Desiré Randall Wilson (born 26 November 1953) is a former racing driver from South Africa and one of only five women to have competed in Formula One.
Born in Brakpan, she entered one Formula One World Championship Grand Prix in 1980 with a non-works RAM Racing-prepared Williams FW07, but failed to qualify. She also raced in the 1981 non-world championship South African Grand Prix in a one off deal with Tyrrell Racing. This race was not part of the 1981 world championship due, in part, to the FISA–FOCA war. She qualified 16th and, after a disastrous start where the car stalled, she moved up though the field in wet conditions, as conditions dried she fell back and damaged the car when it touched a wall while she was letting the race leader through. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
This is a very long post but Desire has an interesting career plus I found a number of personal accounts of the races. Please forgive any mistakes in years or sequences but there were a lot of cars raced!
One of only five women to have competed in Formula 1, Desire Randall Wilson was born in the gold and uranium mining town of Brakpan, near Johannesburg, South Africa, on the 26th November 1953. She entered one World Championship GP in 1980 with a RAM Racing-prepared Williams FW07 but failed to qualify. She also raced in 1981’s non-championship South African GP with Tyrrell though after qualifying sixteenth the car stalled at the start but although she moved up though the field in wet conditions she hit a wall while letting the race leader through.
Desire grew up around motorsport as her father Charlie Randall was a national motorbike champion, winning the title on a Manx Norton, and she would sit in the garage with him while he worked on his bike, taking in everything he was doing. She started racing at the age of five on micro-midgets on dirt tracks and competing against much older boys, and when twelve she came second in the South African Championship though only lost by inches in a tie-deciding match race. She left motorsport though and focused on athletics, becoming school champion over a number of disciplines and an avid horse jumper and polo player. However, after being persuaded by her father to try a Formula Vee car at Kyalami she returned to the tracks when she was eighteen, racing Charlie’s home built cars and was fourth in her first season while the following two seasons saw her finish fourth and second. Having moved into Formula Ford she won the Championship in 1975 and 1976 and during this time she and FFord racer Alan Wilson had run alongside each other in FF Titans and had eventually married. Alongside this came the Kyalami 1000km in 1975 with Dave Charlton in a Ford Escort and a return the following year with Louis Cloete in an Alfa Romeo Alfetta. After receiving 1976’s ‘Driver to Europe’ Award the couple based themselves in Holland to race FF2000 and she drove a Crossle 33F in the Dutch, Benelux and European FF2000 championships. Desire was third in each and took wins at Zandvoort and Colmar Berg, plus two lap records and four fastest laps. However their money was running out and they were forced to ration themselves to one square meal every three days and survived on snacks but by the end of the season the lack of finance eventually forced them to return home.
Back in South Africa she raced in two Formula Atlantic races at the start of 1978 but engine failures in her Chevron B34 forced her to retire. However the deal was abruptly pulled from her and she and Alan decided to travel back to Europe though her racing prospects seemed bleak until Brands Hatch circuit’s manager John Webb asked her to drive in a Ford Escort womens’ race. She promptly won it after leading from start to finish and he helped secure work permits plus gave them jobs at the circuit. As the promoter of the Aurora British F1 championship he entered her for that year’s round at Brands Hatch but though Desire understood it was to create publicity, once the test was over he withdrew the entry from the race. But after impressing with her performance she was asked to drive the Mario Deliotti team’s Ensign for the rest of the Championship and in the five races contested, despite retiring with clutch problems at Oulton Park, she took sixth at Mallory Park, fourth at Brands Hatch, third at Thruxton and sixth at Snetterton.
She also stood in for another driver in a Crossle 34K at a Brands Hatch FFord 2000 event and after qualifying fifth, she finished fourth plus set fastest lap and ended up driving the car for the rest of the year. Added to this were races in Sports 2000 but she told how “racing two very different cars on the same day was sometimes hard. In practice at the Race of Champions I decided to do three quick laps in the 2000, set a time, and then park it and focus on the F1 car. But I put a wheel off at Westfield and had a big accident. In those days the medical facilities were quite basic. St John’s Ambulance looked at me and said, ‘How’re you doing, love?’ ‘I’m fine.’ ‘OK, have a nice day.’ And off I went. Actually I had concussion and I’d broken my foot, but I didn’t want anyone to know.” Despite this she went on to finish third of the Aurora cars then went straight out in her Sports 2000 car and finished fourth.
