‘First To The Finish’ Is ‘Drive To Survive’ For the Rest of Us

Amazon’s female-fronted docuseries on the MX-5 Cup impresses with real action and emotion.

If Drive to Survive can be credited with almost single-handedly bringing F1 enthusiasm to the mainstream, Amazon’s First To The Finish could do the same for the Mazda MX-5 Cup. That, and making Shea Holbrook, Heather Hadley, and Sally Mott household names.

The three women are the stars of the new docuseries, which debuted its first three episodes today. Assembled at a swanky Toronto hotel as part of a media preview tour, you would think this was normal for them, such is their composure through a gauntlet of pre- and post-screening interviews. This level of all-access, cameras-everywhere is entirely new of course, providing a rare glimpse into the paddock of one of North America’s more accessible professional racing series.

Mott entered MX-5 Cup as a rookie in 2024, the season detailed in FTTF. She earned this spot after winning the exclusive MX-5 Cup shootout the previous year. Ahead of the screening of the first episode, she tells me she still can’t quite believe seeing herself on the screen. More than that, she’s picking up details she may have missed in the heat of the moment on-track, and getting to relive the adventure from other perspectives—including those of her co-stars.

Sharing the track with Mott is Hadley, who is embarking on her sophomore season in the Cup. The California native got her start in karts, working her way through the ranks and netting the Mazda Motorsports Women’s Initiative Scholarship in 2022. In the 2024 MX-5 Cup season, there’s a prize for the top-finishing female driver; with Mott and Hadley as the only two in the field, there’s an uneasy alliance that is—spoiler alert—tested early on in the season. (With six women competing in this year's championship, Season 2 will see even fiercer competition.)

And Holbrook? Herself a racer, she’s now team principal at BSI Racing, the team Hadley drives for. Her challenges are different but not easier, having to manage a whole team, mentor drivers, and run a business.

It’s these different perspectives that make First To The Finish such an engaging watch. Director Annetta Marion doesn’t just show us in the cars and paddocks; punctuating the action is proper story beats, weaving in human elements. We learn about the sacrifices each woman (and their families) have made to get to where they are. We only see the first episode at the screening, but I have the sneaking suspicion Brad Little, Mott’s car chief, will be the glue that keeps things together, his soft-spoken words of wisdom a sharp contrast to the sensory overload of two dozen MX-5s buzzing around the track.

That’s the other thing: forget the clever editing used in DTS to distract from how predictable many F1 races were. What MX-5 Cup lacks in outright pace, it makes up for in close-quarters racing, with drivers typically going three wide into turns. At the season opener at Daytona, there’s bump drafting, where drivers go nose-to-tail for less drag down those long straights.

Post-screening, the stars are all asked what their biggest professional challenges have been. “Being a woman, inherently, in the industry is kind of a double-edged sword,” explains Holbrook. “Women are definitely under a magnifying glass. When you exceed somebody’s expectations you’re put on a pedestal, but if you’re anything less than that, well then it’s like you’re not that good. It’s not a fair fight for women because it’s a double-edged sword. For me, I embraced that instead of challenged it.”

I could tell you that the show is inspiring to young women, to encourage them to be like Holbrook, Hadley, and Mott and prove themselves in a male-dominating career. I hope so, anyway; I’m only an ally, but one episode in and I’m invested in rooting for these women and people like them. I could look up last year's results, but that misses the point. What I can tell you is that First To The Finish is properly entertaining, equal parts heart, humor, and the heat of close racing.

“I want people to remember us for yes, what we did,” says Holbrook in the first episode, “but who we are, and that whole experience.”

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