Women Drivers Association

All information on this page is not part of canon. For the canon-related aspects, please visit Women Drivers Association (RWRS).

The Women Drivers Association is the governing body of the Women's GT World Championship and the Women's GT Junior Cup. Its origins can be traced back to the early years of Grand Prix history.

Early beginnings (1905 - 1914)

Bertha Benz founded the Bertha Benz Stiftung für Motorsportlerinnen (Bertha Benz Foundation for female racing drivers) in 1902, when Grand Prix racing became more and more popular and the first female pioneers in motorsports had entered the scene. At first, the foundation focussed on signing only german female drivers to race Benz cars in several European motorsport events.

Soon the Daimler Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG), rival firm of Benz & Cie. at that time, got the upper hand in motorsports with their Mercedes 35hp, and they even wanted to sign famous French racing lady Camille du Gast to drive such a car in the 1904 Gordon Bennett Cup, because her performance in the 1903 Paris-Madrid trial (the "Race of Death", as it was later called) had impressed the chairmen of the DMG very much. But then the French Government barred women from competing in motorsports altogether, and du Gast had to decline the offer.

Another notable driver was Countess Elsa d'Albrizzi, who finished ninth in the 1899 Padua-Vicenza-Thiene-Bassano-Trevisio-Padua trial, driving a Benz lightcar. The Countess became good friends with Bertha Benz and helped her finance the Bertha Benz Foundation and female drivers in general to enable them to partake in major motorsport events, even when they weren't driving a factory Benz car.

Finally, Camille du Gast was able to sign a contract with the Daimler Motoren-Gesellschaft to race one of their Mercedes 35hp in the inaugural Brighton Speed Trials in 1905, only to be beaten by British rising star Dorothy Levitt in a Napier 80hp. Although Bertha Benz felt sorry for du Gast, she was delighted to see the Mercedes 35hp lose at this major event.

Bertha Benz herself travelled to Brooklands several times during 1908 and 1913, but her husband refused to let her finance promising female drivers like Muriel Thompson and Christobel Ellis, because he feared, the increasing political tensions between Germany and Great Britain at that time could cause immense trouble for Benz & Cie., if German authorities could get the impression, that the company financed British racing drivers on behalf of Bertha Benz.

Bertha was disappointed, but found herself agreeing with her husband's fears. So she cancelled her already scheduled trip to Indianapolis in the spring of 1912 and focussed solely on running the company, before the war broke out in August 1914.

The Golden Age of Grand Prix Racing (1930 - 1939)

During these years Bertha Benz donated Ladies' Cups in major racing events. One of these was the Swiss Klausenrennen (Klausen hillclimb), and despite her age, Bertha still presented the trophy to the winning lady personally until 1930. That year, Beatrice Else Frieda Margarethe "Margot" Gilka-Bötzow, Countess of Einsiedel, who raced under the name Margot Einsiedel, became the new president of the Bertha Benz Foundation. Einsiedel had won the Klausen hillclimb Ladies' Cup from 1926 to 1931 and even supported the Bertha Benz Foundation with her own money in all these years.

The ambitious Countess soon set her eyes on the male dominated Grand Prix scene in order to prove what female racing drivers were capable of outside the often ridiculed Ladies' Cups. Therefore she purchased several Alfa Romeo Monzas and founded the Deutsches Alfa Romeo Damenteam (German Alfa Romeo Ladies Team) in 1931. Notable female racing drivers driving for the very first exclusive ladies team in the history of motorsports were Anne-Cecile Rose-Itier, Mariette Helene Delangle (better known as Mlle. Helle-Nice), Vittoria Orsini and Eileen Ellison. Rose-Itier was easily the most successful driver of the team, scoring 5 podiums during 1931 and 1936, even winning the Picardie Grand Prix in 1933.

The ladies participated in Grand Prix all over Europe and even in South America until 1936. By that time, the Daimler Benz AG and Auto Union were utterly dominating the scene, so Margot Einsiedel and British rising star Kay Petre, who was a very good friend of German Auto Union driver Bernd Rosemeyer, tried several times to purchase a couple of Auto Union C types or at least the next best thing, upgraded Auto Union B types. This should have helped the ladies to be more competitive, but the company itself as well as Nazi authorities refused such a deal. It was obvious, that the Nazis didn't approve of female racing drivers at all, because it was highly contradictory to how they saw "modern" women.

