The Canadian-born Isabelle Tremblay was born in 1972 in St. Hippolyte, Quebec, and became a female racing driver at the mature age of 35. This makes her very unique in the racing world, as most drivers, especially the female ones, end up retiring at around this age. Before transitioning into racing, she worked as a real estate agent, but couldn’t help herself from dipping her feet into the racing driver world.
In late 2008, Isabelle Tremblay made her debut in a 200-lap endurance race alongside 97 other drivers. While she participated mostly for the fun of it, the accomplished and talented driver actually wound up winning the event. From there, she began training for a real career in the sport, and joined the first Formula 1600 race, while also becoming the only woman in history to win this challenging and unique tournament.
Francesca Linossi
Francesca Linossi is an avid car racer. She is often seen driving dirt bikes, or her signature Mercedes track car. Her tweaked-out Mercedes AMG GT3 is one of the most intimidating vehicles currently employed in NASCAR. She got the vehicle after racing with a Lamborghini Huracan for a while. Linossi also loves hiking and often enjoys traveling anywhere from beaches to deserts.
Francesca Linossi is one of the more promising female NASCAR drivers and has accumulated four wins from 120 races entered. She's arguably the most famous Italian NASCAR driver in the world right now and lives quite an extraordinary life. She was the youngest race driver in Italian history to drive four rounds of the Citroen C1 Cup and currently focuses mostly on GT racing.
Angela and Amber Cope
Female drivers are quite rare in the NASCAR sport. But what’s even rarer, is two identical female driver twins who compete together in NASCAR events. Angela and Amber Cope, also known as the Twin Turbos, made history in 2010 when they both competed in three top NASCAR events together. Angela, however, is regarded as a slightly better racer than her sister, Amber.
The two have built an incredible racing career, but it took them many years to do so. They overcame many obstacles before getting the recognition they do today and had to share a racing car at an early point in their career.
Janet Guthrie
Janet Guthrie has a very interesting life story that involved a massive career transition toward her passion. It’s hard to describe what would motivate a successful aerospace engineer, which is one of America’s best-paying jobs, to switch careers and become a professional race car driver. In 1972, she made the switch which was quite a feat considering that there had been no female NASCAR drivers in over a decade.
Perhaps it was her deep knowledge of physics that helped her, but what’s clear is that Janet Guthrie was a great driver. She finished 15th in the 1976 World 600 tournament, her first-ever race, and went on to quality and complete in the challenging Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500 races. Guthrie is revered in the race-driving world and her race suit and helmet are displayed at the Smithsonian Institute, the world's largest museum, and research complex.
Johanna Long
Like many other female racers on this list, Johanna Long was the daughter of an avid racing fan who helped turn his daughter into a lean, mean racing machine. Long began racing karts at the young age of five and made her NASCAR debut in 2009. Since then, she has raced in a variety of competitions and often manages to beat much older and more popular competitors.
Long is an extremely active racer and has participated in 38 events in 2009 alone. Of these 38 events, she managed to win 27 top-ten finishes, 17 top-five finishes, and 5 wins. From there, Long only improved and later crossed a major milestone in her NASCAR career when she won the Snowball Derby winner in 2010. We’re excited to see this trend continue and look forward to what Long might accomplish next as one of NASCAR’s top racing drivers.