Then came a full season in 1979 with Melchester Racing’s Tyrrell 008, with Gordon Smiley as team mate, and at the first round at Zolder she became the first woman ever to lead a Formula One race. Desire also took the lap record and finished third there and then took consecutive third places at the following rounds at Oulton Park and Brands Hatch.
Other results through the year saw another third at Thruxton, plus fourth at Zandvoort and Nogaro, fifth at Oulton Park and Silverstone plus sixth at Snetterton and two sevenths at Brands Hatch and Thruxton. Although seventh in the final standings, Desire had gained a superlicence qualification and could now contest a world championship event.
For 1980, Teddy Yip and his Theodore Racing team offered a drive in a Wolf WR4 for the Aurora British F1 series. Despite retiring with mechanical issues at the first round, Oulton Park’s International Gold Cup, in the next race she became the first woman ever to win a Formula One Championship race after taking the flag at Brands Hatch. As a result of the achievement a grandstand at the circuit was named after her. Added to the win were two more podium finishes, with second and third at Thruxton and Mallory Park but unfortunately the team ran out of money.
After attracting the attention of John Macdonald and his F1 RAM Racing team she tested a Williams FW07 at Brands Hatch shortly before the British GP. Things looked promising when she recorded the twelfth fastest time, out of twenty four drivers, which was also impressive considering she did not have access to soft qualifying tyres. But at the Grand Prix the car had been replaced with an FW07 which had been crashed heavily in a race at Monza two weeks earlier. The repairs had left the chassis flexing badly and she recalled “It was actually an Aurora Formula One car which they threw some sliding skirts on and brought to the track. Whereas the car I drove at the tyre test day was the Emilio de Villota grand prix car, a very good car.” Unable to repeat the lap times achieved in the practice session, she prepared for her final run with a set of soft qualifying tyres. There was a slim chance she could get the car onto the grid with these tyres but unfortunately they didn’t fit on the car and she had to sit out the final fifteen minutes of the session. Her career changed course when she co-drove with Alain de Cadenet in his De Cadenet LM1 and they took an impressive third place in the Brands Hatch 1000km. They went on to win the Monza 1000km and the Silverstone 6 Hours races, beating the factory Lancia and Porsche teams in their privately entered and underfunded car. At Monza, with half an hour remaining, she told how “I was leading Henri Pescarolo’s Porsche 935 and Patrese’s Lancia. Then a big black cloud came over, and suddenly it was bucketing down. I thought, ‘This can’t be happening’, because everybody else could change tyres quickly, and we only had a wheel wrench and a copper mallet. I decided to stay out on slicks. Pescarolo switched to wets, and at once he was catching me at 10 seconds a lap. I was desperately trying to keep it on the island on the streaming track, and with three laps to go he passed me. But I kept him in sight, and with two laps to go I saw him dive into the pits. His crew had miscalculated, he needed fuel to get to the end. He came straight out again, but I stayed in front, won it by a few seconds.” The omens looked good as they headed to Le Mans, with François Migault as a third driver. In qualifying, after Alain and François had set a time, Desire went out but had a big accident on her third lap when she hit a wet spot and spun. After hitting a barrier the wooden support broke and fell over and launched her and she described how “the car landed on its back and I was soaked in fuel. I was conscious and unhurt, but when you’re upside down you don’t always think clearly. I was trying to turn off the ignition, thinking, does the switch go up or down? There wasn’t a mark on me and the car was mended for the race, but the organisers ‘lost’ the decent time I’d done on my second lap. They said I hadn’t qualified, and Alain and François did the race without me.” Sadly the team ran out of sponsorship and her season came to an end in mid-year.
