American race car driver Leilani Munter has faced her fair share of sexism. It goes with the territory as one of just a handful of women in a male-dominated sport.
"All female race car drivers have to grow a pretty thick skin to stay in the game because people can be very harsh on us," Munter tells Fairfax Media.
The biology graduate fell into racing in her twenties when she first raced a car as part of a bucket list.
Now 43, she's a well-known environmental campaigner, an animal activist, a model and an actress (after college she worked as a double for actress Catherine Zeta-Jones and used the money from acting to fund herself through racing school).
Sometimes being a girl helps.
"The race car is what gave me a voice," says Munter, a self-described "vegan hippie chick with a race car".
Munter also used that platform to lobby from Washington to Geneva and will soon head to Melbourne for the C2 creative conference - which she says "is unlike any business conference you have been to before - it's so cool".
She can tap into 75 million motor racing fans around the world and expose them to her 100 per cent electric car, a Tesla Model S, and vegan food (she says her fans have taken to the fake meat she's handed them at the end of a race).
An amplified lens
The downside of being a woman in racing is "everything you do is amplified".
???The downside of being a woman in racing is "everything you do is amplified" says Leilani Munter. Photo: Allen McEachem
"It's very hard to blend in when you're a female driver," she says. "Everyone wants to see how the girl's going to do."
Her own experiences of sexism include being run off the track.
"I've heard guys talk to each other over the radio, planning to take me out [of the race] because I was at the front," she says.
"That happens less now, at higher levels because it's a bigger and more experienced game - but when racing smaller tracks, that would happen."
There was a moment when where she joined a male driver in signing autographs for their fans. "There was a little girl waiting for me to sign my autograph, and I asked her, 'Do you want to drive race cars one day?' And the guy I was standing next to, about to race, said, 'don't encourage her'."
There's men who are still against women racing.
"[Former racing champion] Richard Petty doesn't believe women should drive race cars," she says. NASCAR's Danica Patrick got denigrated by Petty at the Canadian Motorsports Expo in 2014 in which he said that she would only win a Sprint Cup Series race, "if everybody else stayed home".
"When a man who is a legend in our sport is basically saying, 'it's ok to have sexist opinions' ... that gives permission to male race fans that they can be sexist," Munter says. "That just comes with territory and hopefully one day there will be enough girls out there that it won't be a big deal, but we're not there yet."
Beating the men
She's also upbeat about the progress that's been made. "For a long time women weren't allowed in the pits," she says. "Now we're racing against them [men] and beating them."
A fully electric Tesla Model S P85+ Photo: Joerg Mitter
There's been a number of stand-out moments, she says, from the time she debuted in racing in 2003 at the NASCAR Weekly Racing Series at South Boston Speedway (where she finished ninth).
She made her first speedway start at Texas Motor Speedway in 2004, where she set a new record by qualifying fourth - the highest qualifying effort for a female driver at the track - and finishing seventh.
But she attributes the turning point in her global racing career in 2006, when she had one of the biggest races of her career, setting a new record at Texas Motor Speedway for the highest finish for a female driver in the history of the 1.5 mile speedway (fourth place).
"If there was one moment when I earned respect it was 2006 when I finished fourth in that race," she says. "That was when I proved I could hang upfront and run fast with the guys. I could hold my own. Once you earn that people will support you."
The support grew louder in 2007 when she became the fourth woman in history to race in the Indy Pro Series. She was about to pass for fourth place when she was collected in a multi-car accident.
Still, that was the moment that the great male champions of racing - Indy 500 multiple winner Rick Mears and IndyCar driver Jaques Lazier, noticed her, she says.
"I still haven't made it," she says. NASCAR has three main series, and she wants to move up to a more elite level. "I don't know if realistically that'll happen," she says. "But I'm racing in a good car, and have earned the respect to ride in a good team."
Return to win
In February she made her return to the ARCA Racing Series at Daytona International Speedway.
She raced her way to fourth place, but with just 15 laps to go, the race car behind her made contact with her rear bumper, causing a multi-car accident.
"I had a shot but I got taken out by a guy that kept hitting me over and over and finally wrecked me. But I will be back at Daytona and I want to win."
Aside from racing, she's working on winning the public's hearts and minds via other projects.
Munter began working for Ric O'Barry's Dolphin Project after seeing 2009 Academy Award winning documentary The Cove, which exposed dolphin hunting practices in Japan.
She then featured in the next Oceanic Preservation Society film, the 2015 documentary Racing Extinction.
She's now working with the same crew on a new documentary film about humans overpopulating. She says she and her husband decided not to have kids for that very reason.
"There's 134 million orphans in the world", she says, and animals are being driven to extinction.
After the current debates about gay marriage, she wants the next big public debate to about "the elephant in the room" - population limits. She advocates people have just one child; not through force, but free choice.
Fairfax Media is media partner of C2 Melbourne.
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