KEEPING THE SPIRIT ALIVE SINCE 1999
Lella Lombardi
26/3/1943 - 3/3/1992
Lella Lombardi was a female Formula One driver from Italy. She participated in 17 grands prix, debuting on July 20, 1974. She is the only female Formula One driver to date to have scored a top 6 finish in a World Championship race, the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix. She later raced sports cars with some success. She died at only 50 years of age from cancer.
Lella Lombardi died 28 years ago, she was 49 , She would have been 77.
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Born Maria Grazia (Lella) Lombardi in Frugarolo, a village near Turin, her father was a butcher and the family didn't even own a car, but never the less, Lella started racing before she had her driving licence. She drove in Formula Monza and F3 with Lotus and Brabham cars, before winning the Italian Ford Mexico Championship in 1973.In 1974 she was signed to race the Shellsport-Luxembourg Lola in F5000 and silenced her critics by finishing fourth in the final standings. She also tried to qualify for the British GP in an old Brabham but failed. However that winter she met Italian nobleman Count Vittorio Zanon and he paid for her to enter F1 in 1975 driving the ex-Vittorio Brambilla March 741 with sponsorship from Zanon's Lavazza Coffee company.
She qualified for the South African Grand Prix becoming the first woman to qualify for a Grand Prix since Maria Teresa de Filippis 17 years earlier. By the next race she had a new March 751. She the became the only woman to have registered a top six finish in a World Championship Grand Prix by taking half a point for sixth place in the prematurely terminated 1975 Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona's Montjuich Park. She also did well to finish seventh in the German GP.
She joined Williams in 1976 but her hopes of continuing in F1 were dashed after the first race in Brazil when she was replaced by Ronnie Peterson. Ashort lived association with RAM Racing, driving another Brabham. was predictably fruitless.
Squeezed out of Formula 1, Lella continued her career, mainly in sports cars, through into the early eighties.
She enjoyed some excellent results in the Osella prototype with Giorgio Francia, the pair winning the Ignazio Giunti Trophy at Vallelunga in 1979, and the Ore di Mugello in 1981, a year which also saw them finish second in the Monza 1000 Km.
She sadly died of cancer on March 3, 1992 in Milan at the age of 48.
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Jacques Edouard Ledure 1893 - 1948 -
Charles Baumann 1896 - 1930 -
Jack Early 1928 - 2005 -
Yojiro Terada 1947 -
Didier Pironi 1952 - 1987
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Andrea de Adamich 1941
Formula One driver from Italy. He participated in 34 grands prix, debuting on January 1, 1968. He scored a total of 6 championship points. -
Renzo Zorzi 1946 - 2015
A former Pirelli engineer, Zorzi began racing in Formula 3 in 1972. He won the Monaco Formula 3 race in 1975 and ended up with a couple of F1 drives. -
Giorgio Francia 1947
A very talented Italian racing driver best know for the testing and development work he did through the 1980s and 1990s for Alfa Romeo. He entered two Grand Prix but had to give up his car to his team mate on both occasions. -
Lorenzo Bandini 1935 - 1967
Italian Formula One driver who won the 1964 Austrian Grand Prix. In sports cars he won Le Mans (1963), the Targa Florio (1965) and the Daytona 24 Hour race (1967). He was killed in the Monaco Grand Prix in 1967 after rolling his Ferrari at the chicane while chasing Denny Hulme for the lead. -
Massimo Natili 1935
Formula One driver from Italy. He participated in 1 grand prix, debuting on July 15, 1961. He scored 0 championship points.