My first ideas for the top 10 female race and rally drivers of all time included entries from all over the world, maybe with one or two unsung heroines and some historical pioneers. However, looking at the cold, hard statistics of the best and fastest women of their day gave a different picture. Motorsport has had a far bigger share of female success than we think, and that’s even in the modern era, without trying to draw equivalence between Brooklands races and 1930s rallies and their present-day counterparts.
These drivers were the best, rather than being the first, the most popular or the most significant. This list does skew towards Europe and half of the drivers here were active in the 1970s. In comparison with the youngsters of F1 Academy or W Series, nowhere near far enough into their careers to compare, they are much older, often reaching the peak of their powers in their 30s and beyond and sometimes not even taking up the sport until adulthood.
In common with the latest crop of World Endurance Championship hopefuls, the Iron Dames among them, they were often most successful in sportscars, or working alongside a co-driver in a rally car. Interestingly, all-female teams have proved almost as fruitful as mixed ones.
There are only 10 spots on this list and inevitably, someone will be left out who may well deserve to be one of the ten. A top 20 would have looked very different and had a much bigger spread in terms of time periods and countries of origin. Debate away; it’s the point of this article after all, and just goes to show the strength in depth that the female side of the motorsport world has within it.