10 Most Important Women in Formula 1®

The most important women in Formula 1® span the sport’s entire history: record-setting drivers like Lella Lombardi and Maria Teresa de Filippis, pioneering leaders like Monisha Kaltenborn and Susie Wolff, and the engineers Hannah Schmitz and Laura Mueller, now winning races from the pit wall.

Women have been part of motor racing for a century, but the story has never moved faster than it is moving right now. After decades without a female driver on the grid, the modern era has produced the F1 Academy pipeline, the sport’s first full-time female race engineer, and, at the 2026 Australian Grand Prix, the first F1 circuit corner ever named in women’s honour. Here are the ten women who matter most, past and present, and why.

The 10 most important women in F1 at a glance

Numbering reflects a blend of historical weight and current influence, not a strict competitive ranking.

1. Lella Lombardi

Every conversation about women in F1 eventually arrives at the same statistic, and it belongs to Lella Lombardi. The Italian remains the only woman ever to score points in the Formula 1 World Championship, and by that measure the most statistically successful female driver in the sport’s history.

The defining moment came at the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix. Lombardi brought her March home sixth, and because the race was stopped early before full distance, half points were awarded. Her 0.5 points are the only ones any woman has scored, before or since.

Across 1974 to 1976 she made 17 Grand Prix entries and took 12 starts, racing March, RAM and Williams machinery against the likes of Lauda and Fittipaldi. The record doesn’t need embellishing. Fifty years on, it still stands alone.

2. Maria Teresa de Filippis

Before anyone could score, somebody had to start. Maria Teresa de Filippis was the first woman to race in a Formula 1 World Championship Grand Prix, making her debut at the 1958 Belgian Grand Prix around the fearsome old Spa circuit and finishing 10th.

The Italian, nicknamed ‘Pilotino’, did it in a privateer Maserati 250F, the same model Juan Manuel Fangio drove to a world title. Her record reads 5 entries and 3 starts across 1958 and 1959 before she walked away from racing, shaken by the deaths of several friends on track in an era when danger was a constant companion.

Her ‘first’ is the hook, but the fuller truth is more sobering: she opened a door that the sport then barely let anyone else through for decades.

3. Desiré Wilson

Desiré Wilson holds a record that needs stating precisely, because it’s routinely blurred: the South African is the only woman ever to win a Formula 1 race of any description.

The win came at Brands Hatch in 1980, in the British Aurora F1 series, a non-championship competition run to Formula 1 rules in genuine F1 machinery. It was not a World Championship Grand Prix victory; Wilson entered one World Championship round that same year, the 1980 British Grand Prix, and did not qualify. But a win in an F1 car, against a field of F1 cars, belongs to her and nobody else.

Brands Hatch later named a grandstand in her honour. Get the distinction right and her achievement stands as one of the most genuinely ownable lines in this whole story.

4. Susie Wolff

If you had to pick the most important woman in F1 today, the strongest case belongs to Susie Wolff, because she bridges the two halves of this list: the drivers who broke through, and the people now building the structure for the next ones.

In 2014, Wolff drove Free Practice 1 for Williams at Silverstone and Hockenheim, the first woman to take part in a Grand Prix race weekend in 22 years. When her driving career ended, she moved to the other side of the garage, and since 2023 she has run F1 Academy, the all-female junior series created to rebuild the pipeline of women into top-level motorsport. Through its Discover Your Drive programme, that work now reaches all the way down to grassroots karting.

Her arc, from on-track pioneer to the executive constructing the pathway she never had, is the story of women in F1 compressed into one career.

5. Monisha Kaltenborn

In 2012, Monisha Kaltenborn became the first female team principal in Formula 1 history, taking charge of Sauber. It remains one of the most senior leadership positions a woman has held in the sport.

Her significance is the precedent. For six decades, the pit wall’s top job had been exclusively male, and Kaltenborn’s appointment established, permanently, that it didn’t have to be. She also serves as a useful correction to a common assumption that runs through this subject: importance in Formula 1 has never been measured only from the cockpit.

6. Claire Williams

Claire Williams served as deputy team principal of Williams from 2013 to 2020, running the day-to-day operations of one of the most storied names in Formula 1 through the most difficult financial era in its history.

Hers is a leadership entry of a different kind to Kaltenborn’s: not a single record, but endurance and stewardship. She kept an independent, family-owned team on the grid through seasons when the economics of F1 were stacked brutally against exactly that kind of outfit, before the family sold the business in 2020. Along the way she became one of the most recognisable executives, of any gender, that the sport has produced.

7. Hannah Schmitz

Watch a Red Bull victory closely and you’ll often find Hannah Schmitz’s fingerprints on it. As the team’s head of race strategy, she is the mind behind many of Max Verstappen’s race-winning pit calls, decisions made in real time, under scrutiny, with a world championship riding on them. She is widely regarded as one of the sharpest strategic operators in the paddock, and she is one of only eleven women ever to stand on an F1 podium to collect the constructors’ trophy.