Helle-Nice also crashed heavily during the Sao Paulo Grand Prix of 1936 and retired from Grand Prix racing altogether afterwards, which ultimately led to the decline of the German Alfa Romeo Ladies Team. Margot Einsiedel financed Anne-Cecile Rose-Itier's private entries in the smaller voiturette class until 1939, when World War 2 broke out. By then, the financial situation of the Bertha Benz Foundation was already hopeless.

Rising from the ashes (1948 - 1960)

Kay Petre and Margot Einsiedel had retired from motorsports altogether, so it was Anne-Cecile Rose-Itier's turn to rebuild the Bertha Benz Foundation or what little was left of it after the war. Her first official act was to move the headquarters from the almost completely destroyed Berlin to Paris.

It took her until 1958 to rebuild the Foundation, and like in the early years, the main focus was financing independent female racing drivers, but also organizing the Ladies' Cup of the Nassau Speed Week from 1956 to 1962. This event, although never part of any official Championship, attracted all the big names of that era, so Rose-Itier saw it as a perfect opportunity to display the capability of female racing drivers as well. Luckily, Sydney Oakes, the millionaire president of the Bahamas and main organizer of the Nassau Speed Week, liked the idea so much, that he was willing to fund it mostly from his own money, especially since he knew, the Bertha Benz Foundation was still knee-deep in financial trouble at that time.

Notable lady drivers of the Nassau Speed Week Ladies' Cup are Suzy Dietrich, Denise McCluggage, Isabelle Haskell (later to become Isabelle de Tomaso), Sierra "Smokey" Drolet and Greta Oakes, wife of Sydney Oakes, who continued to race at the Speed Week even after the couple divorced in 1956.

Maria Teresa de Filippis, who played an important role in the restructuring process of the Bertha Benz Foundation during the mid-fifties and early sixties, became the new president of the organisation in 1960, after Rose-Itier had retired.

Safety issues (1960 - 1975)

De Filippis gave the old Bertha Benz Foundation its first true international flair by changing the name to Women Drivers Association in 1961. But the former Formula 1 driver soon found other projects to be much more interesting, after having witnessed so many good friends dying behind the steering wheel of a race car. Because of that, de Filippis refused to finance female racing drivers entering Formula 1 or any Formula class for that matter, solely focussing on sportscar events like the Nassau Speed Week, the 12 Hours of Sebring and the Daytona 24 Hours instead, where Denise McCluggage and Allan Eager managed a 10th overall (class win) in 1961, driving a Ferrari 250 GT and the all-female team of Janet Guthrie, Rosemary Smith and Judy Kondratieff (later married to Howden Ganley) finishing 19th overall (class win) in 1970, driving an Austin-Healey Sprite.

The best race finish in the Daytona 24 Hours during that time was 16th overall (class win) in 1969 by Smokey Drolet alongside male drivers John Tremblay, Vince Gimondo and John Belperche in a Chevrolet Corvette C2.

During the Monaco Grand Prix 1971, de Filippis met World Champion Jackie Stewart for the first time and was intrigued by the Scotsman's lonely crusade for safety in Formula 1, immediately deciding to support him in any way possible. Soon after this fateful meeting, the WDA started funding female racing drivers for Formula 1 once again, mainly to back Stewart up with some more "comrades-in-arms" for further safety measures.

Then came the Spanish Grand Prix of 1975, and de Filippis stepped down from her position as president of the Women Drivers Association immediately afterwards, leaving motorsports behind her for good.

Big Dreams and the Aurora F1 Series (1975 - 1999)

French rallye driver Claudine Trautmann, who was the former manager of the infamous Team Aseptogyl, a well-known entity in the European rally scene throughout the early seventies, was elected new WDA president after de Filippis had stepped down. She had a far more pragmatic way of seeing things: "If a lady is determined enough to drive in Formula 1, you won't stop her from trying, no matter what you do. So why try to stop her at all?"

