Giovanna Amati (Italian pronunciation: [dʒoˈvanna ɑ.mɑ.ti]) (born 20 July 1959) is a former professional racing driver from Italy. She is the most recent female driver to have entered the Formula One World Championship.
Brought up in a wealthy background, Amati was kidnapped in 1978 before being released on an 800 million lira ransom.
She started her racing career in Formula Abarth series before moving up into Formula Three for 1985–86. An entry into Formula 3000 in 1987 brought little success but the following year, Amati improved her performances. She moved to Japan for 1989 but still had no success. A move back to Europe in 1990 saw better performances that continued into 1991. In 1992, Amati became the fifth woman Formula One driver when she signed for Brabham. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Even before the publicity around her involvement with the Brabham F1 team, Giovanna Amati had attracted much media interest earlier in her life, though unfortunately due to a kidnapping in 1978. Giovanna was born on July 20th, 1959, into a wealthy Italian family, with her mother Anna Maria Pancani being an actress and her father Giovanni owned a chain of movie theatres. At the age of 15, despite being too young to hold a licence, she bought a 500cc Honda motorbike and used it for late-night rides around the streets of Rome and kept the bike hidden from her parents for two years. In February 1978, while sitting in a car in front of the family’s villa, three masked men seized her and forced into a waiting van. They originally held her in a house close to her own home but when the police began searching and getting close she was bundled into a large plastic bin bag and moved to a more remote location. She was held prisoner for 74 days, most of which were spent in a wooden box, though during the ordeal she formed an emotional attachment to one of the men, Jean Daniel Nieto. In an attempt to stop the ransom being paid the courts had frozen the family’s assets but her father eventually raised the money by various means, one of which involved diverting his theatres’ box office takings from the Star Wars movie. He delivered the ransom to the gang’s ringleader and shortly after Giovanna was returned safely the police arrested seven of the suspected kidnappers. However, Nieto had escaped and left town but soon after he began contacting her, sending flowers and love notes. Once the police learned of this they convinced her to assist them in his capture by arranging a meeting with him on Rome’s Via Veneto. As Giovanna arrived on her motorcycle, armed officers surrounded Nieto as he waited on a street corner but he drew a gun, forcing them to fire warning shots at his feet to make him drop the weapon. As he was taken off to jail it was said she immediately regretted it and began weeping and begging for his forgiveness and release. She later claimed the ordeal made her stronger, declaring “For sure it made me stronger..I mean, spending three months in captivity-it makes you stronger. Either you go mad or it makes you stronger, and I got stronger. You just don’t have the contact with the rest of the world, but then once you get out you recover.”
In 1981, Giovanna and her close friend Elio de Angelis entered a motor racing school together and she graduated to Formula Abarth. She showed promise in the lower categories, taking a pole position and fastest lap in 1982 and in 1984 contested Italian F3 with G.Pirola’s Ralt RT3 and was fifteenth at Nogaro plus had a single race in European F3. Continuing in Italian F3 in 1985 with a Ravarotto Ralt RT30, she was eighth at Imola, tenth at Monza, eleventh and thirteenth at Vallelunga, twelfth at Misano and Enna-Pergusa and fourteenth at Varano. Her best results came with fifth in a Trofeo Monza race and fourth at the series’ fourth round at Mugello in May, behind Franco Forini, Luis Perez Sala and Alex Caffi. The second season in F3 saw her continue with a Ralt RT30, though now with Team Coperchini, and although she did not start at Varano and retired at Misano and Imola, she was seventh in the first round at Vallunga, fifth at Monza, eleventh at Enna Pergusa, fourteenth at Misano and seventh and eighth at Monza in late August and then September. There was also a drive in an Alfa Romeo powered Martini MK45 in the Monaco F3 race during the year.
Moving up to F3000 proved disappointing though and in the three races contested with BS Automotive’s Lola T87/50, she did not start at Enna-Pergusa and Imola and finished sixteenth at Donington. Returning the following season with Colt Racing’s Lola T88/50, the best results came with tenth place finishes at Jerez and Monza plus twelfth at Enna-Pergusa. Contesting 1990 with Roni Motorsport there were four races in their Reynard 90D though she did not qualify for three of the rounds and retired at Donington. She entered the fifth round at Monza with the team’s Lola T89/50 but did not qualify and following this came a switch to Colin Bennett Racing, though she did not start in four of the rounds and the only finish was fifteenth at Hockenheim with the team’s Reynard. During 1990 she was involved in an incident during a test at Oulton Park where she allegedly deliberately ran driver Phil Andrews off the road at 160mph. The incident was supposedly triggered at the previous race at Hockenheim, where he had overtaken her and told how in passing she had to go off line a little. However, after getting out of his car in parc ferme and walking back to the pits, Colin Bennett (her team manager) shouted a warning to him. As he turned, he described how he saw Amati coming towards him with a glass bottle of water, stating “she wasn’t going to offer me a drink, not from the way she was carrying it, above her head and with a demonic look on her face!” Colin managed to take the bottle from her leaving Phil perplexed as to why she was so angry though he thought that was the end of the matter. But, at the Oulton Park test a couple of weeks later he came across Giovanna “going slowly up the hill, probably on an in-lap. I just crested the rise and she jinked to the left sharply. I honestly couldn’t say whether or not she did it on purpose, but it was very odd. It didn’t really matter at that stage because I was about to have the most terrifying accident of my life!” His car flipped but when it landed it hit the tyre barrier at Druids and after being in the medical centre his mechanics later told him that not even the fire extinguisher was salvageable from the wreckage. When he saw Giovanna in her car waiting for the session to restart, he went up to the car and told her to get out though she “didn’t say a word, just gesticulated nervously” and he was ushered away.
