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Diana Elizabeth Carter, motorsport athlete, administrator (born 18 September 1937; died 27 September 2020 in Ladysmith, BC). After winning her very first race in a borrowed car, trailblazing auto racer Diana Carter went on to win more than 40 racing trophies between 1962 and 1967. The first woman to win an auto race in Canada, Carter emerged as the country’s top female driver in the male-dominated racing world. She won three consecutive Shell 4000 Coupe des Dames victories from 1963 to 1965. She also secured the CDRA Touring Class Championship in 1963, making her the first woman to win a CDRA championship. Carter's impressive achievements paved the way for women in motorsport and changed the landscape of Canadian auto racing. She was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 2013. In 2025, the Museum of Toronto named Carter one of 52 women who shaped the city.
This article was created in collaboration with Museum of Toronto.
Early Life
Diana Carter grew up in the suburban car culture of Etobicoke, Ontario, where her father taught her to drive. She has said that she was “interested in racing from high school days since my friends had MGs, etc.” She graduated from Etobicoke Collegiate.
Early Career
Diana Carter was working at an advertising agency when her boyfriend, well-known amateur racer Jerry Polivka, hired her to oversee the circulation of the Canadian motorsport magazine Canada Track & Traffic, of which Polivka was the managing editor. Carter was involved in many aspects of the publication and eventually became the magazine’s general manager.
Racing Career
Diana Carter’s racing career began because of an “anything you can do I can do better” conversation she had with Polivka. Carter was determined to see if she had what it took to compete in auto racing — and not just in the sideshow “powder puff races,” where women would drive their boyfriend’s or husband’s car for a lark. So, Polivka offered to let her drive his Volvo 544 in a beginner’s race at the Connor Circuit in Saint-Eugène, Quebec, in 1962. In her very first race, Carter beat 19 men to win the trophy — a feat that made the CBC national news. “The guys were really ticked off,” she said with a laugh at a Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame gala in 2014.
Diana Carter in 1966
Diana Carter, Canada's leading woman auto racing driver, with her race car on 6 June 1966.
(photo by Boris Spremo, courtesy Toronto Star via Getty Images)
Competing against men, Carter won the touring class (sedan) championship in 1963 and the production car class in an endurance race with co-driver Shirley Bowles at Mosport in 1964. In a Formula Vee race at the Bahamas Speed Week in 1966, Carter defeated Janet Guthrie and Denise McCluggage, America’s best-known female auto racers. (Guthrie later became the first woman to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.) Also a successful rally driver, Carter won the Shell 4000 Coupe de Dames in 1963, 1964 and 1965.
Nicknamed “Canada’s raciest blonde,” Carter had to frequently contend with sexism, both in the racing world and in the coverage of it. It was a sexism that was still pervasive long after she retired. As she said in a 2014 interview, “Racing is now such an expensive business that unless you have the looks of Danica Patrick, it’s almost impossible to raise the amount of sponsorship money necessary to compete and win. In my lifetime, a woman F1 or IndyCar champion is just not going to happen.”
Post-Racing Career
Diana Carter and Polivka eventually married but were soon divorced. Carter then moved to the United States, where she was the first PR and promotions director at Roger Penske’s Michigan International Speedway. She then worked in the same role at the new Texas International Speedway (now the Texas World Speedway) in College Station, Texas, before retiring from motorsports altogether.
Carter was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 2013, in the same class as Formula One driver Nigel Mansell and IndyCar driver Paul Tracy. She lived her later years in Ladysmith, British Columbia, and died in 2020 at the age of 83.
