Maria Teresa de Filippis, who took part in three grands prix in 1958, has passed away at the age of 89.
The Italian entered five race events, qualifying for three of them, and finishing just one of them, which was her debut at Spa where she finished in tenth.
She drove a privately entered Maserati 250F, and finished two laps down to the winner Tony Brooks and was last of the classified drivers.
The next year she attempted to qualify for the 1959 Monaco Grand Prix for the Behra-Porsche team, but was unsuccessful – as she had been the previous year.
Her racing career was short lived though, after she walked away from the sport at the age of 23 following the death of her team owner Jean Behra.
She wouldn’t return to racing again until 1979 when she took part in the International Club of Former F1 Grand Prix Drivers, which she went on to become the vice president of in 1997.
Former F1 driver Alex Wurz took to twitter to show his condolences:
We lost another pioneering member of the Motorsport world today, Maria Teresa de Filippis, the first woman to race in #F1. RIP
— alex wurz (@alex_wurz) January 9, 2016
To this day, she is one of just two female drivers to start an F1 race, along with Lella Lombardi who is the only woman to have scored points in Formula One.