Driving for GJ Motorsports the following year, results from the seven rounds included seventh at the Bugatti Circuit (Le Mans), ninth at Hockenheim, fourteenth at Mugello and nineteenth at Brands Hatch. August that year also an entry into the Spa Hours alongside Didier de Radigues and Francois Turco in a Peugeot 309 though they retired from it. At the end of the season there was an opportunity to test Benetton’s F1 car though in January 1992 she signed for Brabham. The team had initially signed F3000 racer Akihiko Nakaya but his application for a Superlicense was refused by the FIA. Lining up alongside Eric van de Poele in the team’s Judd powered BT60B Giovanna did not qualify at the first three rounds, at Kyalami, Mexico City and Interlagos. However, taking the car and a complete lack of testing into account, it was unsurprising she failed in these attempts and after being replaced by F1 rookie Damon Hill he himself only qualified in two of the eight races he entered. Unfortunately, it was a bad season for the Brabham team as after Eric qualified twenty sixth (and finished thirteenth) in South Africa, neither car qualified for a race until the ninth race. At the British GP, Damon qualified twenty sixth at the British GP but two races later the team sadly had its last ever race in F1 in Hungary, where Damon gave them its highest finish of the season by finishing eleventh. Speaking later about her time with Brabham she said “I had all the interest on me because I was the only woman in the championship but with that car I couldn’t perform..Brabham at that time had a lack of sponsors and a lack of budget. My engine was leaking oil, water, everything, and when I asked to change it there were no spare parts. So it was difficult, and all the other cars were performing much better than ours. I couldn’t qualify with that car and the problem was that they didn’t give me another chance afterwards.”
Following this Giovanna continued to race in various sports car and GT series throughout the 1990s, becoming the women’s champion in 1993’s Porsche Supercup series and was a frequent participant in the Ferrari Challenge series. There were two races in Augusta Racing’s Callaway Corvette in 4 Hour races at Paul Ricard and Monza in 1995 (alongside Rocky Agusta, Eugene O’Brien and Karl Wendlinger) though they retired. Towards the end of the 1990s, 1998 started with a BMW M3 at the Sebring 12 Hours with Craig Carter and Andy Petery and then end of the year saw a race in November at Vallelunga in a Lucchini P3-97 with Giovanni Gulinelli and Fabio Poggetti. Between these races came drives in July at Misano, with Gianni Giducci and Arturo Merzario in a Gaiero SPN 1 and and September with Guido Knycz and G.Gulinelli in a Lucchini P3-96 at Le Mans. The following year saw an involvement in the Women’s Global GT Series with a Panoz though her main racing came in the Sports Racing World Cup. Teamed with Angelo Lancelotti in an Alfa-Romeo powered Tampoli SR2 RTA-99, though not classified at the first round in Barcelona they were sixth at Monza, eleventh at Nurburgring (joined by G.Knycz at this race) and fourth at Magny Cours. The season’s final round came at Kyalami, though she raced MMP Motorsport’s Nissan powered Pilbeam MP84 and finished fifteenth with Hennie Groenewald and Nicke Blom. She was the winner in the SR2 category as well as in the Nurburgring and Magny-Cours rounds.
Giovanna took up TV work full-time in 2000 and became a sports presenter on Italian television. In 2014 there was a guest appearance with a drive at Misano in the Italian GT Championship, driving GDL Racing’s Mercedes SLS AMG, and she was twelfth and eleventh in the GT3 class with Gianluca de Lorenzi.
Before her racing career, at age 19, Amati was kidnapped for ransom by three gangsters. Kept in a cage for 75 days where she was assaulted both physically and mentally, Amati was finally released on an 800-lira ransom, but not before falling in love with her captor, Daniel Nieto. Still, she wasn’t quite infatuated enough to keep him out of trouble; Nieto was eventually imprisoned after Amati arranged a meeting between the two. https://www.redbull.com/us-en/secret-lives-of-f1-drivers
