The history of motor sport is, in many ways, a history of barriers being broken. In the automobile’s 19th-century infancy, 60 mph was thought an insurmountable barrier; doctors even hypothesized that the human body would be unable to breathe at that speed and, therefore, the driver would surely die. As racers proved this notion wrong, the physical barriers quickly shifted. Louis Rigolly became the first to break the 100-mph barrier in 1904. By 1925, Malcolm Campbell had pushed the barrier to 150 mph, while Henry Seagrave pushed it to 200 mph in 1927.
In the subsequent three decades, the absolute speed record would shoot up to over 600 mph, yet absolute speeds were not the only barriers. In addition to physical barriers, there have also been significant psychological barriers, the most persistent of which being those of race and gender. By and large, international motor sport—and here I speak of it at the highest professional levels, i.e., Formula One, Indy 500, etc.—has been almost exclusively dominated by Caucasian men.
