The first woman to race in Formula One turned 80 on November 6, 2006. She is Countess Maria Teresa De Filippis, who drove a six-cylinder Maserati 250F in four 1958 Grands Prix and a Porsche RSK Special F2 at Monaco a year later.
A petite, attractive 32-year-old brunette from Naples, Italy, she was unable to qualify her Team Centro Sud Maserati for the 1958 Grand Prix of Monaco, but she was in good company: Louis Chiron, Ron Flockhart and Giulio Cabianca did not qualify either. Maria Teresa’s best effort was in the ’58 Belgian Grand Prix in which she finished 10th, two laps down on winner Mike Hawthorn, but on the same lap as the talented Swede Jo Bonnier, another 250F driver at the time. She qualified last on the grid at the Portuguese and Italian GPs and retired from both.
Nicknamed the Pilotino (little racing driver) by her contemporaries, Maria Teresa first made her name in sports car racing. She won a number of minor events before finishing 9th over all and 4th in class in the 1955 Targa Florio, driving a Maserati A6GCS. Ninth-place may not sound much, until it is put into the proper perspective—she was competing against the likes of Stirling Moss and Peter Collins (who won in a Mercedes-Benz 300SLR), Fangio, Kling, Castellotti, Fitch, while beating a number of seasoned racers including Elio Zagato and Giovanni Bracco, the 1952 Mille Miglia winner.
Asked what it was like to compete in Formula One against the giants of her sport, Maria Teresa said recently that she knew them all because F1 drivers also raced sports cars in those days. “In fact, we were all a group of friends who travelled the world,” she said. “At night, many of us went out dancing together. It was not like today, when drivers don’t even speak to each other.”
Countess Maria Teresa retired in 1959 and was, for many years, vice-president of the Maserati Register, at whose meetings she often gave demonstration drives in a Maserati 250F.
By Robert Newman
