In 2024, American driver Gray Leadbetter debut in Extreme E alongside Travis Pastrana with Legacy Motor Club. This year in October, she entered the inaugural FIA Extreme H World Cup alongside Fraser McConnell with ZEROID QEV Motorsport. We had the opportunity to catch up with Gray recently. Here’s her story of chasing speed.
© All photos provided by Gray Leadbetter
Gray Leadbetter’s interest in driving fast-moving cars started with common plastic toys from the supermarket. But her real taste for speed stemmed from riding something much more real than a toy. “When I was about two, many kids my age had plastic toy cars from Walmart. I, of course, also wanted one. But my parents didn’t like the sound of the plastic tires on the gravel driveway in front of our house. So my dad actually gave me something even better – an electric four-wheeler. They saw that I really liked it, so they put me on a dirt bike with train wheels a year later. When I was four, I started to enter races, and it just never stopped from there.”
My parents may say, ‘we can go to Disney World, or go on vacations, or go to your friend’s birthday party.’ But I always say I wanted to go racing, this is what I want to do.
After racing for six years as a kid, Gray found her first major goal at 10 years old. “We went to the X Games, and I saw rallycross there. I immediately fell in love with it. I think that was the turning point for me to really treat racing seriously. They told me I can race rallycross at 14. So I started preparing for this goal. We got a Yamaha YZ side-by-side, and I started driving it to learn the sequential shift. When I turned 14 in 2019, I was lucky enough to get an offer from Dreyer and Reinbold Racing to drive in the Americas Rallycross series (ARX2).”
Before starting to work towards rallycross, Gray tried many different things, from karting to legend cars. Since committing to rallycross, she has primarily concentrated on off-road short-course racing. It’s a combination of what she’s always loved as a child, and a more level playing field for women. “We mostly race on a dirt bike track. Everyone knows that for women in motorsport, it’s so hard to make it in the dirt bike world, because of the physical strength it requires. Compared to that, racing cars doesn’t require that much, so women have a better opportunity. I really like the dirt bike world that I grew up in. What I do now is just racing cars in it.”
Her dedication quickly yielded results. In 2020, Gray started racing in the Sportsman SXS Class of Championship Off-Road and then moved into the Pro class a year later. In both classes, she became the first woman to win a race in the class. Her first short-course win in 2020 was particularly memorable. “At the last race of 2020, I gave my teammate my car because my teammate was fighting for the championship, and I wasn’t. But the team was able to find me a car. We got to the track at around 10pm and got everything going. I was able to race the next day and went from dead last to first. It was my first short-course win. And I didn’t think it was going to happen at all. I went from not even going to race to winning my first race.”
While building her career in Championship Off-Road, Gray also kept an eye on the international racing scene. “At the end of 2022, I went to Uruguay for Energy X-Prix with the Chip Ganassi team, which was how I first knew about Extreme E. I was still under 18 at the time, so a parent had to come with me. I didn’t have the ability to actually travel around the world and race in the championship.”
In 2024, as she met the age requirement, Gray made a huge step by debuting in Extreme E at Desert X Prix with Legacy Motor Club (Legacy M.C.). Even though the start is a bit hectic, it was a great experience for her to be racing in Saudi Arabia and Scotland. “Last year, Travis Pastrana reached out to me and asked me whether I wanted to run with him for Jimmie Johnson’s Legacy M.C. in Extreme E. I’ve never really said no to an opportunity, so of course I said yes. I’m very grateful that he picked me as his teammate. It was only two weeks before the first race. I had to get new FIA-standard gears within that really short two-week window. It was such a surreal experience to be racing in Saudi Arabia and Scotland. It’s so cool to get to travel and race at the same time.”
This year, Legacy M.C. didn’t continue with Extreme E, but Gray was able to secure herself a seat in Extreme H as the replacement for Laia Sanz while Laia had a scheduling conflict with Rallye du Maroc 2025. “It gave me a bit of a step down because I didn’t race in Extreme E and only filled in for Extreme H. Everyone else had already run the same track. But it’s also a brand new car for everyone, so it’s a level playing field on that front. The Extreme H car I drove this year drove a lot better than the Extreme E car I drove last year. I had a blast, it was such a cool experience.”
I raced against Fraser McConnell back in 2019 when I was 14 in ARX2. So getting to race with him as his teammate and having him to help you was super cool.
When asked to reflect on her strengths as a driver, Gray revealed a unique mental approach that defines her racing style. “I don’t like to think about racing before I get into a vehicle. I’ll go and check out the track, but it’s always going to change. That’s the difference between asphalt and dirt. So I won’t think about racing until I put my helmet on. I’ve been like this since I was a kid.”
Gray is not only achieving her own dreams but also paving a new road for the next generation of female drivers in off-road racing. As she continues to ascend in the racing world, we wish her all the best of luck in her endeavour in motorsport and beyond!
Paddock Sorority 
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