Named the Project 356 World Rally Tour, Brinkerhoff’s inspirational journey started in 2013 and concluded in an epic fashion in December 2021. In the last eight years, she’s broken down barriers as a female racer and raised a substantial amount of money to combat human trafficking. While the rally tour is completed, there’s still more in the tank for Brinkerhoff, who has vowed to continue racing.
One might assume that Brinkerhoff comes from a family entrenched in racing, but her introduction to the sport is far from conventional. She has no background in racing cars, and for years her primary responsibility was homeschooling her four children. Despite the lack of knowledge or racing experience, she told herself that one day she would race a car. When Brinkerhoff turned 55, she decided it was time to fulfill that secret desire.
“It wasn’t something I wanted to do. I realized it was something I had to do,” Brinkerhoff says. “I thought I would go race one time and check that box and go back to enjoying my life.”
That did not happen. She fell in love with a vintage Porsche, developed a passion for rally racing and became hooked. In her first race ever, she participated in the La Carrera Panamericana in Mexico, and Brinkerhoff described it as a metamorphic experience in her life that she needed to do again. Nearly 20,000 miles later, Brinkerhoff, her dedicated team and the Porsche 356 have traveled to nearly every corner of the world, competing under the name Valkyrie Racing.
What’s in a name? Well, there’s a lot of symbolic meaning behind Brinkerhoff’s racing name. The name Valkyrie was suggested by one of her children, and refers to women warriors in Norse mythology. On the racetrack, Brinkerhoff is without a doubt a modern-day Valkyrie. But it’s her work off the racetrack that really makes Brinkerhoff a warrior.
When she decided to start rally racing, she wanted to race for a cause and bring awareness to an issue that deserves more attention. She chose to fight against human trafficking after being inspired by a chance encounter she had with an FBI agent. Now her charitable organization, Valkyrie Gives, has raised nearly $400,000 to combat the global issue.
After learning more about the mythological role of Valkyries, Brinkerhoff found the name to be even more fitting. “They (Valkyries) go to the battlefield and they rescue the worthy that are wounded and dying and take them back to Valhalla and restore life,” Brinkerhoff says. “Without even realizing all the meanings behind Valkyrie, it’s so fitting. We want to be modern-day Valkyries.”
Like a battlefield, her racing journey was marked with dangerous terrain, breakdowns and wrecks. But Brinkerhoff was unrattled and she continued to race, serving as a beacon of hope to so many of the people she’s encountered over the years.
“Giving hope and inspiration to other people to live dreams and reach for things ... those are about the most memorable things that I take away,” Brinkerhoff says. “The racing obviously is exhilarating and frightening but it’s those experiences with all of those people that I remember the most.”
Antarctica: 356 Miles To Go
In her latest endeavor, the absence of civilization was noticeable in the harsh landscape. From the beginning, Antarctica was planned as the final leg of Brinkerhoff’s world rally tour, and it posed new challenges. While it was not a race per se, the level of preparation was heightened as Brinkerhoff set out to drive 356 miles on the planet’s harshest and most unpredictable landscape. One of the most obvious challenges was the actual surface she raced on. The ice required a special modification to the car. The tires were replaced with skis in the front and tracks in the back.
The car maintained the classic Porsche beauty and performed perfectly thanks to Kieron Bradley, a chassis design engineer who spent more than 18 months working on the modifications. Brinkerhoff was introduced to Bradley after searching for experienced guides to accompany her on the journey, and finding Jason de Carteret. Both Bradley and de Carteret are extreme explorers who set a world record for the fastest overland journey to the South Pole. After speaking with de Carteret over the phone, Brinkerhoff knew she had to get him on board.
“He knows that terrain and I realized very quickly that if we want to come home, if we want to have a successful go at it, we need Jason,” she says. “So we interviewed each other and agreed to do this project together.”
De Carteret has been to Antarctica more than a dozen times. In one stint, he cross-country skied through the dangerous environment for more than a month. His calm demeanor would fool most people into believing he lives on an island working as a bartender, but he says he feels strangely at home in Antarctica.
“She put together an amazing expedition with the help of her crew in order to take a car to Antarctica where there are no roads, there is no recovery system, there is nothing. You are pretty much on your own out there,” de Carteret says. “But it gives you the most pure exhilarating experience you could ever ask for.”
While he may feel at home there, de Carteret acknowledges the incredible dangers in Antarctica. The frigid temperatures are expected and prepared for, but he says the bigger dangers are the ones you can’t see.
“Crevasses are pretty much everywhere. It’s like driving on a very steep mountain path where you have steep drops on both sides ... and then try it blindfolded,” de Carteret says. “The snow looks flat, but there could be something very perilous right at your wheel and you don’t even know about it. At the end of the day, you’re going into an envelope of danger.”
Because the ice is constantly moving at a slow pace, it cracks to form these invisible dangers and they must be monitored constantly. The crew prepared by surveying the area with ice-penetrating radar and outfitting the Porsche with a crevasse bar in case they were to fall into one. The idea being that if the skis were the first thing to fall through, hopefully the bar that extends in front of the hood would catch on the other side of the crevasse. Fortunately, de Carteret was right alongside Brinkerhoff in the Porsche and guided the adventure with the utmost precision.
“There were some times when we were driving in a whiteout with almost no visibility, and in rally racing you have to have an amazing relationship with your navigator. I had a new kind of trust experience in this vehicle with Jason,” Brinkerhoff says.
The ice-penetrating radar system would often show that their path could not deviate right or left more than 10 meters, or just over 30 feet. Helpful information when the visibility was non-existent.
Despite whiteout conditions on three of the five racing days, Brinkerhoff was able to accomplish the goal of covering 356 miles on Antarctica. She was accompanied by long-time mechanic Simon Redhead, videographer Neil Carey and her daughter Christina, who wears multiple hats for the organization and is also a photographer who helped document the expedition. Along with Redhead, Christina has been part of the Project 356 World Rally Tour since the beginning and there was no way they were going to miss out on the grand finale.
To celebrate the accomplishment and show some love to Valkyrie Racing’s premier sponsor, PXG Golf, the crew took the car back to the Drake Icefall, where they had completed the milestone and proceeded to hit golf balls with the company’s latest driver. They made sure to hit pink golf balls so they could be easily spotted and retrieved.
While Brinkerhoff has accomplished her goal of racing her Porsche on every continent, the fight against human trafficking is not over. Valkyrie Gives is determined to raise $1 million and continue rescuing people from this under-reported global issue.
“How do you get people’s attention and get them engaged in what you care about? You have to get them to listen to you,” Brinkerhoff says. “We wanted to do something outside the box.”
Brinkerhoff doesn’t know exactly what she will do next to raise awareness about human trafficking, but she says there’s no doubt in her mind that she will race again. Until then, her story is an inspiring reminder that it’s never too late to pursue dreams and fight for positive change in the world.
Jay McKinney is a Colorado native who recently graduated from Metro State University of Denver with a bachelor’s degree in communications. He loves spending time outdoors, playing golf and hiking.
