Women are making their marks in every field these days. When it comes to women in Formula One, we might not have a lot to talk about apart from Maria Teresa de Filippis who first entered the championship in 1958.
But once we look beyond F1, things look much brighter. Right from rallying to record breaking, to speed trials, even in drag racing, women have made their presence known. The first one came in way back in 1899, when Mme Labrousse became the world's first female racing driver by entering the Paris-Spa race. She finished fifth in her class, and less than a year later London's Ranelagh Club organised the first ladies' race in Britain.
And almost after 60 years, women got their own racing club and a few years later they were allowed to race against men rather than being treated as a special case. Again, in 1990, Britain's Louise Aitken-Walker won the Jim Clark Trophy and the Seagrove, and just a year later Lyn St James became the first woman to be awarded 'Rookie of the Year' at the Indy 500.
Here we bring to you the 10 most famous women racers of all times.
Michele Mouton is the first and so far the only woman to win a round of the World Rally Championship. Not only that, she finished a close second in the 1982 competition. Mouton also won in Portugal and Brazil and the Acropolis Rally in Greece, but she failed to secure the top slot, which was a flaw of her Quattro.In 1929, Mrs Victor Bruce drove a 4.5-litre Bentley at Montlhery for 24 hours, and also got the record for single-handed driving at an average of 89mph. The following year, she flew around the world and famously switched off her engine over Hong Kong to observe two minutes' silence for Armistice Day.
In 1962 Tulip Rally brought not only Mini's first international victory, but also saw Pat and Ann Wisdom the record for being the first women to win an international rally. European Ladies' Rally Champion five times in all, besides being the younger sister of Sir Stirling Pat married another outstanding driver, Swedish rally ace Erik Carlsson.
Lady Mary Grosvenor was the favourite daughter of Bend'Or, the fabulously rich 2nd Duke of Westminster. She died in 2003, at the age of 89. Before the war, Lady Mary Grosvenor raced regularly at Brooklands, and favoured a 1.5-litre Alta over Bugattis but denying herself a 2.0-litre grand prix version.
Violet Cordery is the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by car in 1927, after averaging 73mph at Brooklands. Both the times, she did it in an Invicta, the same cars bring engineered by her brother-in-law Sir Noel Macklin. She has also been described by the Daily Telegraph as "the Amy Johnson of the track".
Melanie Troxel is one of the biggest names in American NHRA racing and Top Fuel drag star Troxel. Additionally, she is also the one of the fastest. With most of the 'fuelies' typically accelerating from 0-100mph in 0.9 seconds and hitting 330mph in around 4.5, drivers usually don't go beyond the regular experiences. Troxel's individual best in 326mph.
Janet Guthrie was a qualified aerospace engineer, but her destiny took her somewhere entirely different. In the year 1963, Guthrie raced a Jaguar XK140 on America's SCCA circuit. She is also the first woman to compete in a NASCAR superspeedway race, and has also been awarded the 'Top Rookie'. In 1977, she finished 29th in the Indianapolis 500, the first woman ever to take part in the event.
Robert Cowell, after having a sex change operation in 1951, became Roberta Cowell. She was in love with cars, and liked speed even better. No wonder then that she campaigned as many different cars as possible, later designing one of her own, heavily influenced by British Racing Motors, but with little success.
It was Levitt who increased the women's world speed record to 96mph in 1906. It was the same year that, in her book The Woman and the Car, she advised the girls to carry a hand mirror in their tool kits: useful to restore a girl's makeup after a drive. The mirror can also be held aloft to examine the traffic behind.
Helle Nice was a former stripper who turned into a racing driver. She could have become a French national heroine after several years as the only woman on the international GP circuit. But as luck would have it, she got ostracised by friends and family after being accused of being a Gestapo agent. Nice died in 1984 at the age of 83.
