You'll have got used to the idea that women are safer drivers - that's why, in terms of motor insurance, ladies get cheaper premiums.

But men still like to think they're better drivers. Not because they drive safely, not because they get the furthest on a tank of fuel, not even because they're considerate to other road users. No, it's because any man who has ever sat at the wheel of a car has fantasised about being a racing driver.

You see, most men secretly believe they are Michael Schumacher.

The world of motorsport is not as welcoming to women as the world of motor insurance. Female drivers who have made it have had to do so in the face of scorn and suspicion from their male peers.

But in a few cases, determined, extraordinary women have broken into the world of motorsports and had remarkable success there. Over the next few pages, we'll be telling the stories of four such women - their struggles, their achievements, and their legacies.

It's ladies like them who demonstrate that there's more to it than just cheap motor insurance. Woman drivers can be faster, more aggressive and more technical; and we can be safer too.

And for starters, there's no better example than Janet Guthrie: the legendary figure in women's motor racing.

Janet Guthrie
Walk across the road from Talladega, the two and a half mile Superspeedway just north of a town by the same name in Alabama, and you’ll come to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame. As this is America, home of a domestic baseball tournament called the ‘World’ Series, the overwhelming majority of inductees into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame are Americans.

And seeing as the way to get ahead in the two powerhouses of American motorsport – NASCAR (The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) and IRL (The Indy Racing League) – is to play by the rules of a widely-acknowledged ‘good ‘ol boy system’, the overwhelming majority of inductees are also male.

So when 68-year-old Janet Guthrie was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in April 2006, it marked the latest extraordinary achievement in a career that has been littered with them.

Guthrie is best known as the first woman to qualify and race in both the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500, centrepiece events in the NASCAR and IRL calendars respectively, in 1977. She is an inspiration to every female racing driver of recent years; she should be an inspiration to women drivers in general.

So read the following, and the next time a man tells you that motor insurance for women is only cheaper because we drive joylessly and slowly, tell him you know a 68 year-old lady who lived to race (she gave up a career in physics, and the chance of a place on NASA’s Scientist-Astronaut program, for the sake of it) and regularly drove quicker than stink (qualifying at Daytona in ’77, Guthrie was the fastest driver with a top speed of over 185 mph).

That’s why specialist women motor insurance providers are able to offer such fantastically cheap car insurance policies to women nowadays. Not because, as he might think, we’re slow and boring, but because we’re genuinely better drivers, across the board.

Hopefully, that’ll keep him quiet for ten minutes.

Before 1976
Guthrie began racing in 1961, the year after she graduated from the University of Michigan. She was 23 and living in New York, working as an aviation engineer and competing in gymkhanas, field trials and hill climbs in her spare time.

Competing on a shoestring budget, she struggled to pay for race fees and motor insurance. Women racers rarely picked up sponsorship, and it was two years before she could afford the upgrade from her first racing car (a Jaguar XK 120; so called because of its 120mph top speed) to one in which she posed a real threat to the opposition: an XK 140.

Saving for fees, motor insurance and upgrades left no money for a mechanic, and so when, after her first season in the new Jaguar, Guthrie decided the engine needed stripping down and repairing (she had salvaged it from a wreck and then raced it for a year), there was nobody to do the work but herself.

Hard work under the bonnet and experience on the track led to a string of successes and by 1972 a new career as she turned her back on physics to race full time.

1976
Cheap women’s motor insurance is a modern-day phenomenon – back in the seventies, you would more likely be penalised by a car insurance provider for being ‘emotionally unstable’.

But in 1976, Janet Guthrie was breaking into the big leagues in American motor racing: IRL and NASCAR.

In the case of the former; her invitation came from the long-established team owner and car builder Rolla Vollstedt.

He asked Guthrie to try out for him at that year’s Indianapolis 500, and of course she enthusiastically accepted.

Indy 500 is not just ‘the greatest spectacle in racing’, as it is billed; it is the biggest single-day event in worldwide sport, with more track-side spectators and a larger international audience than any other.

In her autobiography, Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle, she recalls “Rolla had flown in the face of 65 years of tradition when he announced his intention of bringing a woman driver to the Indianapolis 500. There must surely have been moments when he regretted it.”

65 years before, in 1911, Ray Harroun had won the first Indianapolis 500-Mile Race – which was recognized as the longest race in motorsport history. No woman had ever taken part, and the majority of NASCAR race organisers or competitors there thought women were incapable of driving 500 miles non-stop.

