About Lily-May Watkins
Lily-May Watkins
Born in 2007 in North London and growing up near the hometown of Sir Lewis Hamilton, Lily-May was born into a family where sports and cars played a significant part of life.
And So It Begins....
In 2019 Lily-May tried Karting for the first time at Rye House, Hertfordshire. Despite being her first time on a race track, she finished in 4th place against a grid of 12 driver.
Thanks to that initial success, she entered a number of 1 day junior race events, securing podiums in all events against over 15 drivers.
The Long Wait.....
Thanks to her initial success in 2019, Lily-May entered a local junior race series for 2020.....which ultimately got cancelled due to world events meaning she was largely unable to race anywhere.
Despite a significant blow, she turned to sim racing where she turned her attention to learning how to drive GT and Formula cars. Frustrating at the time, this turned out to be a significant benefit to her later in her driver development.
The Long Wait Ends!
In the summer of 2021 lockdown restrictions eased and Lily-May re-started racing at Rye House. Keen to make up for lost time she entered multiple 1 day events, securing podiums in all events and entered the Rye House junior half series (Lando Cup), finishing the series in 3rd place overall out of 12 drivers, securing 4 podiums and being the only girl to finish in the top three of any Rye House championship that year.
Karting Journey
Since her initial success in her first junior series, Lily-May has continued to race in karts at a senior level at Rye House. Driven by a desire to succeed and test her abilities, she has entered multiple events since 2021 seeing her race all over the UK including reaching the semi finals of the 2023 British Indoor Karting Championship (BIKC) and joining the highly successful DNH Racing endurance karting team. A karting pathway that will see her enter the legendarily tough British Universities Karting Championship's (BUKC) 24 hour race at the super fast Teesside Autodrome on the full International Circuit in 2024
Beyond Karting
Through her success in karting, Lily-May was offered a trial with the Young Racing Driver Academy (YRDA), run by Arden Motorsport and was ultimately invited to join their program.
With YRDA, she was given one to one training in their bespoke Formula 4 simulator as well as fitness and diet programs.
Training alongside drivers such as the 2024 Arden Motorsport GB4 driver Leon Wilson, she learnt the core skills required to drive formula cars.
Car Racing
With a desire to widen her view of racing, Lily-May left the YRDA in 2024. Since then she has joined Kokoro Performance. Through Kokoro, she has continued a strict training program involving hours of simulator training, on track training, reaction training, diet and exercise. Working with driver coaches that are former and current Formula 3 and LMP2 drivers, she is aiming to emulate the success of other current Kokoro members such as F2 driver and Williams Academy member, Zak O'Sullivan.