By 
The long wait for Formula 1’s next female racer reaches another milestone today as five decades have passed since the last time a grand prix grid featured a woman.
Advert |
The 1976 Austrian Grand Prix, held 50 years ago today, marked the 15th and final time a woman appeared on the grid. The racer in question was Lella Lombardi, who accounts for all bar three of those starts.
Driving for RAM Racing, Lombardi qualified her year-old Brabham BT44B 24th on the 25-car grid. She had failed to make the cut for the previous round at the Nurburgring Nordschleife, but two weeks later three fewer entrants appeared, notably that of Ferrari’s Niki Lauda who had suffered near-fatal injuries in a fiery crash.
Lombardi reached the chequered flag, albeit four laps behind winner John Watson. She was six laps ahead of team mate Loris Kessel, though he spent a lengthy time in the pits while a fault with a fuel union was fixed.
This marked an unfortunate end to Lombardi’s F1 career after a season which had begun promisingly. A year earlier she became the first (and still only) woman to score points in a grand prix. Famously, she took half a point for finishing sixth in the shortened Spanish Grand Prix at Montjuich Park.
Her seventh-placed finish later the same year in the German Grand Prix on the daunting Nurburgring is less well-remembered. Lombardi switched to Frank Williams’ team for the final race at Watkins Glen but her FW03’s clutch failed on the formation lap.
She started 1976 at March but the team replaced her after just one race as her sponsorship failed to materialise and Ronnie Peterson switched teams from Lotus. Lombardi reappeared at RAM, but the Austrian race would be the only time she managed to qualify.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Lamentably few women have since had the opportunity to join Lombardi and Maria Teresa de Filippis as F1’s only female racers. Desire Wilson won a non-championship F1 race at Brands Hatch but laboured with much less competitive equipment when given the chance to compete at the top flight. Nor did Divina Galica manage to get her car onto the grid in the seventies.
The last woman to attempt to qualify for a grand prix was Giovanna Amati in 1992, also in a Brabham, albeit for the now-beleaguered works team. Given her lack of experience and the team’s dire financial situation, her failure to qualify in four attempts came as no surprise.
The only other woman to participate in a grand prix weekend since then was Susie Wolff who made four practice appearances for Williams over a decade ago. But if F1 ever manages to get another woman onto the grid it will likely have Wolff to thank, as she now heads up F1 Academy, the all-female racing category which runs as a support series to F1 and puts female racers in cars backed by grand prix teams. With F1 now making a serious effort to promote female racers, it is hopefully only a matter of time until more of them reach Formula 3, Formula 2 and eventually the top flight.
But it will take time, as F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has acknowledged. “Realistically speaking, I don’t see, unless something that will be like a sort of meteor coming into the earth, a girl in F1 in the next five years,” he said. “That is very unlikely.”
He was speaking four years ago.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
F1 history
- When did F1 last have a mid-season break longer than five weeks? 1990
- Did Norris actually win Formula 1’s closest championship fight of all time?
- Hamilton is Ferrari’s first new driver in 44 years to complete season without a podium
- Ferrari are on course to lose an F1 record they’ve held since 2004
- Red Bull in 2010 or Ferrari in 1979? Past title fights illustrate McLaren’s current dilemma
Browse all history articles