355 F1 drivers have scored points over the last 75 years, but only one woman’s name makes that list thanks to a drive on this day 50 years ago.

Coming in at the very bottom of the list of F1’s points-scorers is Lella Lombardi, an Italian woman who scraped onto the list thanks to an unusual race weekend at Montjuic Park in Barcelona.

Lella Lombardi’s drive to sixth place at Montjuic Park

On April 27th, 1975, Formula 1 arrived at Montjuic Park in the middle of Barcelona for that year’s Spanish Grand Prix.

The sinewy and narrow street circuit was certainly picturesque, and was unusual in that it featured plenty of elevation change and tight corners along with a very fast main ‘straight’ that was anything but.

The circuit’s tenuous safety wasn’t helped by the barriers barely being hand-tightened onto the posts, with the arriving drivers threatening to boycott the race on safety grounds – many of the big names of the day didn’t even take part in practice.

But the organisers of the race weren’t to be cowed by the actions of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA) and, against threats of legal action and the possibility of the Spanish police seizing the cars from the paddock, the race indeed went ahead.

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Reigning World Champion Emerson Fittipaldi qualified almost 20 seconds off the pace in protest and withdrew before the race even started, an action followed up by Arturo Merzario and Wilson Fittipaldi after the first lap.

A crash on the first lap took out polesitter Niki Lauda’s Ferrari, after a collision between Vittorio Brambilla and Mario Andretti, while front-row starter Clay Regazzoni also picked up damage in the other Ferrari.

The chaos continued in the early stages as Jody Scheckter’s engine blew, with the resulting oil spill taking out Alan Jones (making his F1 debut) and Mark Donohue, while the leading James Hunt also crashed after sliding off due to the oil.

John Watson retired due to technical issues, Andretti’s rear suspension failed as he crashed out of the lead, while Tom Pryce and Tony Brise collided.

This left Rolf Stommelen leading, but tragedy struck on Lap 26 as the rear wing of his Embassy Hill failed. Colliding with the barriers and bouncing to the other side of the track, his car flew over the barriers and killed four trackside observers. The driver himself suffered a broken leg and wrist, as well as cracking two ribs.

The race was red-flagged a few laps later, with Jochen Mass declared as winner to take his one and only Grand Prix win. Two laps down on Mass was Italian racing driver Lella Lombardi, who was classified in sixth and thus in the points positions. However, due to the race being less than 75 percent completed, only half points were awarded.

The half point Lombardi scored that day remains the only time a female racing driver has finished in the points in an F1 championship Grand Prix.

Who was Lella Lombardi?

Lombardi, who was Roman Catholic hailing from Italy, was a very private individual – her sexuality, as a gay woman, meant that she maintained a very private life and granted precious few interviews in a bid to protect herself and her long-term partner.

However, an authorised biography about her story will be published in August 2025, written by Jon Saltinstall, and will shed more light on Lombardi’s life and career. Sadly, Lombardi herself isn’t around to tell her story, having passed away due to breast cancer in 1992, aged just 50.

The daughter of a butcher from Frugarolo in Italy, her career began in the mid-1960s as she and her partner, Fiorenza, acquired a car to go racing in the new ‘Formula Monza’ category.

Moving into Formula Three in 1968, she spent the next half-decade racing with a Brabham BT41 and BT42 and became a sporadic points-scorer. Moving into Formula 5000 in 1974, she finished fourth overall, finishing fifth overall.

Gaining the support of the Italian Automobile Club, she attempted to qualify for a Formula 1 race with a privately entered Brabham in 1974, but it was her meeting with Lavazza Coffee’s Count Vittorio Zanon that opened doors for her. Through Lavazza’s sponsorship, Lombardi joined the March team for 1975.

Aside from her points finish in Spain, she finished seventh at the Nurburgring and, by year end, had made a one-off appearance for Frank Williams’ eponymous team.

She was replaced by Ronnie Peterson shortly into the 1976 season, with a story emerging years later about something Peterson uncovered after taking over her car. Lombardi had complained vociferously about the poor handling of her March, complaints which were ignored by the team.

However, with Peterson complaining similarly, the car was stripped down and a cracked bulkhead was found. Lombardi’s largely anonymous performances had been vindicated, but it was too late for her to recover her F1 career.

“It was one of the few times that she complained about the inequality of F1 – because nobody had listened to her about the problem with the car,” said March boss Robin Herd years later.

50 years on from Lombardi’s historic drive at Montjuic Park, F1 appears closer to finding a great female talent to arrive in the sport as initiatives like F1 Academy have spurred all the F1 teams on to find worthy talents to get on their ladder.

While segregated championships have yet to prove their worth in producing a top-level driver worthy of F1 consideration, such a divide was not a concern for Lombardi. Upon her arrival in F1, she said, “I hope that, now, people have begun to understand that Lella Lombardi is a racer who is a woman, rather than a woman who races. That is a distinction that I care about very much.

“I have never considered the male-female issue, only the competition that exists between different drivers. Under the helmet, women and men are completely equal.”

Lella Lombardi: The Tigress of Turin, Her Authorised Biography” by Jon Saltinstall will be published by BHP Publishing in August 2025.

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