Story of the 'Drift Queen': Leona Chin

When I was racing karts locally in 2011-2013, I knew it would be an expensive affair. In India particularly, it wasn’t common to see a woman (read: girl) try her hand at racing, although by then, we had a handful of active female racing drivers. But for me, if I was going to pick up an expensive hobby, I was determined to make sure that I was aiming to be the best. My role models were F1 drivers who were at their peak in 2011 — Vettel, Button, and Hamilton. But none of those drivers represented who I was and where I came from.

There’s a popular belief that when you go in search of inspiration, it finds you. And for me, I landed on an incredible athlete doing a discipline of motorsport that I wasn’t exposed to, and blazing her trail — Leona Chin.

For the uninitiated, Leona is one of the first female athletes from Malaysia who started racing cars before racing karts (although, through this piece, you’ll know there’s just about nothing that she hasn’t tried yet). Not just any cars; her journey began with drifting — a discipline that had quite the weight in the region due to the influence of the Japanese drift scene. So, where did she pick it up? “I have a few (idols). So, when I was growing up, drifting was very difficult. So I watched a lot of Japanese motoring shows and there’s also Keiichi Tsuchiya, who was the drift king. I watched a lot of his videos. He’s a funny guy, but he’s also very, very, very, very good at driving! So I learned a lot about how to do heel-toe and shifting gears from his videos. In 2008 (or 2006), he came to Malaysia and I met him and I was really excited!”

For most people, meeting their idols is a daunting experience — you always want to be at your best in their presence. For racing drivers, the most ideal experience would be when they compliment you or see a future ‘them’ in you. Although Leona met Keiichi, the experience was far from what she might have expected. “I met my idol. Then he saw me drifting — I was doing a performance. He told me ‘You are too gentle! You drift too gently because you’re a girl.’ And I told him ‘Okay, thank you for the comment.’”

Twelve years later,

She’s popularly known as the “Drift Queen,” clinched the Malaysia Championship Series title in the M-Production Class, won the 1000km of Sepang race in the M-Production Class, and just over the weekend, clinched the China Circuit Sprint Challenge (CCSC) BMW M235i Cup overall championship.

“It is not easy to be a woman in motorsports,” she says without hesitation. “So, being able to inspire young women like you, the youth, it’s great! I hope that more young drivers become more motivated and inspired by my story to never give up.”

While her start was in drift cars, it never stopped her from exploring what the rest of the motorsport world had to offer. She’s raced in GT cars, rally cars, karting, gymkhana, and drag (although she says she never liked this too much because it involved a lot of waiting). Her journey exploring different types of motorsport began with a stint in reality TV in China called F-Team, a motoring-entertainment show that involved high-endurance obstacle courses with cars — if you’re a 90’s kid, think Takeshi’s Castle meets motor racing, and that’s F-Team for you.

“It was a tricky one because I had to prepare my own car, and everything with respect to the layout, etc., was on such short notice, so I had no time to practice. There’s only one chance, so if you mess up, you go back home empty-handed. The first challenge was the language — I’m not very fluent in Chinese. Second, it was my first time in China, so it was a culture shock for me. I wasn’t able to converse with other participants because their slang is different from my Chinese slang. It was a bit hard, but I tried my best to understand. So in the audition episode, I was very stressed: I had only one chance, the car wasn’t mine, and I had to go through this obstacle course — something I had never experienced before. Like, you had to press buttons on the ground, you have to grab stuff from the window, which is on the left side of the car (Malaysia is right-hand drive), then hop into a left-hand car and try to drift it as well. After the obstacle course, there’s a free play area where you’re supposed to do a display. My skill is drifting, so I did some drifting in the large empty lot.”

This was all just the first audition episode of F-Team. Talk about a challenge!

What F-Team did, despite the challenges it threw — including a torn knee ligament, among others — was open a door into China for Leona. “It was a very good experience. I didn’t regret it. Going to China was an eye-opener. I didn’t know that China’s motorsports scene was very active. But having a chance to open a door to China and go visit there more frequently [was important]. I made a lot of friends during the show — they are also racers. I still keep in contact with them, and they invite me to racing. We go race together in endurance racing and other events like drifting.”