Two years ago Rianna O’Meara-Hunt had never raced boats before. Today she has a permanent seat in the world’s premier powerboat racing competition.
The 24-year-old from Wellington started her motor racing journey when she was 8 in karts, taking multiple national titles and was the first junior female to become an Australian Rotax State Champion in 2017.
She then moved into car racing after being selected for the Toyota 86 Championship in New Zealand in 2021, which was then followed by an offer to step up to GT4 racing in the United States.
Aston Martin later made her part of their driver academy, leading her to relocate to the UK and take part in the GT Cup series.
However, in 2024, her sponsorships started to run out and she was offered the chance to be a powerboat reserve pilot for Team Drogba Global Africa in the E1 Series.
“I’d never raced anything in a boat before, really even driven a boat,” O’Meara-Hunt told the Herald.
“So I had to get my boat licence, I had to learn how to start it, park it, use it in a little marina and then within the same week we were driving these racebirds racing around a racecourse.
“So it was a very fast-track learning, but something that I adapted to well.”
She stayed with Drogba, who also has Kiwi Olympic bronze medallist sailor Micah Wilkinson in their ranks, for the 2025 season as a reserve pilot, but left to try and find a fulltime role with another team, which didn’t arise straight away.
She was called up to race for Team Sierra at the start of the 2026 season because of an injury to a pilot, though, flying in from Australia where she was visiting her family.
“I was thinking ‘oh wow, I haven’t actually been in this racebird for maybe a year and a bit and I’m going to have to jump straight in’.
“But it went really well and we came third across the line. Unfortunately, my teammate got a penalty so we came fifth overall.”
From there, Team Miami offered her the chance to be a fulltime pilot for the rest of the season, something she’s still learning to do after spending so long racing on tarmac.
“The surface in car racing only ever changes if it goes from dry to wet, in E1 the surface is changing the whole time.
“You have to deal with overcurrents and undercurrents, you’ve got to deal with wakes from the other boats but also private boats around the course because we’re not able to obviously stop people going on their weekend drives in their boats.”
With six races left on the calendar, she said the boat is good enough to make a podium and expects to improve at each event after Team Miami finished ninth at Lake Como.
“We know we can win, we know we can be on the podium for the rest of the events, so it’s just about putting everything together and making sure that we are within the top three in the championship results soon enough.”
O’Meara-Hunt is one of 10 female pilots in E1 and said she has seen motor racing, whether on water or land, provide more opportunities for women.
“When I started racing at 8 years old, it was very heavily male dominated, I think in the whole of New Zealand karting there may have been six females.
“Now I go to go kart tracks over here and my dad’s still involved within coaching people in New Zealand and it’s really growing, and to be able to help inspire that next generation is one of my big missions through my motorsport journey.”
She said, growing up, there weren’t many women drivers to look up to, but the work of former racing driver Susie Wolff and Doriane Pin testing cars for Mercedes in F1 has proved women can stand tall in the sport.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re from New Zealand and you’re trying to make it over in the UK or if your family hasn’t been in motorsport, I think we can show that, yeah, you can do anything you put your mind to.”
O’Meara-Hunt still has her sights set on returning to racing cars and still works with Aston Martin, travelling around the world and teaching clients how to drive supercars on tracks.
Her main aim is to make history in one of motorsport’s most iconic races while also keeping her New Zealand connections.
“I’ve got a very big end goal ... for me it’s to be the first Kiwi female to do Le Mans 24, so being back in a car is crucial to that goal and I’ve been working really hard over here in the UK and in Europe to start those connections up to be able to talk about sponsorship and getting myself back on track.”
She said she’s had positive talks so far and is hoping some Kiwi businesses can help to make her dreams come true.
“We’ve done some pretty amazing things us Kiwis in the motorsport realm and sports realm, so I’m hoping that I can kind of put my mark on that too.”