Difference between revisions of "Women Drivers Association"

Revision as of 13:55, 10 April 2014

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

Early beginnings (1905 - 1914)

Bertha Benz founded the Kaiserlicher Verband deutscher Motorsportlerinnen (Imperial association of german 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 association focussed on german female drivers only and established an early collaboration with the Daimler Motoren-Gesellschaft, which lasted until 1914, long before the company merged with Benz & Cie. to become the Daimler Benz AG in 1926.

The most notable effort of the KVdM was offering famous French racing driver Camille du Gast a works Mercedes 35hp to race 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 Bertha Benz 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 KVdM and female drivers in general to enable them to partake in major motorsport events, even when they weren't driving a factory Benz or Daimler 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.

The Golden Age of Grand Prix Racing (1920 - 1937)

None of the major german car manufacturers showed any interest in motorsports until the early thirties. During the late 1920s an aged Bertha Benz handed over the KVdM to Beatrice Else Frieda Margarethe "Margot" Gilka-Bötzow, Countess of Einsiedel, who raced under the name Margot Einsiedel.

Since the monarchy had been abolished in Germany after World War 1, Countess of Einsiedel renamed the organisation Bertha Benz Stiftung für Motorsportlerinnen (Bertha Benz Foundation for female racing drivers) and bought a small arsenal of Bugatti T35 and T37, which were some of the best racing cars at that time. The Countess herself participated in the 1932 Eifel Grand Prix, but retired for unknown reasons.

The same year she became best friends with French drivers Mariette Helene Delangle (known as Mlle. Helle-Nice) and Anne-Cecile Rose-Itier, with whom she founded the Deutsches Bugatti Damenteam (German Bugatti Ladies Team) in the fall of 1932 to compete in Grand Prix racing. Countess Einsiedel became the team's manager and financier, occasionally racing in hillclimbs and voiturette classes herself, whenever she found time to do so.

The German Bugatti Ladies Team, known as German Alfa Romeo Ladies Team from 1933 onwards, was pretty successful and continued to partake in Grand Prix all over Europe and even in South America until 1937. By that time, the Daimler Benz AG and Auto Union were utterly dominating the scene, and Nazi authorities didn't approve of female racing drivers at all, because it was highly contradictory to how they saw "modern" women.

So the German Alfa Romeo Ladies Team disbanded at the end of 1937, and the three ladies went seperate ways. Helle-Nice took one of the Alfa Romeo Monzas the team had purchased in 1933 over to Sao Paolo, where she crashed heavily and gave up her Grand Prix career altogether.

After World War 2 (1950 - )