She participated in five World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 18 May 1958, but scored no championship points. Though largely unsuccessful in her Formula One racing career, she won races in other series and is remembered as a pioneer in the sport.
At the age of 22, de Filippis began her racing career. Two of her brothers told her that she would not be able to go very fast, goading her and making a bet that she would be slow. She won her first race, driving a Fiat 500 on a 10 km drive between Salerno and Cava de' Tirreni. She went on to drive in the Italian sports car championship, finishing second in the 1954 season. Seeing her potential, Maserati brought her in as the works driver.
In 1954, while driving in the Giro di Sardegna, she was well on her way to the title in the Italian sports car championship. However, some straw, thrown in the air by two cars in front of her, blinded her, and Maria lost control of her Maserati A6GCS, to crash out of the race. She lost her hearing in her left ear that day, and her potential championship. However, a consolidation for her, was that Maserati had seen enough, and signed her as a works driver.
She had two more accidents. In a 1955 event at Mugello, she slid off the road and crashed into a ravine. A tree prevents her from tumbling all the way down, saving her life. And in 1956, in the 1000 kilometres race of Buenos Aires, she tried to avoid a slower participant, but crashed and was thrown out of the car, breaking her arm and losing her fourth place in the World Sports car championship. But Maria couldn't be stopped.
her 2nd race was driving a Topolino up the Sorrento-St Agata hillclimb, in Italy, and her trophy was a silver steering wheel that she still has. When she raced in Monaco in 1958, one of her competitors who dnf's was Bernie Ecclestone, and the 1958 Italian Gran Prix had only one Italian driver, her. Ferrari's famous F1 pull kicked her out of the 1959 Monaco GP, because if not for kicking her out, a a Ferrari driver would have not gotten in with a worse qualifying time.
https://www.facebook.com/maseratiusa
http://www.victorylane.com/articles/2013_08%20Maria%20Teresa.pdf has the most thorough and complete history though
JESSE! THIS IS ABSOLUTELY MIND BLOWING! I'VE NEVER HEARD OF THIS WOMAN. Thanks for posting this. There's got to be a book about her out somewhere.
ReplyDeleteHey... this is what I do! You buy me a beer someday and we'll call it even. I hadn't heard about her either, and I'm not done yet with this story. You probably didn't know it, but I keep adding to posts after they get up, I don't have more for every single post, but some like this have so much there to work with... like Maria, she won a trophy for racing a 1904 Oldmobile. Yeah, that. I HAVE to get to the bottom of a woman F1 driver, who also went racing a curved dash 1904 Olds (tiller steering)
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