I was 3 years old when I got a quadbike for my birthday. After watching the film Cars a million times, I decided I wanted a piece of the speed and action! I loved my quadbike and caught the racing bug. My only complaint was that it wasn’t fast enough! So, aged 8 years old, I visited my local kart track and immediately fell in love with it! I started going more and more often and even managed to get the lap record!
Soon afterwards, I began racing in hire kart championships. Age 10, I got my own kart and had great fun driving at different tracks around the country. I mainly kart for fun, but I’m currently in the process of getting a new, even faster kart, which I’ll race!
Soon after I started karting, I joined Susie Wolff’s Dare To Be Different (D2BD). This is a community, who’s aim is to encourage women and girls into all different aspects of motorsport. They offer incredible opportunities to community members, brilliant advice on how to enter the 
world of motorsport and host multiple community events in racing themed locations throughout the year, where you can network with fellow community members and meet inspiring racing role models. I would recommend D2BD to anyone who is interested in a career in motorsport, as it will give you great contacts, with people in the sport, and brilliant opportunities.
When I was ten, I even got to meet Toto Wolff at a D2BD event, and I told him I will race for him one day!
In June, last year I was invited, through D2BD to the Mercedes factory for the day! It was unbelievable and I got to do so many cool activities, including driving a real life F1 car size simulator, learning how to change an
F1 cars tyres and even following a fitness routine designed for the drivers, complete with encouragement from Lewis Hamilton’s personal trainer!
I’ve always enjoyed writing and journalism and I’ve watched F1 and loved it from a young age, so it was incredible to be invited to Autosport Magazine’s headquarters in Richmond, for a taster day! (Once again, through D2BD!) It was amazing to see what it would be like to write for a magazine and work in F1 journalism. I’ve been on 2 more taster days since then and have learnt so much! Using those skills, I began to post videos of me interviewing drivers and people who work in the sport on my Facebook page.
I’m currently choosing my GCSE options and looking to the future, I have quite a long list of things I’d like to do (mostly working in some form of F1, whether it be journalism or driving!).
You can visit Sophie’s Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/SophieGillMotorsport/
Some of Sophie’s published articles:
overtakemotorsport.com/2018/07/30/daring-to-be-different-with-teen-kart-queen-sophie-gill/
overtakemotorsport.com/2018/10/01/girl-talk-teen-kart-queen-meets-ace-racer/