This Week in Motorhead History – Maria Teresa de Filippis Breaks Barriers in F1

On August 24, 1958, Maria Teresa de Filippis, who had broken one of motorsport’s biggest barriers by becoming the first woman to ever compete in Formula One, raced her third event of the year in a Maserati at the Portuguese Grand Prix at Oporto.

Though she drove the same Maserati Juan Manuel Fangio had raced the year before, de Filippis finished only one Grand Prix in 1958, coming in last in the 1958 Belgian Grand Prix, after nine other cars failed to finish.

In an interview in 2006, de Filippis once recalled that Fangio had worried over her driving, “You go too fast, you take too many risks,” he purportedly said. Of course, it was preferable to what had stopped her from competing in the French Grand Prix at Reims-Gueux on July 6, 1958, where the Race Director had said, “The only helmet a woman should wear is the one at the hairdresser’s”, refusing to allow her to compete.

De Filippis’s career was filled with near-misses, almosts and close calls. She joined the sport merely because of a bet with her two brothers at the age of 22, after they claimed she couldn’t go fast. Instead, she won her very first race in a Fiat 500 on a 10 km drive between Salerno and Cava de’ Tirreni, before going on to drive in the Italian sports car championship, where she placed second in the 1954 season. After that, Maserati brought her into the fold, and she raced in various circuits with them until the 1958 F1 season.

De Filippis raced during a renaissance, failing to qualify for the Monaco Grand Prix alongside Bernie Ecclestone, and qualifying at times just a few seconds short of racers like Mike Hawthorn, Jack Brabham, and Graham Hill. In the event that occurred nearly seventy years ago to the week, it was Stirling Moss who brought home the win.

Unfortunately, racing at that time also included great loss, and after the death of Porsche team leader Jean Behra in a racing accident at the 1959 German Grand Prix at AVUS, where de Filippis had been scheduled to drive, she left the industry broken hearted, not looking back at motorsports for another twenty years.

She returned in 1979 to join the International Club of Former F1 Grand Prix Drivers, eventually becoming Vice President, and became a founding member of the Maserati Club, and eventually chair person. De Filippis died this past January, 2016, at 89 years old.

Though she raced beside and knew many of the greats, de Filippis was never able to make it to the kind of fame many of them would enjoy. Instead, her legacy is a quieter one, far less spoken of, though certainly challenged in its time. Though Lella Lombardi wouldn’t become the second female racer to compete in F1 until fifteen years later, and though there have only been four other women since that 1958 season, de Filippis broke down a wall at record speeds. She pushed the industry to accept a good driver and pushed herself to be a good driver. When driving no longer meant the world to her, she left, returning only when it did.

The motorsports world is still an up climb climb for women, proof of that remains stark in Formula One. But because of the efforts of Maria Teresa de Filippis, back in the 1950s, because of all those races she pushed so hard in so many years ago, it has a fighting chance. Maria Teresa de Filippis may not have won, or even completed, many races, but she did do something a hell of a lot more important. 

Image selected from F1 Grand Prix Driver’s Club