MARIA TERESA DE FILIPPIS to GIOVANNA AMATI: The 5 Women Who Made F1 History

March 9, 2026

• MARIA TERESA DE FILIPPIS broke the ultimate glass ceiling in 1958 as F1’s first female driver, racing her Maserati 250F to a 10th place finish at Belgium GP despite being told “the only helmet a woman should wear is the one at the hairdressers” by French GP officials. The Italian aristocrat proved her brothers wrong after they bet she’d be slow – she won her very first race and earned the nickname ‘Pilotino.’
• LELLA LOMBARDI remains the only woman to score F1 points, earning 0.5 points at the 1975 Spanish GP when the race was stopped early due to a fatal crash. The ‘Tigress of Alessandria’ worked her way up from delivering meat for her butcher father to becoming a serial podium-finisher in Formula 5000, proving that talent comes from everywhere.
• DESIRÉ WILSON made history as the only woman to win any Formula One Grand Prix, taking victory at Brands Hatch in the 1980 Aurora AFX Championship – a feat so significant the circuit named a grandstand after her. Starting at age 5 in micro-midgets in South Africa, she set faster lap times in older F1 cars than factory drivers in newer machines.
• DIVINA GALICA and GIOVANNA AMATI rounded out the pioneering five, with Galica transitioning from Olympic skiing to motorsport after discovering hidden talent at a celebrity race, while Amati overcame a traumatic kidnapping to pursue her racing dreams. Though qualifying proved challenging for both in F1’s unforgiving environment, their courage opened doors that had been bolted shut for decades.

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