After a period with barely any driving she was asked to drive a Tyrrell-Ford 010 at the 1981 South African GP, alongside Eddie Cheever. There had been the possibility of a drive in a Brabham alongside Nelson Piquet but it never materialised. The ongoing FISA–FOCA war led to it being declared a non-championship race but it still attracted a strong field. She qualified sixteenth with the 010, behind her twelfth placed team mate but stalled on the grid and was fifteen seconds behind at the end of the first lap. Fighting back she drove through the field, overtaking her team mate and several other experienced drivers but she spun off the track when allowing race leader Nelson Piquet to lap her. Recalling the race she said “I totally screwed up. On the grid it started to rain, and I was adjusting my visor when the lights went out. I let the revs drop too low and stalled. They push-started me and I got away 15 seconds behind the rest. But I caught and passed Sigi Stohr’s Arrows and Salazar’s March, and then I passed my team-mate Eddie, who was on dry tyres. It dried out, I did my stop for slicks, then on lap 51 I got on the throttle too early at Leeukop and lost the back end. I thought I could have a harmless spin and rejoin, but at that moment Piquet, in second place, came along. I turned the wheel to go backwards out of his path, and my wing hit the barrier. I found first gear and drove back to the pits, but in those days they didn’t change wings in 10 seconds, and my day was done.” Despite this Ken Tyrrell was impressed and offered further drives but a lack of sponsorship meant she was unable to take up the seat. There were two races in a Porsche 935 though she, Dieter Schornstein and Jurgen Lassig retired from the Kyalami 9 Hours but was eighth with Edgar Doren in the Brands Hatch 1000km.
She drove the Swap Shop Team’s Porsche 935 at Brands and though the car suffered oil cooler damage she came back through the field to finish eighth. Further races with a 935 came with a solo drive at Road Atlanta, then with Bonnie Henn and Marty Hinze at Daytona, Mosport and Road America, plus John Fitzpatrick at Kyalami. Other cars raced included a Ferrari 512BB at Sebring (in an all-female team with Janet Guthrie and B.Henn), a Grid S1 with Emilio de Villota at the Mid Ohio 6 Hours and the best result came with Jonathan Palmer at the 1000km Brands Hatch when they brought their Ford C100 home in fourth place. The year saw a debut at Indianapolis in a Theodore entered Eagle-Cosworth and Desire became the second woman ever to drive at the Speedway. After the Rookie test she was granted the license to race in the 500 and was drawn as the first car to attempt to qualify. However her team waved off her first run as they believed she would get much faster during the rest of the sessions but team mate Gordon Smiley was tragically killed in an horrific accident and the team withdrew from the rest of the first weekend of qualifying. In the final week of practice the team lost three engines and were unable to make the final weekend of qualifying.
In 1983 they based themselves in America and Alan was involved in the projected New York GP at Flushing Meadow, though it never took place. Later, in 1994 they set up Wilson Motorsport to design and build circuits and since then they have created over 30, from street races and kart tracks to major facilities. Desire established herself in the IMSA GTP and the CART IndyCar series and in GTP drove a March GTP-Porsche for Moretti Momo in three races but the car failed to finish at Riverside (when she had it up to fourth) and Lime Rock. Following this came Brainerd, where she again qualified second, but while running second in the race the front suspension failed. The car cartwheeled for several hundred metres, disintegrating as it went and Desire said “It finally stopped upside down and on fire. I remember a marshal shouting, ‘Switch it off!’ and I looked for the master switch on the dash, but the dash wasn’t there. I had a broken right leg and my left foot was bashed up, otherwise I was OK. Contesting Indy Car for the Wysard team the first race was at Cleveland in their March 83C, where she finished tenth after a near four hour race in 100°F heat and close to 100% humidity. She arrived for the next race at Road America with her leg in a flexible cast, three weeks after the Brainerd crash; “I couldn’t brake and blip the throttle at the same time but I qualified 13th. In the race Howdy Holmes and Roger Mears collided, I lifted to avoid them, and Tom Sneva hit me.” At Pocono, an accident brought out the pace car and after pitting quickly she came out in the lead but a right rear universal joint broke and caused her to hit the outer wall at over 180mph. The rest of the season saw the team fail to finish and it was not until the final race at Phoenix, in a repaired 83C, that she finally came home in thirteenth place. The highlight of the year was Le Mans, sharing a Porsche 956 with Alex Plankenhorn and Jurgen Lassig. They qualified thirteenth in a very competitive field and had the car in third place at one point before it suffered a misfire, but they made up time after several pit stops and finished seventh. Other sports car races included Kyalami in a Fitzpatrick Racing 956, shared with Thierry Boutsen and David Hobbs, and they were running second when it crashed. In Thundersports she was teamed with Siegfried Bunn at Oulton Park in a Porsche 908/03 Turbo but after taking pole and then leading the race they were forced out due to fuel problems.
