Maria Teresa de Filippis

Italian Formula 1 racing driver who became the first woman to compete in F1 World Championship races, breaking significant gender barriers in motorsport.

Maria Teresa de Filippis was born on 11 November 1926 in Naples, Italy, the youngest of five children of an Italian count and a Spanish noblewoman, raised in the 16th-century Palazzo Marigliano. Uninterested in cars as a girl, preferring horse riding and tennis, she took up motor racing at 22 after her brothers bet she would not be fast enough to compete — a wager she settled decisively by winning her very first race, a hillclimb between Salerno and Cava de' Tirreni, in a Fiat 500. De Filippis progressed rapidly through Italian sports car racing, finishing runner-up in the 1954 national championship, which caught the attention of Maserati, who signed her as a works driver. On 18 May 1958, she became the first woman to compete in a Formula One World Championship Grand Prix, driving a Maserati 250F at Monaco. De Filippis made five Grand Prix entries in total, with a best finish of tenth at Spa-Francorchamps, and faced open prejudice throughout her brief career — the director of the 1958 French Grand Prix reportedly barred her from competing, telling her the only helmet a woman should wear was one at the hairdresser's. She stepped away from racing following the death of her team boss, Jean Behra, and the earlier death of her former fiancé, driver Luigi Musso. De Filippis later became honorary president of the Club International des Anciens Pilotes de Grand Prix F1, an association for retired Formula One drivers. She died on 9 January 2016, at age 89, remembered as the trailblazing pioneer whose example inspired subsequent generations of women in motorsport.

Determined and skilled driver who competed at highest level

Pioneer who broke gender barriers in Formula 1 racing

• First woman to start an F1 World Championship race (1958)
• Three F1 World Championship starts
• Pioneer of women in motorsport