Our speaker is author and journalist Rachel Harris-Gardiner. Her award winning book, Speed Queens, on which her talk is based, is a history of women in motorsport, from the first known motorised race for women in 1897 to the modern era, and covering both circuit racing and rallying.
Some of the best-known female competitors such as Brooklands’ own Kay Petre and Gwenda Stewart, rally stars Rosemary Smith, Pat Moss and Michele Mouton and the only female Formula 1 points scorer Lella Lombardi are covered, but Speed Queens is not just concerned with big names and historic “firsts”. For every woman to be the first to do something on wheels, there were usually several others striving for success.
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