NDTV: Donning a helmet inside a pearl silver sports sedan, Rana Almimoni skids and drifts around a Riyadh park, engine roaring, tyres screeching and clouds of dust billowing from the back.
For Saudi women, such adrenaline rushes were unimaginable just weeks ago.
Speed-crazed women drivers are bound to turn heads in the deeply conservative desert kingdom, which overturned the world’s only ban on female motorists in June as part of a much-hyped liberalisation drive led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Almimoni, 30 and a motor racing enthusiast, is defying the perception — or sexist misconception, depending on who you ask — that only dainty cars in bright colours are popular with women drivers.
“I adore speed. I love speed… My dream car is more than 500 horsepower,” said Almimoni, slamming the accelerator of her silvery sleek Kia Stinger inside Riyadh’s Dirab motor park.
“It’s a myth… that Saudi women only choose pink and cute cars.”
Almimoni said she was awaiting an expected government decision that would permit women to obtain a “racing licence”, which would allow her to hone her passion in motor-sport competitions.
That includes drifting — oversteering the car to slip and skid or even spin, and other high-speed daredevilry — which is illegal in public but tolerated in the controlled environment of Dirab park, whose private owners insist on safety.

Author Pascal Menoret’s acclaimed book “Joyriding in Riyadh” described the high-octane Saudi obsession for drifting, long seen as a symbol of revolt among legions of restless youth, as all “about being a real man”.
Now newly mobile Saudi women are embracing what was previously deemed a male entitlement — speed.
“Most of our enquiries (from women) are about drifting — how to learn drifting, which cars can they train on, how long will it take them” to drift, said instructor Falah al-Jarba as he watched Almimoni zip around the park.