Renee Gracie and Simona De Silvestro will race together this Sunday at the Bathurst 1000, as the first all-female team in nearly 20 years.

Brisbane-born Gracie, had not met her Bathurst 1000 co-driver, Swiss-born De Silvestro, until two weeks ago.

Sorry, this video has expired All-female team ready to take on Bathurst ( Patrick Galloway )

As the only all-female team in the 2015 Bathurst 1000 at Mount Panorama in central-west New South Wales, they are facing both sceptics and supporters.

They are taking on the challenge with gusto and say they do not mind the attention.

"Being a female team here ... I think if we can show that we can get the job done it's going to be really good and that's what we're here for," De Silvestro said.

"Hopefully more girls get into racing after this year's race. Not just just driving, you know engineering or mechanics."

De Silvestro and Gracie will race a Ford Falcon FG X.

Swiss-born Indy car driver De Silvestro admits it will be a challenge because she's never raced a V8 before.

"Being an all-female team I think there's going to be a little more attention on us, but at the end of the day we just have to do a job," she said.

"We're both professional and when we wear the helmet we've got to go fast, and that's what counts at the end of the day."

Out to prove Johnson wrong

Promoters have dubbed the women the 'supergirls' but others have been less than complimentary.

Three-times Bathurst winner, Dick Johnson, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper said he did not think the pair would even go close to finishing.

"Dick Johnson hasn't finished heaps of races so I'm sure he can't talk," quipped Gracie.

De Silvestro added that the pair aimed to prove Johnson wrong.

"It's a long race [and] because of the attention on us, if we don't finish it'll be a shame.

"But there will other cars there that won't finish either." Renee Gracie and Simona De Silvestro are the first female team to compete in the Bathurst 1000 in 17 years. ( ABC: Melanie Pearce )

Four-times Bathurst 1000 competitor from the 1980s and now a local motorsport commentator, Brian Nightingale, commends women drivers.

"The girls themselves are all very talented. They've got to do the same licensing procedure as the men, and they wouldn't get their licence to race at Bathurst if they were not up to standard.

However he says gender won't be the main issue involved when De Silvestro and Gracie take to the track.

"The Swiss girl, she'd never even seen Mount Panorama until today and she's never ever raced in a touring car," Mr Nightingale said.

"That's going to be pretty hard for her because this track bites hard."

Learning curves

The women have been out together for a few meals to get to know each other.

"Simona and I have a pretty similar driving style which is always good, and off the track we actually get along pretty good," Gracie said.

"It's actually pretty good to hang out with another female and talk racing language.

"Probably annoying each other with all the questions [such as] what she does overseas and what we do here."

It was De Silvestro's car salesman father who gave her the bug of cars and driving.

However Gracie said she learnt to drive from her hairdresser mother because her accountant father was a "nervous passenger".

While they have come to motorsport from different paths, the pair says they were both children who enjoyed the outdoors and played a variety of sports growing up.

They also have race-day superstitions with left-leanings.

"I'm just left glove on first, I don't know why ... and if I pick up my right glove first I freak out a bit," Gracie said.

For De Silvestro it's the side of the car she gets into.

"Because I am racing in open wheel I always get in on the left side, which I can't do right now so it's really throwing me off a little bit," De Silvestro laughed.

"Right now I don't have any routines in V8s but I'm sure at the end of the weekend I'll have something."

Whether or not those superstitions help in the Bathurst 1000, De Silvestro and Gracie agree their race is about chasing down a dream and they'd like to impart that advice to other girls.

"If you have a dream and you're passionate about something go and do it and don't be scared," De Silvestro said.

"Racing may not be the first sport a girl thinks about but you know, if she loves it just go for it."