The 22-year-old figurehead a motorsport revolution needs

"You ride like a girl." Not so many years ago, this kind of common sexism was a normalised part of society.

In recent times, the fight for gender equality has kicked up a gear. Women have loudly and proudly been dragging the world into a better mindset, with issues such as the imbalance in pay gradually being adjusted and better representation of gender equality filtering into the mainstream.

Perception of women's sport is also changing. Fading away are the days when it was seen as the lesser alternative, as evidenced by the fervent reception to the recent FIFA Women's World Cup. In motorsport, Susie Wolff's Dare To Be Different initiative has been encouraging young girls to get involved in all areas of the sport by showcasing the amazing women reshaping it.

But where other sports and motor racing differ is that the latter still hasn't quite found that overarching figurehead.

Tennis has the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus; Skiing has the likes of Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin; football has Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, to name but a very few. But figures with such stature are currently absent from motorsport.

Of course, lots of fast females race in junior formulaes and domestic series. But motorsport is already a niche, and only those paying close attention are in the know.

A 22-year-old motorcycle racer from Spain may well be the poster girl motorsport needs.

Ana Carrasco made history in 2017 when she won the World Supersport 300 - a feeder series of the World Superbike Championship - race at Portimao, as she became the first ever female rider to win a world championship motorcycle race.

A year later, she defied inconsistent performance balancing regulations to guide her DS Junior Team-run Kawasaki to the WSS300 title to become history's first ever female world champion in any discipline of short-circuit racing in a dramatic finale at Magny-Cours.

In the blink of an eye, she went from forgotten grand prix midfielder to a global star, as mainstream media giants such as the New York Times and Rolling Stone, among countless others, rightly rushed to cover her story.

And the impact has been instant. From just two female riders racing in WSS300 last year, five have competed in the WSBK paddock in 2019: Carrasco, Beatriz Neila, Alexandra Pelikanova, Steffie Naud and Maria Herrera in Supersport 600.

Carrasco herself has become part of Kawasaki's official team, which has allowed her to forge an even closer working relationship with four-time WSBK champion Jonathan Rea.

"To share the same team is perfect for me because the team is really good, they have a lot of experience with the best riders," says Carrasco.

"If in Spain we have only 20 girls, it's difficult to find one who can compete in the world championship. I think it's the same problem in every country, because there aren't many girls who start riding" Ana Carrasco

"For sure it also helps me to be close to Johnny and also Leon [Haslam], because I can learn a lot from them. Also for me Johnny is one of the best riders in the world. So it's good for me for everything he has told me, I can see how he works. It's good and it helps me to stay better."

It's an almost unimaginable rise to prominence. In her three years in Moto3 between 2013 and '15, she scored just nine points. Her maiden season with the Calvo team - which took Maverick Vinales to the title - was her peak, but she never had machine parity with the current Yamaha factory rider. A switch to the RBA team proved fruitless, as did a brief spell in the Moto2 class of the CEV Championship. Dorna's fledgling WS300 series set up in '17 offered Carrasco a last chance.

The Provec-run factory Kawasaki outfit expanding its project to WSS300 specifically for Carrasco is a step towards exactly what female motorsport needs: high-profile teams taking a punt and dipping their hands in their pockets to invest in young talent. But, as Carrasco points out, a lack of girls already racing complicates the situation.

"It's difficult, because you have to help some riders during many years, because if you start at five years old [and race] until 16, you have 11 years of paying and waiting [to see] if the rider will be good or not. So this situation is difficult, because for me it's important to help young riders, to have good teams, good bikes during many years to try to mould them and to achieve the level to arrive at the world championship.

"So it's difficult to find the money and everything to help all these young girls. The problem is this, I think. They need to have more support, so if we have in Spain only 20 girls, it's difficult to find one who can arrive in the world championship. And I think it's the same problem in every country, because there are not many girls who start riding. So it's difficult to find the one at the level to arrive [at the top]."

Dorna has done an excellent job over the years in ensuring its paddocks are equally represented, but it is yet to make a concerted effort in trying to balance gender representation on its grids. The FIM held a Women's European Cup briefly, which ran alongside the now defunct European Junior Cup supporting WSBK in 2015 and '16, but it went by largely unnoticed.

The subject of segregated motorsport series is a contentious one. In a sport where the competitor is just one element, it's long been thought creating separate series for men and women at higher levels is needless. This led to split opinions over the all-female car racing W Series, which launched this year.

At grassroots level, this is a perfect idea and is desperately needed. At the Formula 3 level W Series comes in at however, it doesn't quite address the fundamental problem of a lack of upcoming talent to get there in the first place.

Carrasco also notes another issue facing W Series when it comes to supporting its top drivers into the future.

"I think on one side it's good to have this championship because it's free for the drivers. So it gives you an opportunity, if you don't have the money," she says.

"But after this what is the next step? This is good, but they have to try to help - I don't know - the top three, for example, to try to bring them to Formula 3, but after this they need another option, because if you win the championship, then where do you go?"

Evidently, not enough is still being done to properly address the key areas limiting the advancement of truly equal motorsport: nothing substantial to get girls into racing at the lowest levels is available, not enough money to develop that talent, nor enough to sustain them as they progress up the ladder.

This is where the importance of having an internationally known figurehead comes in. Carrasco now acts as inspiration to young girls hoping to break into racing, just as the likes of Valentino Rossi and Casey Stoner inspired her, proving that it can be done.

This is important to her, but more so is the fact that she is fundamentally changing the public perception of female racers - not just in the paddock - but for the younger generation, ensuring that they are seen, as she sees herself, as simply a racer.

Carrasco transformed 'ride like a girl' from a horribly sexist ridicule into the battle cry that took her to a world title and can perhaps carry her all the way to World Superbikes

"I think it's also important for the young girls to have somebody like me or Maria [Herrera] or whoever, who are finding good results in the world championship because if on the TV when you are six, seven years old you see another woman doing it, it's more easy to think that you can do it also," she adds.

"So I think inside the paddock we have to think like a rider, but it's important for them [young girls looking on] to have something to see. It's important to make good results, and in my case I think everybody thinks about me as a rider, a fast rider, and they think I can be always fighting for the championship.

"I think this is the best thing I have [gained] from last year, because after winning everyone will know it, so this is good. But for the next [generation of girls] coming, I think it's good because in this sport we need to have this ethos for the team, for everything; they have to think of us as a rider, because we are doing the same job like everybody."

Since Carrasco made her grand prix debut, the landscape of motorsport has changed for the better in terms of gender representation. It's not come as far along as it really should have done by now, but the revolution has been set into an unstoppable motion.

At the helm is Carrasco, the 22-year-old history maker who transformed 'ride like a girl' from a horribly sexist ridicule into the battle cry that took her to a world championship and can perhaps carry her all the way to the WSBK championship.

With such a defiantly strong and fiercely quick woman front and centre of mainstream attention inspiring the next generation, the future looks incredibly bright.