Why Lella Lombardi was much more than F1’s half-point heroine

Born in 1941 in the tiny village of Frugarolo, close to Alessandria, Lombardi was the youngest of three children. Her father was a butcher and Lella became the first person in her family to hold a driving licence, learning at the wheel of the delivery van.

She gained a taste for competition by racing her Lambretta against the village boys – in whom she had no other interest – which resulted in a visit from the local priest, asking her to tame her wild ways. The request fell on deaf ears…

Blagging her way into the co-driver’s seat in local rallies convinced her that she wanted to race professionally. She scrimped and saved her way into the sport, starting with the nascent Formula 875 Monza in 1965.

Thanks to financial support from her brother, her life partner Fiorenza and a hire-purchase deal, Lombardi acquired a Fiat-based CRM single-seater and quickly established herself as a frontrunner, claiming a heat win in only her third race.

She prepared the car herself and towed it to the tracks with her road car, finishing ninth in the series in 1965 and eighth the following year.

In one of her rare interviews, she told how she hated the condescending smiles from some male rivals, which conveyed either contempt or the patronising suggestion, ‘I’ll help you because you’re just a woman who won’t be able to do this alone.’

Her response was furious; one rival commented: “She keeps her hair very short and adopts the worst manners of any in the paddock. But she tries harder than anyone.”

Following an unsuccessful move into the national F3 series, too soon for her limited experience, Lombardi took a step back into F850 in 1968. Here she really showed her mettle and, armed with a reliable Biraghi chassis, won the Italian championship in 1970 against rivals who would later be frontrunners in F2, taking four outright victories along the way.

F3 outing in 1973 Monaco Grand Prix support race turned heads

Photo by: McKlein

She had competed on an equal footing with her male rivals and beaten them in a straight fight. It was the vindication of her refusal to acknowledge that her gender was of any relevance to her abilities; a racing driver was just a racing driver.

Lombardi finished second in the F850 championship in 1971 and ran a concurrent campaign in Formula Ford before returning to F3 for 1972. A long-in-the-tooth Lotus 69 did her no favours, but she made a better showing the following year in a new Brabham BT41. 

A strong outing at the Monaco GP support event brought her to the attention of Brands Hatch promoter John Webb. When he saw her add the 1973 Italian Ford Mexico Challenge crown to her tally, he recognised the publicity value of having a competitive female driver in one of his championships.

“I hope that people now understand that I am a racer who is a woman, rather than a woman who races. That’s a distinction that I care about very much” Lella Lombardi

After an impressive track test by Lombardi, Webb found her a seat with Jackie Epstein’s ShellSport team in the 1974 European F5000 Series. Lella quickly took to the five-litre, 500bhp big bangers that team manager Jeff Hazell recalls “were like a sock with lead in it. Not an easy car to drive.” 

She also faced stiff competition from hardened racers who gave little quarter. Fifth in the championship was a fair reward for her steady progress. Further competitive F5000 appearances in the USA and – particularly – Australia, where she was robbed of two almost certain victories by a crew member’s mistake in under-fuelling her car and a mechanical failure, made her more famous down under than she was in her homeland. 

Meanwhile she had made an abortive attempt to qualify a year-old Brabham BT42 for the British GP at Brands Hatch. Although she missed the cut by a hair’s breadth, thanks to a broken half shaft, she had laid down a marker.

Former world champion Graham Hill, who had competed against Maria Teresa de Filippis (the only other woman ever to have contested an F1 championship race), said bluntly: “De Filippis had a go, but you couldn’t compare her to this woman Lombardi. Lombardi is something else.”

Few doubted that Lella would have been an F5000 championship contender in 1975, but she had other ambitions. With the support of her new benefactor Count Gughi Zanon, who had backed her Jolly Club-run Lola T292 in a few Interserie and Italian Championship sportscar races, she became the first woman to hold an F1 works contract.

Lombardi impressed in her bid to qualify a year-old Brabham BT42 for the 1974 British GP at Brands Hatch

Photo by: Getty Images

The cash-strapped March team eagerly accepted Zanon’s £50,000 contribution, though March’s Robin Herd recalled: “Lella wasn’t there to make up the numbers. We knew what she’d done before and, clearly, she was very capable.” 

His faith was repaid when she qualified for her first race with the team, albeit in a year-old car that failed to go the distance.

When challenged by a local reporter that she was only there because of her novelty value, she responded: “Whilst being a woman may have made it easier for me to find sponsorship, if I hadn’t demonstrated that I merited their support, rest assured they would have soon withdrawn it. The incentive is to show that I can be equal and, sometimes, superior to my colleagues.

“I hope that people now understand that I am a racer who is a woman, rather than a woman who races. That’s a distinction that I care about very much.”

Most drivers felt that the Spanish GP should not have been run, given Montjuich Park’s improperly secured crash barriers. Railroaded into the contest like her rivals, Lombardi qualified last after gear selection problems in practice, but she kept her head down and drove a circumspect race.

The threatened catastrophe eventually happened when leader Rolf Stommelen’s Hill leapt over the barriers after losing its rear wing as it crested the rise past the pits, killing four spectators and a fire marshal.

The race was stopped, at which point Lombardi had risen to sixth position, with only eight cars still circulating. She was two laps behind Jochen Mass’s McLaren, taking what would be his only GP victory, but she had stayed on the road when many others hadn’t.

