Engines growl, tyres scream, and smoke clouds the track. Through the haze, a Mustang carves sideways with surgical precision. At the wheel isn’t the tattooed, grease-stained daredevil you’d expect; it’s Dina Al Naib. Impeccably styled, she is more likely to be mistaken for a runway regular than a drifter. But that’s exactly the point.
Dina has made it her mission to break the stereotype that women in motorsport strip away femininity to be taken seriously. “I’ve always loved fashion,” she tells me, her eyes lighting up. “Why should I have to compromise that just because people don’t think that fits in with the aesthetic of a drift racer.” For her, cars and couture coexist. Outfits are costumes, tracks are stages, and the real performance is proving that femininity and ferocity can share the same driver’s seat.
Dina’s motorsport story ignited in New Zealand, a country where petrolhead culture is as vibrant as its landscapes. At sixteen, she walked out of a cinema after watching The Fast and the Furious film with passion that she had never felt before. She begged her parents for a black Honda Civic. Although they got her a tamer version, Dina wasn’t about to settle. Working a part-time job through high school, she saved every dollar to buy a bigger engine. Nine painstaking months later, she swapped the motor herself with the help of Youtube tutorials.
The Civic wasn’t just a car, it was her coming-of-age. Even after buying a McLaren and Mustang she still regrets selling the Honda Civic. The car was also the launchpad that led her to found New Zealand’s first university car club, the Auckland University Car Club (AUCC), where she organized drag races and events. Eventually, she also got into motorbikes. “I bought a bike,” she says simply, as though that step wasn’t another leap into life in the fast lane.
Drifting didn’t emerge until Dina’s 30s, but when it did, it came with a roar. “When you’re younger you take more risks and at my age I wasn’t sure I could throw my all into it. Something in my gut and heart just told me it feels right.”
Her weapon of choice? A Ford Mustang, one of the hardest cars to drift. Everyone told her she was mad. Why not start smaller? But Dina wanted a challenge. “Why not?” she shrugged at those who questioned her. When someone sneered that the Mustang was too much car for a woman, Dina simply smiled and proved them wrong. The first time she threw it into a corner, fear gave way to something closer to euphoria. From that moment on, she knew she had found her machine. She named the car Harley, because to her, it wasn’t just metal and horsepower. It’s her partner in drifting.
Support has been Dina’s anchor. Her father, a mechanical engineer, nurtured her love of cars from childhood. She tears up when talking about her family’s unwavering encouragement. “When the people you love the most believe in you,” she says, “society’s opinions don’t matter.”
On the track, her mentor Ahmed from DX Drift is her loudest cheerleader. After races, she scans the crowd for him. She hears his ecstatic “Woo hoo!” in the background in every drifting video which is so special to her. He’s been one of the few who believed in her from the very beginning.
She recalls her toughest day with brutal honesty. It was a tandem drift that resulted in disaster because of a second lap she took, ignoring her gut that was screaming at her to not. At full speed, she went into a barrier wrecking her Mustang. “It wasn’t about embarrassment,” she says. “It felt like I had hurt a co-driver, because that car isn’t just a car to me.” It’s a raw confession, but one that shows why she respects the sport and her machine so deeply.
Much like her racing inspiration Marc Márquez, Dina has learned to block out the noise and let her performance do the talking. Competing against drivers a decade younger doesn’t faze her. Instead, it fuels her fire. That fire carried to a racing highlight: testing for a Radical racing team in the UAE. The lap time she set matched their professional driver’s, an achievement that left her stunned. “I think I’ve just always understood how to feel a car,” she says, as if sensing machinery is an instinct she was born with.
Today, she commands Harley, her Mustang, and her Lamborghini STO. When asked what does racing mean to her, she calls it her ‘fountain of youth’. The track makes her feel sixteen again—that same teenager who swapped engines in her driveway and begged for a Civic. Only now, the cars are faster, and the stakes are higher.
Racing doesn’t just keep her alive, it keeps her young.