Three women who paved the way in motorsport | TAG Heuer Official Magazine

For International Women’s Day 2025, TAG Heuer pays tribute to three impressive women who played a significant role in the history of racing and timekeeping. By carving out their place in motorsport history, they also proved themselves in a male-dominated environment.

Janet Guthrie

JANET GUTHRIE: PAVING THE WAY FOR WOMEN IN RACING

Born in Iowa City in 1938, Guthrie gained a degree in physics and began a career in aerospace engineering, but within three years decided to follow her heart and pursue a career as a racing driver. Hauling her Jaguar XK140 on a trailer behind a station wagon that she bought for $45, she competed in sports car races across the USA. In 1966, she raced at the first ever 24 hours of Daytona, driving a Sunbeam Alpine in one of two all-female teams. The Boston Globe covered the event with the headline “Porsches and Women Surprise At Daytona”. They were the first female team to finish an international 24-hour endurance race, and as the Globe put it, “they chose a most formidable field of men drivers to run with”.

Guthrie would go on to twice score class wins at the 12 hours of Sebring, but her big break came 13 years into her life as a sports car driver, when a team owner named Rolla Vollstedt offered her a chance to qualify for the Indy 500. It was 1976, and the following year she became the first woman to race at the famous circuit. She later competed at the Daytona 500, and raced in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series from 1976 to 1980. In 1978, she finished 9th at the Indianapolis 500, driving for a team she managed, nursing a broken wrist. Her career-best finish in Indycar racing – 5th place, in Milwaukee in 1979 – set a record for a woman that would stand for 20 years. On her wrist was a black PVD-coated two-register Heuer chronograph.

JUDY STROPUS: A HEROINE OF PRECISION

While Janet Guthrie was making history behind the wheel, Judy Stropus was doing the same on the pit wall. Born in Lithuania, she arrived in the USA after World War II and by the 1960s, found herself immersed in the world of sports car racing. Although she would prove a skilled driver, competing in national cup events in the 1970s, her unique talent was with a stopwatch and pencil.

“I started out timing and scoring with the Queens Sports Car Club,” she said in an interview with Daily Sports Car. “The gal who was there (Lee Sorrentino) taught me how to do it and I thought, ‘Wow. Is that all there is to it?’ I didn’t know any better; I just thought anybody could do it. It was something that I discovered I could do and I could do it well.”

Stropus became renowned for her ability to time multiple cars simultaneously, armed only with a Heuer 11.404 flyback stopwatch and a number 3 pencil (apparently a number 2 wore out too quickly). Her sharp-eyed acumen and powers of mental arithmetic and recall were matched by her stamina: Stropus was known to time entire 24-hour endurance races without a break. In a pre-digital age, Stropus had a talent that was the envy of every race team on the grid. During her career, she worked for such world-class names as Penske Racing in Can-Am, Trans-Am and at the Indy 500, Bud Moore Racing, BMW, American Motors, and customer and factory teams for Porsche and Chevrolet among many others. Her services were so valuable that she even told an anecdote of a rival team principal attempting to spy on her hand-written timing notes mid-race.

She credited her success to a determined, and modest, attitude, telling the International Motorsport Hall of Fame – into which she was inducted in 2021 – that “in my family there were surgeons, scientists, skilled professionals… I believed that everyone else was better than I was. It was paramount that we did an accurate job for these high-profile teams. That was a lot of pressure. Once you have the reputation of being very good, you have to live up to it.”

Joann Villeneuve

JOANN VILLENEUVE: BREAKING BARRIERS ON AND OFF THE TRACK

Stropus lived and breathed analogue racing; when timing technology advanced, she pivoted her career to a hugely successful second act as a PR consultant. But she would not be the last woman to influence the world of racing from the timing chair.

Many Heuer aficionados will know the name of Jean Campiche, the former motorcycle racer who ran Heuer’s sports timing operation for many years – notably during the watchmaker’s groundbreaking partnership with Ferrari. At his side would always be an indispensable assistant, and one such was Joann Villeneuve, the wife of the legendary Canadian driver Gilles Villeneuve, who raced for Ferrari from 1978 until his death in 1982.

Working alongside Campiche, she was a vital link in the system, communicating with the team from his timing station (the iconic Heuer Centigraph Le Mans, recognisable by its bright red livery). She would collect the printed times, copy them onto A4 sheets with columns for each driver, and onto a plate featuring small pull-tabs. When a better time came along, the position of the tab was changed, the old time was erased and the new one written in; the plate was shown during pit stops to the drivers and engineers, providing real-time information for their analysis and strategic decision-making. Such cool-headed efficiency is testament to the old adage that it takes a team to win races, and like Janet Guthrie and Judy Stropus, Joann Villeneuve showed that women have always played an impactful role in the sport.