After breezing in tandem twice this month, Molly’s a Bullet and Bel Pensiero will find themselves in adjoining stalls in the starting gate for Sunday’s $100,000 Eleven North Handicap at Monmouth Park, one of three stakes races on the 12-race New Jersey Thoroughbred Festival card.

That wouldn’t be unusual for stablemates except for one significant detail: They are full sisters.

The two Jersey-bred mares are daughters of Army Mule-Milaya by Eskenderya, with Bel Pensiero, at age 5, older by one year.

“I certainly have never run full sisters against each other and frankly if there was a way to do the research I am sure there are not many times when that would have happened,” said trainer Anthony Margotta, Jr., who started his career in 1986. “They were born on the same farm, raised on the same farm and they have always been next to each other during their careers.

“The last two breezes for both of them have been against each other, too.”

Monmouth Park racing secretary Gerry Stanislawzyk called this meeting between the siblings “very rare.”

“It doesn’t happen often where two full sisters race against each other,” he said.

Margotta, who owns both horses in partnership with Hudson Stable (Larry O’Rourke), said he can’t say definitively whether the sisters know they’re related even though he has had both throughout the entirety of their careers.

“There has to be an instinct that they know they are sisters,” he said. “I don’t know that for sure but you would think there is some instinctual thing that they can identify as sisters.”

Bel Pensiero is the more accomplished of the two, owning a Jersey-bred stakes win and finishing second in the Eleven North Handicap a year ago. She has a 5-6-2 line from 20 career starts with earnings of $358,587.

“Bel is a better turf horse. Her numbers are better sprinting on the turf,” said Margotta. “When I race her in open company it will be on the turf. But this is a Jersey-bred race, so while she isn’t as good on the dirt neither is the caliber of horses she is running against. I think she can compete with these horses on the dirt.”

Bel Pensiero’s only dirt race this year in five starts was an off the board finish in the Spruce Fir Handicap for Jersey-breds on May 17.

She is adding blinkers for the first time “to keep her a little more focused,” Margotta said.

Molly’s a Bullet, winless in four starts last year, has two wins and two thirds from six starts this year.

“She has really turned the corner,” Margotta said. “We’re trying her in a stakes race for the first time so she’s going to have to improve a bit. But I think she can do that.

“It’s difficult enough to breed a winner, so to have two Jersey-breds who are winners and full sisters is pretty remarkable.”

Bel Pensiero, Margotta said, will be sold as a racing/broodmare prospects at the Fasig-Tipton “Night of Stars” sale in November. So for the sisters this may be their only time competing against each other.

“I’m hoping for a dead heat,” said Margotta, also has Cassation in the seventh race on the card.

The Eleven North, at six furlongs on the first, has attracted a field of 10. The Sunday card includes the $125,000 Charles Hesse II Handicap at a mile and a sixteenth on the dirt and the $100,000 New Jersey Breeders Handicap at six furlongs on the dirt.