In 1984 she failed to qualify at Long Beach but despite passing the rookie refresher test at Indianapolis did not attempt to qualify. There was a fourth at a WEC round at Brands Hatch with George Fouche and David Sutherland in Kremer’s Porsche 956 while at the same track in a Thundersports race she retired due to an engine problem in the Olympic Refrigeration sponsored Kellygirl, shared with Divina Galica. She returned for three more CART outings in 1986, driving the Machinists Union team’s March 86c, and finished thirteenth at Mid-Ohio but crashed out at Elkhart Lake and had an engine failure at Laguna Seca, in what would be her final IndyCar race. Out of the eleven starts in her CART career the best result was her tenth place at Cleveland’s road race in 1983.
Desire undertook fewer drives during the following years though later drove in the PPG Industries Pace Team at IndyCar races throughout America, Canada and Australia. During 1987 she won an SCCA Stock Endurance Series in a Saleen Ford Mustang at Sears Point with Lisa Cacares and went on to win the Mosport 24hrs and Sears Point 6hrs (from pole). At the season’s final race, at Sebring, she was paired with Scott Pruitt, who handed the car over to her for the final three hours, in second place but she caught and passed the leading Porsche on the last turn of the last lap to clinch the race and the SCCA Manufacturers Championship for the team. There was a fourth place in a Brands Hatch British F3000 round in 1989 with GA Motorsport’s Lola T88/50 Cosworth plus two WEC races with Team Davey’s Porsche 962, finishing fourteenth and thirteenth at Brands Hatch and Fuji with Tim Lee-Davey. However, Fuji’s result was the more impressive as she arrived at the circuit to find the car still being repaired after a major crash at the previous race. Despite no pre-race practice and missing qualifying, she took over after the first hour with the car in fifteenth place and about to be lapped. Exiting the pits into heavy rain behind the first three cars, she passed two and for the next hour stayed with race leader Bob Wollek in his Joest Porsche 962 until the race was stopped due to the poor visibility.
Desire raced at Le Mans three times with the final drive coming in 1991 in a Japanese entered and run women’s team, driving a pink Spice-Cosworth with Lyn St James and Cathy Muller. The team suffered a car destroying accident at the start of the first practice and had to rent a second chassis for qualifying but Desire told how the car was in no state to race as “it was unstable on the straight, it turned right under braking, the bodywork was loose, it had a terrible misfire.” The team was allowed to start, though from the back of the grid, but but when they returned to the circuit on race morning “one of Dave Prewett’s crew-their Spice had failed to qualify-said to me, ‘I think you’ll like your car today.’ I didn’t know what he was talking about. Well, I went out in the warm-up, and it was perfect: went like a train, braked in a straight line, no misfire. Turned out Prewett’s boys hadn’t been able to bear what was happening with our chaotic team. So they’d picked the locks on our garage, worked on the car all night, and virtually rebuilt it.” In the race the car was going well until they were forced to retire after 47 laps when the rear suspension collapsed.
In IMSA in 1993 she entered the Daytona 24hrs in a Ford Mustang with Ron Fellows, Pieter L. Baljet and Tomika Yoshikawa but a crash put the car out. There was also some Yokohama tyre testing for the SCCA while for many years Alan’s motorsports consulting business handled the marketing and development of the SCCA World Challenge Touring Car and GT series for both the SCCA and for Speedvision.
In 1996 she won and took pole in a Detroit GP Neon Challenge event while the following year raced Mazda Xedos saloons in North American Super Touring, coming sixth in two Long Beach races. The couple eventually moved to Salt Lake City and the new race track Alan designed there plus also raced Ford Mustang GTs and Porsche GT3 Cup cars. Alan mainly focused on regional races though Desire also contested the national Pirelli Porsche GT3 Cup series and took several class and overall wins, and in her final weekend she finished second in her Porsche 991, some 58 years after starting her first race in her father’s micro midget. Desire often drove at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival events each year and 1999 saw a reunion with the De Cadenet Lola Ford she had driven in 1980 plus fifth in an Aston Martin DB4GTZ with Gillian Goldsmith in a 1 hour race. In 2000, she co-drove a Ferrari 250 GTO with Gary Pearson while other cars driven there include a Lotus Elite, a Willment Cobra, a Ford Anglia, a 1953 Cooper Jaguar and a Tyrrell 011 in a tribute to Ken Tyrrell in 2002. She also drove E-Type Jaguars in a number of the 50th year celebration championship races at Silverstone and Brands Hatch.
In recognition of her achievements, in 1977 Desire earned Springbok Colours (a prestigious South African sports award) and in 1978 received the South African ‘Sports Woman of the Year’ Award.
