On Saturday 9th January, the motoring world lost one of its most important yet lesser-known pioneers, Maria Teresa de Filippis, who passed away aged 89.
Best known for having become Formula One’s first-ever female driver in the 1950s, de Felippis is so far one of only five women in the history of the sport to have competed in an F1 Grand Prix.
Born in the Italian city of Naples in 1926, de Filippis got her start racing Fiat 500s aged 22. After finishing second in the 1954 Italian sports car championship, Maserati hired her as a works driver to race their cars.
Four years later and de Filippis had become the first woman to race in Formula One, finishing tenth in the 1958 Belgian Grand Prix behind the wheel of a privately-entered Maserati 250F, the same car which Argentinian racer Juan Manuel Fangio won his fifth world title in the year before.
At the Portuguese and Italian Grand Prix races she also competed in during 1958, engine failure forced her to bow out early. Later, she ultimately failed to qualify for the Monaco Grand Prix in 1959, retiring from the sport in the same year.
Despite her mixed success, de Filippis is still to this day remembered as a pioneer within a sport dominated by men. After retiring as a driver she joined the International Club of Former F1 Grand Prix Drivers, serving as its vice-president since 1997 and also acting as president of the Maserati Club.
First female F1 driver
Yet amazingly, her story started with a simple bet. Speaking to The Observer back in 2006, she said: “Two of my brothers bet the other that I couldn't drive fast. I trained on the Amalfi coast and won my first race - the Salerno-Cava dei Tirreni event - in a Fiat 500.”
Her parents were understandingly sceptical. For a girl who had always been more interested in horses and animals than in cars to suddenly announce she was going to be a racing driver was quite the leap, though they raised few objections once they realised how good she was.
Others weren’t so accepting, particularly male racing drivers: “At first they thought I wouldn't be able to compete, but then I went all the way to Formula One,” she said. “The only time I was prevented from racing was at the French Grand Prix. The race director said: ‘The only helmet a woman should wear is the one at the hairdresser’s.’”
Not that this discouraged her in the slightest; after working her way up to cars with progressively bigger engines and dabbling in hill climbs and endurance races, which in those days were events that the top F1 drivers also took part in.
As a result, it didn’t take her long to get noticed, in particular by her hero and five-time World Drivers' Championship winner Fangio. She said: “He used to say, ‘You go too fast, you take too many risks.’ I wasn't frightened of speed, you see, and that's not always a good thing. He worried I might have an accident.”
Despite its success in the sport, Maserati officially withdrew from Formula One at the end of 1957 after Fangio’s fifth and final win, but many of the manufacturer’s cars remained, instead being piloted by privateers.
On 18th May 1958, de Filippis was given the opportunity to enter the Monaco Grand Prix in Fangio’s old car as a privateer. Of the 31 entrants only half set a time that was good enough to qualify, and unfortunately the Italian missed out alongside fellow racing debutant and future Formula One Group chief Bernie Ecclestone.
Under Fangio’s watchful eye, she prepared for the Belgian race the following month, which allowed all drivers to compete with no cut-off for a qualifying time. Qualifying in last place, de Filippis finished the 24-lap race in 10th place, which would prove to be her first and only Formula One finish.
Early retirement
In the end, it proved to be a question of safety rather than of conviction that caused her to officially retire from the sport in 1959.
The final straw came when Jean Behra, whose team de Filippis had joined earlier in the year, was killed in a support race for the 1959 German Grand Prix in Berlin. This was a race which de Filippis herself should have participated in.
“Too many friends had died. There was a succession of deaths - Luigi Musso, Peter Collins, Alfonso de Portago, Mike Hawthorn, she said. “Then Jean Behra was killed in Berlin. That, for me, was the most tragic because it was in a race that I should have been taking part in.”
Following Behra’s death, she turned her back on motor racing completely and got married in 1960, after which her family life became more important than success on a track. For the next 19 years she would have nothing to do with racing until she joined the International Club of Former F1 Grand Prix Drivers in 1979.
“Today we've got about one hundred members, including Jack Brabham, Damon Hill, Stirling Moss and Jackie Stewart,” she told The Observer. “Now I get invitations to go to the races, but I tend to follow them on TV.”
Modern Formula One seemed to be of little interest to her, however, as she believed that the sport has lost its way thanks to the increasing dependence on electronics and mechanics rather than pure driver ability.
Increasing role for women in motorsport
She said: “I don't like today's races that much. Success is based more on electronics or the speed of the mechanics and less on the skill of the driver. Very little remains of the sport as it was in our time.
“In our day the drivers were friends. We travelled together, stayed in the same hotels. Today the drivers don't seem to go out together at all. The interviews are too often predictable. After a race they just jump back in their private planes.”
After de Filippis’ retirement, a woman wouldn’t reappear in Formula One for a full fifteen years, when Lella Lombardi became the only other woman in history to start a Grand Prix race. Lombardi would go on to compete in three seasons from 1974 to 1976 and in doing so became the only female Formula One driver to finish in a points-scoring position in the World Championship.
Was de Filippis surprised that not more women haven’t followed her example since? A bit, she said. “Maybe they just don't feel like it. Then, of course, there is the question of money. Many backers don't believe that a woman can compete on equal terms. It's a shame because I think there would be huge interest if a woman was given a chance in Formula One.”
This far there have been no such attempts since Giovanna Amati failed to qualify all the way back in 1992. In 2014 and 2015, Britain’s Susie Wolff partook in a couple of practice sessions for the Williams team, though she never attempted to qualify for a race and officially retired from racing altogether towards the end of last year.
However, given the increasing roles women are playing throughout all levels of motorsport, with luck this will change sooner rather than later.