Schmitz matters because she represents where ‘importance’ in modern F1 actually sits: as much on the pit wall as in the cockpit. And in 2026 that recognition became literal. She and Laura Mueller became the first women in F1 history to have a circuit corner named in their honour, Turn 6 at Albert Park in Melbourne, a story we’ll come back to below.

8. Laura Mueller

At the start of the 2025 season, Haas promoted Laura Mueller to race engineer for Esteban Ocon, making her Formula 1’s first full-time female race engineer. The qualifier matters and it’s the wording used by the official Australian Grand Prix and motorsport outlets alike: ‘full-time’ is what makes the first precise.

If you’ve ever listened to F1 team radio, the race engineer is the voice in the driver’s ear: the single link between driver and team, translating data into decisions across every lap of a Grand Prix weekend. It is one of the most senior trackside roles in the sport, and Mueller earned it within the sport’s most unforgiving proving ground.

She shares the Albert Park Turn 6 honour with Schmitz, and together they form the modern, engineering-led layer of this list, the part of the story most articles still under-tell.

9. Doriane Pin

If you want to know how close a woman is to racing in Formula 1 again, Doriane Pin is the clearest measuring stick.

The French driver, nicknamed ‘Pocket Rocket’, won the 2025 F1 Academy championship and stepped up to a Mercedes development driver role for 2026. Then, in April 2026, she became the first woman ever to drive a Mercedes F1 car, completing 76 laps of Silverstone in the championship-winning 2021 W12 and impressing the team with her pace and feedback.

The honest framing: Pin is a development and simulator driver, not a race driver, and a seat on the grid remains several brutal steps away. But ‘closer than in decades’ is a real answer, and she is the proof the pathway is being used, not just built.

10. Abbi Pulling

We’ll close with the driver furthest up the traditional single-seater ladder. Abbi Pulling dominated the 2024 F1 Academy season, taking the title with a near-perfect, record-setting campaign, and earned a funded seat in the GB3 Championship, a competitive mixed-gender category on the road to F1.

Then, at Spa-Francorchamps in May 2026, the Briton became the first woman to take pole position and win a race in GB3, converting pole into a lights-to-flag victory while holding off the championship leader. She is also the Nissan Formula E team’s rookie and simulator driver.

Her significance is the merit point, and it’s the note this list should end on: a female driver winning outright against the field, in equal machinery, is exactly the proof of concept the F1 Academy structure was built to produce.

Women F1 Drivers: The Historical Record

For the record-keepers, here is the complete history in one place. Only five women have ever entered a Formula 1 World Championship Grand Prix, and only two, de Filippis and Lombardi, have started one.

Full profiles of de Filippis, Lombardi and Wilson appear earlier in this article. The gap since Amati’s 1992 entries, more than three decades and counting, is the number the modern pipeline exists to close.

The Australian Connection: Albert Park’s ‘In Her Corner’

For Australian fans, the most significant chapter in this whole story was written at home.

At the 2026 Australian Grand Prix, the race became the first in Formula 1 history to name a circuit corner after women, dedicating Turn 6 at Albert Park to Hannah Schmitz and Laura Mueller. The ‘In Her Corner’ initiative, a partnership between the Australian Grand Prix Corporation and Engineers Australia, was announced on 23 February 2026 and celebrated across the race weekend of 5 to 8 March, with International Women’s Day falling on race Sunday itself.

Think about what that means. Circuits have named corners after champions and legends for generations; Melbourne chose two engineers, and two of the ten women in this article are now written into the geography of an Australian circuit. Every March, the field will brake into a corner that carries their names.

If reading that gives you a pull towards Albert Park, we understand completely. It’s one of the great weekends on the Australian sporting calendar, four days when the whole city leans into the racing, and we’ve been taking guests to events like it for 50 years. When you’re ready, you can experience the Australian Grand Prix with us, with the seats, access and on-ground support handled from the moment you land.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has a woman ever raced in Formula 1?

Yes. Two women have started a Formula 1 World Championship Grand Prix: Maria Teresa de Filippis (1958 to 1959) and Lella Lombardi (1974 to 1976). Five women in total have entered a Grand Prix, the most recent being Giovanna Amati in 1992.

Who was the first woman to race in F1?

Maria Teresa de Filippis. The Italian made her debut at the 1958 Belgian Grand Prix in a privateer Maserati 250F, finishing 10th, and made three Grand Prix starts across the 1958 and 1959 seasons.

What is F1 Academy?

F1 Academy is the all-female junior single-seater championship launched by Formula 1 in 2023 to develop young female drivers. Run by Managing Director Susie Wolff, it races at Grand Prix weekends and feeds talent towards F1’s junior pathways.

Who is the first female race engineer in F1?

Laura Mueller became Formula 1’s first full-time female race engineer at the start of the 2025 season, engineering Esteban Ocon at Haas. In 2026, Turn 6 at Albert Park was named in her and Hannah Schmitz’s honour.

Who is the most successful female F1 driver?

Lella Lombardi. The Italian is the only woman to score points in the F1 World Championship, earning half a point for sixth at the shortened 1975 Spanish Grand Prix, across a career of 17 entries and 12 starts.