But even Trautmann knew, that you need a well financed development program, if you want to make up-and-coming female drivers interesting for the big names in the business. So she started funding national female-only racing series, like the Swedish Lancia Lady Cup, which ran from 1984 to 1988, being utterly dominated by Nettan Lindgren from 1985 to 1988.

But from mid-1978 to mid-1980, Trautmann also established an official WDA Racing Team in the British Aurora F1 Series, the first effort of this kind since the German Alfa Romeo Ladies Team in the mid-thirties, and the last one until today.

This time around, the WDA mostly focussed on British events and ran Desire Wilson as their only driver. She did pretty well overall, being a constant podium finisher in all these years, even scoring a race win in 1980, her last year of competing in this Championship.

During 1980, Claudine Trautmann tried to buy the rights to the declining Aurora F1 Series to turn it into a racing series for female drivers only, but the organizers and the WDA were not able to come to an agreement, so the idea was finally scrapped. This led to the WDA Racing Team leaving the series altogether, taking Desire Wilson with them.

In the mid-eighties to mid-nineties, Trautmann was able to turn the Women Drivers Association into a worldwide operating organisation. This was made possible with the help of American Janet Guthrie. The WDA finally became a department of the FIA in 1999, the same year Claudine Trautmann retired at the age of 68 to focus on her family and private life.

The WDA of today and the Women's Global GT Series (1999 - 2007)

Having retired from professional racing, Giovanna Amati was elected president of the WDA in 1999. Since the plans for a worldwide female-only racing series had been lying in the drawer of the president's desk for more than two decades by that time, Amati sought the help of Lyn St. James and Don Panoz to create the Women's Global GT Series. It was a one-make series, fielding only Panoz Esperante sportscars, and attracted female racing drivers from all over the world.

Unfortunately, the series only lasted two seasons (1999 and 2000), being won by Cindi Lux and Sonja Bayer respectively, before it was declared too uneconomical and renamed Panoz Racing Series, after having received mixed opinions from spectators and the press alike. Notable female drivers of the WGGTS, who later went on to earn the respect of doubters in other races, are Cindi Lux, Divina Galica and Belinda Endress.

After the rapid decline of the WGGTS, Giovanna Amati found the WDA itself to be way too inefficient to handle all the necessary development programs on its own, especially with the steadily increasing number of young female racing drivers all over the world. So she established branches in almost every country with enough young female drivers, like Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy and South Africa. Chairwomen of these branches were former racing ladies, such as Divina Galica, Desire Wilson, Cathy Muller and Waltraud Odenthal.

The new all-female championships (2007 - 2014)

Michele Mouton was elected president of the WDA in 2007. After all these decades of planning and restructuring, the Women Drivers Association had finally reached an organizational and financial level, which enabled them to pull through with their Women's World Championship.

Since the WDA had already made good experiences with GT cars during their brief outing with the WGGTS, starting out with the Women's GT World Championship in 2014 was not only logical, but also much cheaper than a single-seater series would have been. With the aid of Monisha Kaltenborn and Claire Williams, who would then go on to manage Team Lotus in the Women's GT and its feeder category, the Women's GT Junior Cup, the plan was soon put into motion.

The inaugural season of the Women's GT World Championship series (commonly known as WGTWCS) was a huge success and even spawned a Junior Cup, in which young female talents could be patronaged by big automobile companies and sponsors alike.

After two periods of office, Michele Mouton could not be re-elected as president of the Women Drivers Association in 2015, and after tutoring newly elected president Deryn Pryce during the same year, Mouton returned to overseeing the World Rally Championship, both as a FIA and WDA representative.

Presidents of the Women Drivers Association

1902 - 1930	Bertha Benz
1930 - 1939	Margot Einsiedel
1948 - 1960	Anne-Cecile Rose-Itier
1960 - 1975	Maria Teresa de Filippis
1975 - 1999	Claudine Trautmann
1999 - 2007	Giovanna Amati
2007 - 2016	Michele Mouton
2016 - 2020	Deryn Pryce