For as long as people have been racing cars against each other, one constant has always applied: no matter your gender, it's the speed and the clock that matters.
And so it was for Australia's little-known first lady of speed, Cooma-born Joan Richmond, who started motor racing because her chosen sport, horse racing, barred her from becoming a jockey.
"I was furious and devastated," she said in her now-scarce biography.
"I couldn't see what being a man or a woman had to do with riding a horse. But I could race a car".
And indeed, Joan Richmond was so skilled at motor racing that she regularly embarrassed her male counterparts.
Joan Richmond was the well-educated daughter of a wealthy woolgrowing family from the Central West of NSW, and was taught to drive by the family chauffeur.
The Richmonds developed the now-famous Haddon Rig Merino stud but the death of her father before she had turned 21 meant a forced sale. She was left with what was described as a "small legacy".
Joan Richmond was so skilled at motor racing that she regularly embarrassed her male counterparts.
Privilege and social connections were useful in securing the resources to compete and Ms Richmond had just turned 26 when she took on her biggest challenge, the 1931 Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island in Victoria. At 331kms distance, it was the furthest she had raced.
Ms Richmond and her riding mechanic Mollie Shaw attracted publicity because of their gender but were granted no favours by organisers.
However, of the 19 starters in the race, they finished fifth and sixth on handicap - and her chosen racing career was on the way.
Ms Richmond headed to Europe to try her luck there, taking an overland driving route through India and the Middle East courtesy of a sponsorship deal with British carmaker the Riley Motor Company.
It was a remarkable journey of itself, with Richmond's journal of the trip, together with photographs of the car parked at the Taj Mahal and in a Baghdad bazaar, now part of the National Museum of Australia collection.
Ms Richmond's big break overseas came when former grand prix winner Arthur Waite convinced one of the influential Riley brothers, Victor Riley, already one of her backers, to find a car for her to race in Britain and on the continent.
She partnered with British former motorcycle racer Elsie Wisdom as the only women in the high profile Brooklands 1000 race, and won the 1600km event at an average speed of 141.59km/h on a dangerous, bumpy and difficult track strewn with oil and rubber.
Richmond didn't know she had won the race until she saw the chequered flag.
"In those days, the cars leaked oil and combined with the dirt and dust from the tyres and the track, one really looked a sight," she said later.
They were the first women to win an international motor race, and even received a congratulatory telegram from famed aviatrix Amelia Earnhardt.
She then competed in rallies, races and hillclimbs in a number of different vehicles from Frazer-Nash, Riley, and Triumph, some with factory support.
She met and dated London stockbroker Bill Bilney, who is said to have proposed to her on the eve of a 12-hour race at Donington Park where they were to share the driving.
Bilney was to drive the middle stint of the race and the more experienced Richmond to drive the start and finish stints.
Tragically, with the track still wet after early rain, Bilney locked wheels with another competitor and crashed at full speed into a stone wall. The car was crushed and he was killed.
"To this day, I blame myself for asking Bill to drive with me," she told her biographer.
When World War Two broke out, all motor racing was suspended. Ms Richmond stayed on in London, lived in a canal boat for time, and took on the very risky role as an ambulance driver on the city streets during the height of the war when London was was being bombed on a near-nightly basis by German aircraft and targeted by V2 rockets.
She survived the war and returned to her native Australia in 1946 but did not return to motor racing, so her remarkable story and the success she enjoyed in Europe, has gone largely unheralded.
Joanne Bach, a curator at the National Museum, said that the pre-and post-World War Two eras of motor racing were very different in that after the war, men dominated the sport.
"What's often not well recognised is how many women, like Joan, participated in motor racing in the pre-War period," Ms Bach said.
"I think, too, the fact that almost all of Joan's success was when she was racing overseas that her achievements are pretty much unrecognised here in Australia."
Ms Richmond died, aged 94, in 1999. Items she had kept from her career were put up for [public auction in 2014, including her diaries, photographs, journals and even her racing suit and goggles. Thankfully, the historical value of that memorabilia was identified and key items acquired by the National Museum of Australia to be held in their collection in perpetuity.
"Joan's story is a remarkable one. She was an extraordinary woman and we're very pleased to hold those items in our collection," Ms Bach said.
*Thanks to John Smailes, with excerpts from his book Formula One: The Australian and New Zealand Story
