sense that there’s not a lot of runoff space. You’re dealing with the traffic, and it’s a track with line corners, elevation, and fast flows. That was just something I really enjoyed.
In 2016, Christina made history by becoming the first woman to win the IMSA WeatherTech Championship. Then in 2017, she defended her title together with Alessandro Balzan for Scuderia Corsa. “My best memory of my career was when we won the championship in 2016, with Alessandro Balzan, my full-season co-driver, and Jeff Segal, our endurance driver. It was such an amazing team to be with. I really enjoyed my time. I had so much fun. There’s nothing better than being a driver, showing up to a race weekend, knowing you have a competitive car and a competitive team. You know if you do a good job, we’ll be in a position to create a good result.”
During Christina’s five full seasons in the IMSA WeatherTech Championship, her last season was also special – she joined hands with Katherine Legge and Bia Figueiredo to form an all-female crew for Heinricher Racing with Meyer Shank Racing. “I would say the best program I’ve been part of that I felt was a strong female representation would be the Heinricher Meyer Shank program. Unfortunately, we never got on the podium, but we were extremely competitive. I qualified the car quite often and had several top 3 or top 5 qualifications.”
I had a name in the US, and I also had young girls as fans. I think the Heinricher Meyer Shank program was where we made the biggest impact in terms of being represented as females.
As an accomplished driver and someone trained in Marketing and Management Communication, is there something she would’ve done differently in her career, considering the media landscape we are in now? Yes, building a better social media presence. “Parents of young drivers would come to me and ask how they can take the kid’s career to the next level, how they can get more sponsors. I always tell them if they want to invest in something, get someone to shoot content for them while they are on the road, during the race weekend. Create a platform online for the young driver. Even for myself, if I were to do things all over again, I would invest some money in building a social media platform. That being said, there’s always a balance between staying true to being a racer and being a marketing product, your result is still the most key thing.”
Right now, Christina is getting ready for the next chapter in her motorsport career – she’s going back to school to study psychotherapy, to one day work with young athletes and help them with the mental side of sport. “In racing, there are more lows than highs. But when you are in a stream of lows and not producing results, it can become mentally draining, and it affects the team atmosphere. I wasn’t always the strongest mentally by myself, and that definitely influenced my performance. In motorsport and any sports, you are not always going to be in a dream-team scenario where you have the best support from your team when things are tough. A lot of the pressure the young athletes are experiencing is also coming from being scrutinized in the media, especially with social media nowadays. Everybody is allowed to express an opinion online. These people may have absolutely no say on your career, but it doesn’t mean what they are saying can’t impact your mental state. If I can help somebody navigate this because I’ve gone through it, then that’s definitely a new passion of mine.”
As Christina shifts gears toward nurturing the next generation’s mental fortitude, we wish her triumph in this new chapter as well as all her other endeavors in the motorsport landscape!
Paddock Sorority 
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