Long before the enlightened days of low-cost women’s motor insurance, Guthrie was going up against the weight of popular opinion and the establishment, and Rolla Vollstedt had given her the opportunity.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that Vollstedt was as disappointed as she was when Guthrie failed to qualify for the ’76 race.

But failure at Indianapolis opened doors for her at NASCAR.

Guthrie had attracted a storm of media attention in the build-up to Indy 500, and NASCAR promoters badly needed it for one of their least popular races, the World 600, held at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina.

If she accepted their offer of a place and qualified, Guthrie would be the first woman ever to have competed in a NASCAR superspeedway race. But she resisted, still caught up in the dream of a place at the Indianapolis 500, and only agreed to come to Charlotte at the last minute.

And qualify she did. The publicity brought 100,000 people to Charlotte to see Guthrie race – 10,000 up on the previous attendance record.

“We sold more tickets the next day [after qualifying] than we ever sold in one day in the history of the speedway,” recalls Humpy Wheeler, one of the Charlotte promoters.

“You’ve got to understand, we’re talking about 1976. This was not a woman competing just in a sports event. This was really a sociological revolution that was going on.”

It was turning points like this – the first woman competing in a massively popular, aggressively masculine American national sport – that would one day lead to equality between the genders, and (while we wait for that day to come) cheaper motor insurance for women.

But the massive turn-out at Charlotte did not signify that Guthrie had been accepted by the racing community.

The thought of a woman competing at the highest levels of NASCAR met with scorn from the male drivers; the majority of whom doubted she would be able to finish the race at all, let alone offer them any opposition.

In the event, Guthrie stayed the distance; placing 15th after the gruelling 600-mile marathon. This was the first of 33 top-level NASCAR fixtures she would enter in the years up to 1980. Since then, only three other women have competed at the same level – on a grand total of just 15 occasions.

It says a great deal for Guthrie’s determination that she was more of a success as a female racing driver in the seventies than any woman in these more enlightened times of cheap women motor insurance, female changing-rooms at speedways (unheard of in Guthrie’s day) and enforced diversity.

1977

NASCAR is virtually unique among sports in holding its chief fixture, the Daytona 500, right at the beginning of the season.

Thus, after four more NASCAR appearances in 1976, Guthrie kicked-off the '77 season with the most important race of her life.

She qualified 39th, a staggering feat in itself. But in the course of the 200-lap race, Guthrie moved up from the back of the field to finish in twelfth.

As impressive a result as it was, even twelfth place didn't do justice to Guthrie's performance that day. Up until ten laps from the finish, she had been running in eighth - and it was engine trouble that cost her four places at the last gasp.

NASCAR enthusiasts will always remember Guthrie as the first woman to race at Daytona, but her performance demands we remember that she raced well.

NASCAR judges named her the top rookie at Daytona, an honour she would earn a further four times in the '77 season. She placed top-12 in ten out of 19 races that year.

Meanwhile, Guthrie was preparing for another qualifying session at the Indianapolis 500. And, although the race itself was a disappointment (mechanical problems meant she would only complete 27 laps), the qualifying was spectacular.

She set the fastest time of the day on the opening day of practice, enraging a bigoted IRL establishment. As Guthrie herself put it, "Established drivers complained loudly, publicly, and at length. 'Women don't have the strength, women don't have the endurance, women don't have the emotional stability, women are going to endanger our lives'."

What must these ageing NASCAR stars think of modern-day society, which freely acknowledges women as the better drivers? Perhaps paying twice the motor insurance ladies do has taught them the folly of their youth.

But in '77, a woman had qualified in the Indy 500, and done so in fine style.

Janet Guthrie proved not only that she could participate at the highest levels of American motorsports; she proved she could outperform many of her male counterparts.

After 1977
Guthrie had better success at the 1978 Indy 500, finishing ninth. That year, she was racing alone, without the backing of Rolla Vollstedt - and to succeed at this level, with a small team she alone picked and managed, is an astonishing achievement.

The best finish of her IRL career was also her last IndyCar appearance - at the Milwaukee 200 in 1979. Guthrie placed fifth.

Today, Guthrie is a published author, public speaker and television personality. She is an inspiring example of what women can achieve in motorsports, and her achievements on the track have paved the way for greater acceptance of women behind the wheel - whether they be lining up on future starting grids, or merely surfing the web for cheap women's motor insurance quotes.

Janet's official website can be found at www.janetguthrie.com.