As each car pulled onto the track, she visualized the faces of the women whose lives she was about to change and thought, “I’ve f-ing done it. And now here she was, standing on a track that has hosted Formula 1 races since the ’70s, waiting for 18 female drivers to make their way to the starting line for W Series’ first, history-making race. She had spent the past four years trying to convince sponsors, promoters and organizers at the top tier of motorsport that W Series, the international women’s-only motor-racing series that she founded, was not just a good idea but a necessary one. But as she stood there, her fingers going numb from the cold, she wondered if she could allow tears to overwhelm her for just a few moments. Bond Muir, who is 53 and exudes a let’s-get-on-with-it attitude, is not the crying type.

September 29, 1999: Kristin finishes 9th in the 600cc Pro-Sport Hot Shoe. On a cold spring day in 2019, Catherine Bond Muir, a British former corporate financier and lawyer from Surrey, stepped out onto the wet pavement of the Hockenheimring racing circuit in Germany’s Upper Rhine Valley. Debbi makes it to the semis - the first woman to do so at an AMA Pro race.

Professional women hot racers