Melinda Price is an Australian racing car driver and expert driver coach with more than four decades of successful competition and driver training experience.
From karting to car racing, Bathurst and more
Melinda’s racing started in karting. She grew up around motorsport, with family heavily involved, and began karting at the age of nine. That foundation shaped her driving skills and style, and Melinda has enjoyed a motorsport career built on consistency, smart race craft, and hard work.
From her early start in karting, Melinda went on to race across several Australian racing categories including Supercars, and became widely recognised as one of the ‘Castrol Cougars,’ still holding a Bathurst record.
In 1998, alongside her co-driver Kerryn Brewer, the pair set the best Bathurst 1000 race result recorded by an all-female driver pairing, finishing 11th outright.
In addition to the 1998 Bathurst 1000, Melinda also competed in the event on four other occasions between 1994 and 2000, building a huge bank of knowledge and experience at Mount Panorama across different teams and eras of the sport.
That experience has also grown while competing in other endurance events at the famous Mount Panorama, Bathurst circuit including the 24hour race twice, where Melinda drove with the famous Formula 1 track designer Hermann Tilke.
International and endurance experience
Melinda’s experience extends beyond Australia having competed internationally as well. Melinda has competed in the Nürburgring 24 Hour race on two occasions, and in a career highlight she drove with Sir Jack Brabham in the 6-hour Nurburgring race to finish on the podium. Melinda also raced at the Misano circuit in Italy.
Resilience, return to racing, and advocacy
After stepping back from full-time racing, Melinda’s focus shifted. Melinda was busy raising a family and fighting breast cancer. Melinda’s battle with cancer later shaped her advocacy work and approached a change to driver mentoring.
With life becoming more settled Melinda returned to motorsport with a renewed focus, and in recent years she has raced in the Radical Cup Australia championship, driving with Volante Rosso Motorsport, while continuing to support pathways for women in motorsport through Motorsport Australia’s Girls on Track initiative, alongside fundraising and awareness initiatives.
Driver Coaching and Driving Events
Melinda’s motorsport career has always run in parallel with driver coaching. She has worked as a driving instructor in professional environments for decades, in both racing driver training and in on-road defensive driving programs.
On track, Melinda brings race-proven techniques into practical coaching that helps drivers to develop faster, safer, and more consistent performances with in car guidance and one-on-one coaching.
Her years of racing and instructing experience delivers a solid grounding in the skills for young and old drivers to become better and safer drivers on the road.
Melinda is a professional, both on and off the racetrack.
Driving Events was founded nearly 15 years ago by multi–Australian Gold Star Champion, Paul Stokel and has been a highly regarded deliverer of motorsport training, defensive driver training and motorsport experience events across Australia.
Based in Queensland, Driving Events have operated across several venues including Queensland Raceway, Morgan Park, Lakeside Raceway and Mount Cotton.
Some of the activities conducted include race driver training, road car track days, open pit lane race track sessions, defensive driver training courses, advanced car control and skid pan training and TARGA Tasmania.
As a key part of the Driving Events team, Melinda worked alongside Stokel in delivering many great events to customers.
Melinda saw this part of the industry as something that she wanted to be more a part of, and following conversations with Paul Stokel, Melinda and Paul agreed to the sale of Driving Events.
While Melinda has taken control of the business in recent months (November 2025), Paul will still be on hand for several months to assist Melinda and her team of highly skilled driver coaches and instructors to further develop the business.
Melinda has many great plans and initiatives for the future development of Driving Events and with her decades of high-level experience in motorsport and defensive driving training, the future is looking bright for Driving Events!
