“First to The Finish” Docuseries Depicts Mazda MX-5 Cup Series
Sally Mott, Shea Holbrook and Heather Hadley star in “First to the Finish.” Photo: Mazda
Three Women Double Down on Pro motorsport At All Costs in new Amazon Prime Series
“First to the Finish” is a new six-part docuseries produced by Boardwalk Pictures streaming on Amazon Prime that dives into the on and off-track drama of the Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup series and the lives of the drivers who put their all into professional motorsports. The show follows the grit and grind of the 2024 motorsports season, in the spirit of the Netflix hit about Formula 1 “Drive to Survive.” Through the perspective of three women., “First to the Finish” explores the behind-the-scenes dynamics that are at the heart of racing.
The action starts in episode one, which illustrates the mental toughness that propel teams to chase a place on the podium in the scrappy Mazda series, an action-packed form of racing that is accessible at local tracks around the country.
What makes this series distinct from “Drive to Survive” is the lives of the leading women cast members portrayed, two young race car drivers Heather Hadley and Sally Mott, and team boss Shea Holbrook. The message is resonant — these women will do what it takes to win, and their will to tackle adversity is inspiring. The Mazda Cup has fervent fans, but it’s also an entry point for a new generation of driving talent, where the competition is grueling.
Holbrook, Team Owner & Principal of BSI Racing, is already a motorsports legend. Holbrook was the first female driver to win a touring car race at Long Beach and earned seven wins in the Pirelli World Challenge. “I had a 15-year career racing and ultimately transitioned out of the race car to start a family, not knowing if I was going to throttle out, but I ended up like a thousand percent further into motorsports than I ever imagined,” said Holbrook in an interview. She entered into team management and together with her husband they bought BSI Racing. They scaled up and built 250 Spec Miata chassis, the structural parts of cars that essentially hold the car together.
“The ferocity in MX-5 Cup is unequivocal to anything else. ”
“We are always fixing cars in the MX-5 Cup. Because of how tight knit, close quarter, fender to fender, door to door, competitive racing that it is, the ferocity in MX 5 Cup is unequivocal to anything else,” Holbrook said. “Even new fans take on to MX-5 Cup because it’s incredible to watch. We wreck cars.”
Holbrook, who was once also a nationally ranked water skier, is a guiding voice, mentoring and steering the young drivers on her squad. She and her husband bought BSI Racing five years ago and have put everything they have into building it out as they parent two young kids, where the stakes are high and the pressure to succeed is relentless. Still, she’s not afraid to put herself in vulnerable positions. “I've been out of a race car for five years completely 100% and this past weekend I got back in a car and there were a lot of fears around it,” she said. “The expectation that you should have for yourself is to prepare, to get better each time, to learn something each time. That is the way that I've always found to live fearlessly.”
Heather Hadley is making her own way as the #54 driver in the MX-5 Cup and competes for the BSI Racing Team. She’s always been competitive —she and her dad played chess at coffeeshops in her California hometown. She got into her first go kart race at age 9 and was hooked. “I had won 104 out of 107 of the races that I had entered,” she said. “We bought a go-kart and then I raced go-carts for five years locally in California.” She moved onto the funky legend car series, designed to look like a retro-futuristic version of cars from the 1930s. While racing, she also earned a degree at the University of North Carolina, and draws from her analytical mind to conquer the sport. “I've made a lot of like sacrifices to be able to do it, sacrificing on social things, missing out on senior prom. Racing is just the priority. “ While at age 23, Hadley has moved up the ranks in the Mazda series, she’s set her goals high. “I would love to race an Indy car, and I would love to win the Indy 500,” she said. “I'd love to see a woman do it in my lifetime, in general. And I would want to be the person to do it.”
“ I would love to race an Indy car and I would love to win the Indy 500.”
For 20-year-old driver Sally Mott, racing runs in the family. Her father, a former driver, gave her the fundamentals to work with when she was a little kid. “He would take me to the race track and just like let me drive around and he would never let me practice the wrong line, because he wanted me to have a strong foundation in case I ever wanted to go racing.” Yet, Mott grew up in a small Texas town and racing wasn’t the obvious choice or something she followed. “It was something unique that my dad was traveling around and bonding with these other kids who were my age. I was like, this is a really cool opportunity, why don't I give it another shot?” Since she hopped into the driver’s seat at age 15, she hasn’t looked back. She made her debut in MX-5 Cup Series last year and the lessons of her rookie season are captured in the series.
“It was one of the hardest years of my life just because everything was so new and I think if you would have told me that I would have learned seven years’ worth of life lessons in seven race weekends, I wouldn’t have believed it,” she said. In year two, Mott’s steady confidence is evident and she carries herself with poise.
The honest aspect of how hard it is to make it in racing is on full view, from race day, physical preparation, and the challenge of securing financial support to keep going. Mazda’s scholarships for women drivers has been essential to improving representation over the past five seasons. This year the number of women in the series has jumped from Mott and Hadley to six women drivers out of 41 cars. As the final episodes drop, the race teams are preparing for the next race May 2 to May 4 at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama, where they continue to make strides to draw women into the driver’s seats.
“How do we literally continue to move the needle for ourselves so that we can help move the needles for others?” Holbrook said. “There's definitely this sense of like urgency right now, but we are very lucky because like Mazda is positioning us in so many great ways.”