As less than two-thirds of the distance had been completed, half points were awarded; the first time this regulation had been invoked. Lombardi received just half a point for her valiant efforts, but it was the first time in F1’s history that a female driver had finished in the points. 

Controversial 1975 Spanish Grand Prix was a defining moment for Lombardi

Photo by: Sutton / Getty Images

“I don’t think it dawned on me that I was the very first woman to collect championship points,” she later told the New York Times. “Things like that don’t bother me. 

“I’m just as competitive as any man. Too many women feel that motor racing is a masculine affair; well, I don’t agree. It’s simply a competitive sport. There’s a lot of glamour around being the first girl to do well in F1, but it’s overrated.

“I love racing and that’s all I want to do. I don’t think there’s a difference between male and female – the thing I like is the feeling when you pass the chequered flag first. That’s something I don’t have any problems sharing with my male colleagues.”

When the tub was stripped down at the factory, a cracked internal bulkhead was found to be the culprit, by which time the damage to Lombardi’s F1 season – and her reputation – had been done

The Spanish result aside, her F1 season was frustrating. Her car was consistently less competitive than those of her team-mates, thanks to her receiving tired engines, older components and often less-effective tyres.

A well-documented story recounts her repeated complaints about her car’s mysterious handling, which was attributed to the consequences of an early-season crash that only came to light when her successor at March, Ronnie Peterson, reported the same issue when he was given Lella’s former chassis to drive in 1976.

When the tub was stripped down at the factory, a cracked internal bulkhead was found to be the culprit, by which time the damage to Lombardi’s F1 season – and her reputation – had been done.

She was unceremoniously dropped by March in favour of the returning Peterson after one race in 1976, and a few outings with John MacDonald’s year-old RAM Brabhams brought nothing but disappointment. Her F1 adventure was over.

However, in parallel she had competed rather more successfully in sportscars, where she had been paired with Marie-Claude ‘Beaumont’ in the works Alpine-Renault squad in 1975. The duo claimed class honours at Monza and were candidates for outright victory at Le Mans until a miscalculation of the car’s fuel consumption by the engineers left Beaumont stranded out on the track.

Lombardi was shown the door by March after the opening race of 1976 in Brazil

Photo by: Colombo / Getty Images

The following year Lombardi shared a Lancia Stratos with Christine Dacremont to second in the GTP class, and her 11th place overall with Christine Beckers in 1977 was the best post-war result by an all-female crew at the French classic.

She later raced privateer Group 4 and 5 Porsches before joining the works Osella squad at the end of 1978 to become the mainstay of their two-litre campaign. 

It was in an Osella, in 1979, that she made history again. Although the Coppa Florio, now held at Enna-Pergusa, was a shadow of its past glories, it still formed a round of the World Championship for Makes.

Lombardi started from the front row and, supported by local driver Enrico Grimaldi, she set fastest lap en route to a dominant victory, becoming the first woman to win an FIA-sanctioned championship event. She followed it up with further WCM wins at Vallelunga later in the year and at Mugello in 1981. 

Alongside her sportscar activities, Lombardi had emerged as a highly effective touring car driver. After a year wrestling with a Luigi-entered Chevrolet Camaro alongside Anna Cambiaghi, she spearheaded Alfa Romeo’s European Touring Car Championship campaign driving the Jolly Club’s Alfetta GTV6s. She claimed 13 class wins and jointly won the 1985 Division 2 Championship, sharing with Rinaldo Drovandi.

Now regarded as one of the most experienced hands in the series, her mechanical sympathy and set-up skills were acknowledged as being from the top drawer.

Quiet and self-effacing, Lombardi did not seek the spotlight and kept her personal life private, largely to protect her partner, Fiorenza. She gave few interviews, and didn’t dress in a then-traditionally feminine way that might bring her more attention. For Lella, racing was the only thing that mattered and everything else was incidental. 

Although her story is one of struggles and setbacks, where she was often let down by limited funds and unreliable cars, it is also one of remarkable achievements and successes with the equipment and opportunities available to her.

Lombardi, here in her Alfa Romeo GTV6 in the 1983 Nurburgring 6 Hours, proved to be a top-notch touring car talent

Photo by: McKlein

Lombardi was a quiet force of nature, with an all-consuming determination to follow her passion above all else. Seventeen career pole positions and 20 fastest laps confirm she was no slouch when it came to outright speed, either.

In 1988, she formed her own team, Lella Lombardi Autosport, to create opportunities for new drivers. Ill-health forced her to retire from racing early that season; only a handful of close friends knew that she had been fighting breast cancer since 1985.

She had believed the pain she was suffering to be due to a sailing injury, which proved not to be the case.

On 3 March 1992, three weeks before her 51st birthday, Lombardi died peacefully in Milan’s San Camillo Clinic. Fifty years on from her groundbreaking F1 points finish, no woman has yet matched her achievement.

This article is one of many in the new monthly issue of Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the May 2025 issue and subscribe today.

Jon Saltinstall’s forthcoming book, Lella Lombardi: The Tigress of Turin, Her Authorised Biography, will be out soon, courtesy of Douglas Loveridge Publications.

En route to 11th-place overall finish alongside Christine Beckers at Le Mans in 1977

Photo by: Getty Images