Images kindly provided by Revved Photography.
Kimberly Hughes (pictured right) hails from Yass, daughter of Barry and Yvonne O’Mara and sister to Beau, It’s hard not to be noticed when you are an O’Mara in Yass. They don’t seek the accolades, they just do their part. Community minded, caring, and involved are just some of the superlatives used when to describe the family.
This week’s edition has a story about Barry who is part of the SPIN Foundation installing the 7th defibrillator in the district.
Kimberly has followed the passion her family has had for stock car racing and transferred that passion in to a smoother surface with plenty more power on the world stage, to become the Secretary of the largest motorsport event in Australia, the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Father Barry posted to Facebook Kimberly’s achievement this week. He said, “Congratulations to our daughter Kimberly Hughes, last weekend she carried out the duty of Secretary of the event for the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix, the first female to hold the position. You followed your dreams of becoming involved in Australian motor sport and your dedication and hard work has certainly paid off.”
Kimberly moved over to Canberra in 2020 as educational needs necessitated the move for her children, however, she began as a volunteer at Supercar events in 2011 before she started working her way up as a volunteer.
“In 2016 I started working in administration at Supercar events. In 2022 I was offered a position with Motorsport Australia and since then I’ve been Secretary of the event at all Supercars and Speed Series events in Australia. This year I was offered the role of Secretary of the event at the Australian Grand Prix which is the first time a female has been in the role, so that was a big achievement for myself.”
“Both my parents were stock car racers and part of the Yass Car Club and I’m pretty sure there’s photos of me when I was only a few months old trackside. My dad’s passion for all things motorsport got me into motor-sport as well.”
“Before that I worked at Yass Valley Council. I was running the library and I was just doing the volunteering on the side when taking annual leave and long service leave where I travelled Australia. I continued to be involved and did bits and pieces and turned it into a career.”
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Fast forward 14 years from the first time Kimberly volunteered and she is a skilled and dedicated administrator.
“We start planning for this event with the Australian Grand Prix Corporation about ten months out. We have regular meetings and we are also in charge of recruiting all the officials, or the Marshalls in this case. We had about 1700 applications for people to come and volunteer as Marshalls at the event.”
“Part of this process involves appointing senior officials who then select their teams, followed by the allocation of roles across events. With nearly 1,000 positions available, there are plenty of opportunities for officials to get involved. While demand remains high and we weren’t able to accommodate everyone, it’s fantastic to see such strong enthusiasm for officiating in motorsport. Then from there, we basically start communicating with them, educating for the ones that are new. We had a large number of international marshalls come along as well to join us from overseas. In the end we had 996 Marshalls that were appointed roles at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix.
“We have around 700 to 800 at the Bathurst 1000. It is definitely the biggest event on the calendar.”
“Getting them all signed on, collecting their lunch, doing the briefings and then they’re going out to their post where they’ll work all the way through. Saturday was usually our longest (day), where they finish around 7:30pm at night. It’s hard work, but they get the best seats in the house.”
Just like Kimberly back in 2011 it’s just the passion and the love of the sport which brings them back, “they absolutely have such a connection with their fellow marshalls. It becomes almost like a family on its own.” “There’s actually a few people from Canberra that we have. Our Marshall of the event was actually from Canberra himself. It just happened to be that way.”
“Outside of Marshalls, I also take care of all the administration and governance for the event. Anything from the minute by minute to the event permit to license specs to communicating with the support categories, communicating with FIA, all the sporting and regulations around the event is part of my role.”
“We’ve got the clerks of the course. We’ve also got operations and various other members within Motorsport Australia that assist to put it on in cooperation with Australian Grand Prix Corporation who are the promoters of the event.”
“It all started through my family’s passion. You know, my mum herself was a champion in stock car racing in ACT and New South Wales. So I think her drive and determination I inherited along the way, and both my parents’ passion for motorsport has always been a family based thing for us. And I’m just lucky that I managed to find out how you can volunteer in contributing to the sport and then I managed to make a career out of it.”
“It’s something that I absolutely love, and the friends and family that you meet along the way is something that I’ve never experienced elsewhere. There’s such an amazing group of people out there that dedicate their time and their energies and just put in the passion of the sport, the family connections that they make.”
“Emily Weeks from Yass volunteered over the weekend. She was a track side Marshall. She was one of the ones that would have been going track side to recover all the vehicles. She pays her own way to go all the way down there to do all this work. So it’s in itself absolutely amazing. From Canberra, we have 21 Canberrans involved.”
“We had 59 internationals represented from 19 different countries.”
“Over 27% were female for the volunteers which is a great improvement on what we’ve done previously, and the average age of the Marshalls was 45 years.”
Kimberly will have a short time off before the planning starts all over for the Grand Prix.
“Our focus is to make sure that we continue to build within motorsport in Australia,” she said.
If Kimberly’s story inspired you to get involved visit: https://motorsport.org.au/officials
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