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Shea Holbrook, Sally Mott, Heather Hadley Preview Six-Part Docuseries Streaming March 25 on Prime Video
March 24, 2025
By Tony DiZinno
IMSA Wire Service
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – “The cinema is incredible.”
“Watching episode one of the premiere, I was just blown away.”
“Being on Prime Video, I don’t think it gets much better than that.”
Most media tours generate strong soundbites such as these in advance of a full screening. Ordinarily three sentences like this tend to come from an award-contending movie you’d see on the silver screen, done in Hollywood.
They have not, until now, been sentences used to describe a docuseries covering the Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup Presented by Michelin.
Yet if the reality matches the hype around “First to the Finish,” the six-part docuseries premiering March 25 exclusively on Prime Video in North America, race fans and everyday streamers alike will be in for a treat.
That’s truly the great opportunity for an IMSA-sanctioned series renowned as providing some of the best, most competitive racing in North America to grow widely beyond its core enthusiastic audience. MX-5 Cup’s 45-minute door-banging, buzzing bashes frequently deliver the big “wow” factor.
Show producers Boardwalk Pictures intend for the same effect here for “First to the Finish,” with a mix of both competitive on-track coverage and personality-driven content that will focus largely, but not exclusively, on drivers Heather Hadley and Sally Mott and BSI Racing team owner Shea Holbrook over the course of the 2024 MX-5 Cup season.
The trio has gone on a media tour in addition to starting their 2025 MX-5 Cup campaign with races in Daytona and St. Petersburg. A screening during the second round at St. Petersburg provided a first glimpse at what’s to come, with the first three episodes set to drop on March 25 and the next three on April 15.
“It’s more than cool. It’s so awesome,” Holbrook said. “I had another private screening for my friends and family last night and they’re just like, ‘the cinema is incredible.’ I mean, it’s Tom Cruise awesome.”
For Hadley, in her second MX-5 Cup season and Mott, in her first, getting used to having a camera crew around for their entire season provided a natural adjustment stint before the familiarity took hold. Both drivers are also Shift Up Now athletes, a female racer-run organization working to drive change in the sport.
“Especially at first, it was pretty strange having a whole film crew following you around,” said Hadley, who competes in MX-5 Cup this year in the No. 54 Hendricks Motorsports entry. She drove for BSI Racing in 2024.
“I was racing for Shea’s team, so we had the camera crew around a lot with two women part of the team. You’re doing something that’s pretty natural and then all of a sudden, everyone’s filming! They want the hard conversations and that’s weird to learn, but the more time we got to spend with them, everyone became family.
“It grew so much they came to my graduation (Hadley graduated from University of North Carolina Charlotte with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance) at the end of last year and some of them were crying! It just goes to show we went through a whole journey together throughout the year, and everything they were experiencing, they experienced with me.”
Mott graduated from club level racing into the IMSA paddock for the first time with her first MX-5 Cup campaign. She captured the excitement and nerves of what it meant to arrive at Daytona for the first time to set off on her rookie season.
“I’d never raced in any series the caliber of Mazda MX-5 Cup, and showing up to Daytona, I’ll admit I was kind of freaking out because Daytona’s pretty iconic,” said Mott, now in her second season and competing in the No. 15 JTR Motorsports Engineering entry.
“I’d never been there, and I was driving under the sign knowing I was about to race there, not just be a race fan. Then getting the news there’d be a docuseries film as well, it added another level of pressure for a double whammy. I went in with the mindset of this whole entire season will be a learning experience, and it’s going to be a journey.
“It starts being weird when you are mic’d up all the time and have those awkward conversations, or we get into an incident, and you’ll see in the show there’s these moments. As a rookie you make rookie mistakes, and you look back and think how you could have done it differently. But I feel like we grew as a family with the film crew, and they made it very comfortable.”
Holbrook’s perspective is broader from a motorsports industry veteran standpoint, not only as a driver but also a team owner, manager, business lead and team motivator. This is all while balancing the work with family, from husband Nick to her two children. She said she doesn’t view herself as a mentor or role model but wants to always deliver 100 percent while leading by example and, in her own words, wearing her heart on her sleeve.
“The only thing I didn’t really do is I never got into the mechanical side of things, and I learned pretty quickly that that was probably not my strong suit anyways,” she laughed.
Holbrook’s driving background helped to Hadley during her 2024 season; an example she suggested viewers will be able to see in the docuseries.
“Heather’s pretty small, but she’s mighty,” Holbrook said. “For things like driver fitment and understanding, it has to be perfect. You’re working to make sure she’s able to tune herself as the driver to the correct seat fit and placement in a vehicle. That helps not only from a safety perspective, but also in correlation to performance. That’s a simple example but one of many where I think if I hadn’t been a driver, I don’t think I could be as good of a team owner.”
In addition to the storytelling, where Holbrook sees the docuseries’ strength is from the business standpoint. She explained the docuseries has immeasurable potential to increase exposure for her BSI Racing team, the MX-5 Cup series and the drivers involved.
“Being on Prime Video, I don’t think it gets much better than that,” Holbrook said. “I think we’re going to get a lot of attention we probably couldn’t be able to stir up for ourselves. It’s going to do wonders for our businesses, and we can’t thank Mazda enough to help put us in a space that’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“As a business owner, working with my drivers and with Sally and Heather, we’ve really making sure we move the needle. We’ve been in New York City, we’ve been to Canada. For the bottom line, our hope is this can be a catalyst to corporate partnerships because when that happens, ultimately, we all win because it becomes a great opportunity for the motorsports space, particularly Mazda MX-5 Cup.”
Mott finished 12th (and fourth best rookie), Hadley 18th among the 47 drivers who raced in MX-5 Cup in 2024, with Mott posting a best finish of sixth at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and Hadley a best of 10th at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. BSI Racing finished third among the 12 teams entered, trailing only McCumbee McAleer Racing and JTR Motorsports Engineering.
But with the docuseries due to focus on the stories beyond on-track, how they got there will likely be the more intriguing aspects to follow.
“I think viewers will learn a lot about MX-5 Cup and the racing, but more importantly the people and paddock,” Hadley said. “It really highlights not just us three but the people that make everything happen. All three of us have very different lives and we’re in very different stages. And the crew is following our journeys.”
Mott added, “You go in thinking, ‘I hope they capture everything in the right way’ and watching episode one of the premiere was just I was blown away. I mean, they told our stories perfectly and, you know, it’s a bit weird watching yourself and third person is just an unnatural human experience. But I’ll get used to it!”
Holbrook brought it home.
“I’m just so excited to see the rest,” she said. “We’ve only seen the first episode, so we’re watching it with everybody. So, trust me, we’ll be glued to the TV.”
Official Trailer:
