1137 replies to this topic

[raoul leDuke]

Just researching the following so any help greatly appreciated.

Betty Haigh - Rallies, hillclimbs etc. - Drove with Yvonne Simon at Le Mans in 1951. Raced from late 1940s to late 1950s

Shelly Marten, daughter of Brooklands MG Midget racer K.W. Marten

Isobel Robinson - PR Officer for the Owen Organisation, raced a Cooper-Norton 500

Bluebell Gibbs - wife of Len Gibbs, started racing motorcycles in 1923. Raced the ex-Eric Thompson HRG and later a Cooper-Climax and Lotus XI.

[HiRich]

Isobel Robinson came up in a chat I had a couple of weeks back. I have a couple of appearance in a Cooper 500 in 1962-63. The other comment was she "married someone high up in the VSCC or Bentley Drivers Club, or something". So half a lead, then.

[David McKinney]

She is married to John Willis, who for many years was principal commentator at VSCC meetings

[LotusElise]

Originally posted by raoul leDuke
Just researching the following so any help greatly appreciated.

Betty Haigh - Rallies, hillclimbs etc. - Drove with Yvonne Simon at Le Mans in 1951. Raced from late 1940s to late 1950s

Bluebell Gibbs - wife of Len Gibbs, started racing motorcycles in 1923. Raced the ex-Eric Thompson HRG and later a Cooper-Climax and Lotus XI.

Betty Haig was the granddaughter (I think) of Field Marshal Haig. She won a Gold Medal in the 1936 (?) Olympic Rally and led for a good deal of the way. I have a photo of the car somewhere - it's a little green Singer.

Both Betty and Bluebelle are in the BWRDC book. Bluebelle was a strictly amateur car racer after riding a Norton for the works team in trials early on in her motorsport career.

[HiRich]

Good to hear that Isobel Robinson is still alive, and married.

Betty Haig was the grand niece of Filed Marshal Haig. if you can find a copy of Motorsport, January 1965, there is quite an extensive article on her various cars. I only recorded the 500cc bits as follows:
“While she had the Healey (no dates given, but we know this was around 1950) Betty Haig also had a Cooper-JAP 1,000, her first single-seater. This was purely a sprint car, trailed to meetings behind a Jeep. It seldom ran for long on both cylinders, big motorcycle engines burning dope proving difficult to tune, but it did get some records. Following the theory that if she couldn’t make a big twin run on two, she had better get a single cylinder car which she might be able to keep on one, Betty Haig took on an early Cooper 500, ex-Jackie Reece…
…Following the sprint Coopers, 1953 found Betty racing the ex-Dodson TT MG Magnette.”
She appears to have had two Cooper 500s, which seems to be the Jackie Reece Mk III (it is probably this car in which she entered the 1950 Brighton Speed Trials, in the 1100cc class), and a Mk IV (which appears for sale through Vintage Autos of England in Motorsport, July 1953)

[Andrew Kitson]

Maybe some of the hype can now be justified. Danica Patrick has won the latest round of the Indycar Championship in Japan, I believe her first win ever in a car of any sort. Surely the highest profile result in top level motor racing for a woman for many years? I just find it baffling that a driver can get to this level without actually ever winning anything...but we see this happening with the male drivers too, especially those well funded who can 'buy' their way up. Anyway well done Danica.

[Rob29]

Women in Black

Quote from 'Radio Times' re TV programme scheduled for BBC2 next Thurs May15"meets the Emirates only female formula one driver" To my knowledge the last female in F1 was 16 yrs ago and I have never heard of any driver from UAE.

[LotusElise]

The only one I can think of is Laleh Seddigh - I think she's racing in Bahrain or somewhere at the moment. She hasn't done F1 though. She did win some saloon races in her native Iran, but the only single-seater experience she has is in F. BMW, I think.

[Alan Cox]

Originally posted by Rob29
Quote from 'Radio Times' re TV programme scheduled for BBC2 next Thurs May15"meets the Emirates only female formula one driver"

Nice to see that the BBC, and its once-illustrious organ, are maintaining their current policy of failing to let the facts get in the way of a good story...

[ensign14]

Well, once Andi Zuber gets a sex change and a Red Bull ride, maybe they'll be correct.

[dbw]

as the starter of this thread i thought it would be my duty to report i just saw the video of miss patrick punting a neighbouring team's mechanic with her left front wheel as she entered her pit at indy....women drivers indeed!

[Peter Leversedge]

Wendy Dodge raced a sprint car in the South Island of New Zealand a few years ago [ Chev powered not Dodge powered ] Unfortunately she has ended up in a wheel chair as the result of a stroke.

[eldougo]

Originally posted by dbw
as the starter of this thread i thought it would be my duty to report i just saw the video of miss patrick punting a neighbouring team's mechanic with her left front wheel as she entered her pit at indy....women drivers indeed!

I saw that on the news i did not relies that it was Danica Patrick... the poor mechanic punched her in the helmut through frustration ,what was the outcome after the race i love to know.

[HiRich]

I think that was a different incident, eldougo.
In the last race, Roth (IIRC all of this) speared Shecketer's front right wheel man in the back of the knees with hos wing, and received a cuff around the head for his troubles.
Patrick clipped someone yesterday (who may not have been looking) at Indianapolis. So not necessarily her fault, although she has hit more than her fair share of things in pitlane recently (marker cones, Dan Wheldon, a couple of walls that weren't looking where they were going, that sort of thing)

[ensign14]

It was hardly Patrick's fault. Someone from another pit crew wandered into her pitbox just as she was coming in. With another car in the box next to her's. She couldn't possibly have seen him. Fortunately no broken bones.

[eldougo]

It sounds like it,s all go in the Indy PIT lane in 2008. And they say driving a racing car is Very dangerous.

[Bloggsworth]

Originally posted by dbw
as the starter of this thread i thought it would be my duty to report i just saw the video of miss patrick punting a neighbouring team's mechanic with her left front wheel as she entered her pit at indy....women drivers indeed!

A typically misogynistic remark, he shouldn't have been wandering around in somebody else's way - no-one coming into the pits makes allowances for members of other teams ambling about where they shouldn't.

[dbw]

careful bloggs...you may be visited by the sarcastic humour demon tonite and get a good talking to.....


[btw isn't a misogynist a man with many wives ?????]

[Rob29]

We have several other threads discussing Danika,could this one be left to others?
Re;Lellah Seddigh she is Iranian and the BBC has already done a documentary on her which I have on tape.In view of the way she was treated maybe she has fled to Bahrain?

[HiRich]

One I haven't seen mentioned so far is Miss Pauline Brock. I have records of her running Cooper 500s between 1955 and 1958, mainly on the hills but occasionally on track. There appears to have been a relationship with Jack Welton, whose car she shared on a number of occasions, but beyond that, nothing.

[LotusElise]

Originally posted by Rob29
Re;Lellah Seddigh she is Iranian and the BBC has already done a documentary on her which I have on tape.In view of the way she was treated maybe she has fled to Bahrain?

IIRC the Iranian authorities were trying to get her license rescinded, so she has taken to racing in the Emirates. That, and the higher standard of competition there.

[lanciaman]

Originally posted by eldougo


I saw that on the news i did not relies that it was Danica Patrick... the poor mechanic punched her in the helmut through frustration ,what was the outcome after the race i love to know.

You are confusing two separate incidents. In the first, Marty Roth hit another team's RF tire changer upon entering his pit box and then in getting untangled ran over the foot of another of the team's pit crew, who in ire smacked Roth atop the helmet.

A couple weeks later-- i.e., a day ago-- Danica ran into a chap who wasn't paying attention, entirely his fault and he said so through his stitches.

Shall we begin a thread about pit mishaps, 99% of which would be attributed to male drivers simply by statistical incidence alone?

[Rob29]

Originally posted by LotusElise
The only one I can think of is Laleh Seddigh - I think she's racing in Bahrain or somewhere at the moment. She hasn't done F1 though. She did win some saloon races in her native Iran, but the only single-seater experience she has is in F. BMW, I think.

Not Laleh.Did anyone else watch this programme? Just a few minites devoted to a lady whos name I did not catch but drove a black Ferrari on the road,and seemed to enjoy racing the local boys on the public road It was claimed she holds an F1 licence and does posess race suit and helmet.

[ReWind]

From the book thread:

I don't think Fast Ladies by Jean-François Bouzanquet has appeared in this thread, though it has been mentioned in passing on the Hellé-Nice thread.
Being a French book, the emphasis on French drivers is understandable.
But the book's sub-title, 'Female Racing Drivers', is a breach of the Trade Descriptions Act: the publishers (Veloce) should know that in English we do not call rally-drivers or record-breakers "racing drivers".
Although a number of circuit-racing subjects are included, the vast focus is on rally-drivers. And where a driver competed in both disciplines, the emphasis is firmly on her rallying exploits (I didn't even realise Marie-Claude Beaumont had been a rally-driver). Furthermore, the most important rally of all seems to have been the Paris-Saint Raphaël, which was of course open only to female drivers, and similarly, where the circuit racing exploits of such as Bill Wisdom or Eileen Ellison are discussed, an over-emphasis is placed on their successes in ladies-only races at Brooklands.
There's one page on F1 drivers: Desiré Wilson gets just two lines, and no mention of the fact that she was the first woman to win a Formula 1 race, Divina Galica gets four, Maria-Teresa de Filippis eight, Lella Lombardi 11 and Giovanna Amati 24...
Having said that, there are lots of high-quality photographs, albeit mainly static. And amongst it all are some scandalous facts about some of the better-known names which I didn't know about till I'd read it

I'd be willing to bet that it glosses over the 1938 one, in which Betty Haig, Mrs Lace, Dorothy Stanley-Turner and Amy Johnson took four of the first six places!

[edit] Can anybody remind me of Mrs Lace's first name? It seems to have slipped my memory!

Mrs Alfred Clucas Lace ....... I believe it was Nellie.

Ken, AFAIK it was Betty, but I could be wrong......

ADAM

Hi Adam - Maybe that 1930s fashion for calling folk by first names that are totally unrelated to what is on their birth certificate is to blame? I've seen A C Lace called Bob and Tom but if he was indeed Alfred C then the only bride who married an Alfred C Lace in England and Wales in the appropriate time slot was called Nellie Shaw ..... of course they could have got married in Scotland!

Perhaps Vitesse will regain his memory?

Yes, Ken. You are right re. 1930s "names".
I believe she was from the Isle of Man, where ACL's grandfather owned a hotel. Her names were Phoebe Elizabeth.
Of course following the convention of the time she was almost always referred to as Mrs. A.C. Lace.

ADAM

And her husband too was always referred to simply by his initials. I didn't know until today that he actually had any first names

Thanks Adam

Googling around it seems that Mr Lace volunteered to fight for Finland against the Soviets in the Winter War. Tried to get back to England from Sweden in 1942 but his vessel was intercepted by the Germans and scuttled. He didn't die until 1978 though. For the collectors of birthdates he was born 4 April 1897.

Sorry to have taken the thread off topic.

Betty Lace was in fact Phoebe Elizabeth Mychreest (Maiden Name), she was at the time married to Jerry Macqueen but took the Lace name,
She later married Brian Carbury who became a famous ace in the Battle of Britain.

Thanks for that. Interesting. I also turned up a reference in The Times to Carbury being one of four pilots involved in a plot to export Beaufighters to Israel in August 1948. But without the approval of HM Government ....

Carbury and the other three pilots were each fined £100, but the unnamed instigator of the plot had entered Israel and not returned. And as the pilots had each apparently been paid £500 (although one said he'd done it for free!) perhaps crime does sometimes pay!

This should be the appropriate place for those quotes.

Edited by ReWind, 03 February 2010 - 12:52.

[Rob29]

From the book thread: This should be the appropriate place for those quotes.

Thanks for that 'Rewind' Had not seen those quotes before! One book I have not yet acquired-sounds like I need not bother.

[Alan Cox]

My favourite photo of Divina Galica, taken 35 years before the second one, from this year's Autosport International

[sterling49]

Just a complete aside.....her cousin was a mate of mine at school..............

[Barry Boor]

I don't know if this has entered anyone else's data bank but there will be FIVE ladies in the Indy Racing League series this year, FIVE!

[ensign14]

You're very kind to suggest Milka Duno will be racing...

[Alan Cox]

Nick Mason's daughters, Chloe and Holly, and their team-mate Hubert Fabri from a VSCC Donington meeting.

[Marc Sproule]

Some of Arlene Hiss, the first woman to race an Indy car....

http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4336710648
http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4336710764
http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4291839045

Here's one of Janet Guthrie out of the car.....

http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4339397159

I also have a number of Divina Galica when she was driving one of Fred Opert's Chevrons in the Atlantic series on this side of the pond. I've add those to the list of images to scan and upload.

Edited by Marc Sproule, 19 February 2011 - 08:02.

[Marc Sproule]

Can't forget Desire Wilson.....

http://www.flickr.co...N03/4527433220/

There are other snaps from '83 that were added this evening.....

http://www.flickr.co...s/46681980@N03/

[mwphoto]

Just saw Desire Wilson at Virginial International Raceway less than two weeks ago at the Grand-Am race weekend.


Shot this in the Mustang Challenge paddock on Thursdays test day.
Don't know if she spent any time behind the wheel of one of the Mustangs or not.

[Quixotic]

Not a Woman Driver, but still a woman racer. In 1995 and 1996 I raced against a little lady called Anne Kory in the Australian 125cc Grand Prix Class of the Australian Road Racing Championships.

She was quite fast as well. Much braver than me in fact.

Regards,

John Swensen

[GD66]

Not a Woman Driver, but still a woman racer. In 1995 and 1996 I raced against a little lady called Anne Kory in the Australian 125cc Grand Prix Class of the Australian Road Racing Championships.

She was quite fast as well. Much braver than me in fact.

Regards,

John Swensen

Plenty of other quick ladies in Aussie 125 racing, John...Linda Walsh, Mandy Beales, Candice Scott...all good hard racers in their own right.

[Quixotic]

Plenty of other quick ladies in Aussie 125 racing, John...Linda Walsh, Mandy Beales, Candice Scott...all good hard racers in their own right.

Yep, Lin Walsh was Racing the ARRC just before me, and the others were after me I think. I never had an issue with having my arse kicked by women racers, but I know a few people who had huge problems with being beaten by women

[Marc Sproule]

Divina Galica....Formula Atlantic in North America....

Just two for now. More to be added at some time down the road.....

http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4553576804

http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4552937807

They will end up in my Atlantic set....

http://www.flickr.co...57623186773769/

Edited by Marc Sproule, 16 May 2010 - 02:37.

[David McKinney]

Am I right in recalling that Sheik was a similar product to Excita?

And, while I'm here, it won't be long before someone points out that the lady's name was - indeed, still is - Divina

[Marc Sproule]

Yes, you are correct about Sheik. See my description under this image....

http://www.flickr.co...N03/4553576804/

You are also correct about the spelling of Divina's name. I gotta stop doing this stuff when it's past my bedtime!!!

[RTH]

How many of these can anyone name ?



Great photographs.

[David McKinney]

All of them

(But then, I do have the book )

[Phil Rainford]

Michelle Mouton in her role as President of the FIA's Women and Motor Sport Commission at Le Mans last weekend

Here with Vanina Ickx.....








PAR

[ReWind]

Michelle Mouton

This must be some sort of Obama effect.
Mlle. Mouton's name is Michèle.

[Michael Ferner]

At least he didn't misspell Vanina!

[although it's tempting...]

[Phil Rainford]

Sorry about that...

Must be a Le Mans trait




PAR

[Mallory Dan]

Is it me or does MM look a little like the dreadful Ms Harperson?

[Alan Cox]

Is it me or does MM look a little like the dreadful Ms Harperson?

No, considerably more attractive and appealing

[RA Historian]

At least he didn't misspell Vanina!

[although it's tempting...]

Now, now, Michael, careful...

[arttidesco]

Does anybody recognise the Who Where When and or story behind the driver of this Corvette ?

[raceannouncer2003]

Does anybody recognise the Who Where When and or story behind the driver of this Corvette ?

As discussed in posts 16 and 17 on this webpage:

http://forums.autosp...howtopic=105383

Apparently Ginny Simms at Santa Barbara in May of 1960. Simms finished third in the ladies race. Here is a link to the Life magazine photo mentioned:

http://images.google...2622d310d513c6f

Vince H.