Desiré Wilson is the only woman ever to have won a Formula 1 race, and for all I know she may always carry that mantle. OK, her famous victory in the Evening News Trophy at Brands Hatch in 1980 was not of F1 World Championship grand prix status, because it was an Aurora AFX F1 Championship race, but it was an F1 race nonetheless, contested in an almost-contemporary F1 car against other drivers also in almost-contemporary F1 cars. On a mild and dry April afternoon Wilson climbed into an ex-Jody Scheckter Wolf WR4, she took the lead at the start, she drove away from an all-male field that contained drivers whose F1 experience was significant, and she won the race by more than 15sec, setting fastest lap en route.

That triumph was neither a fluke nor the culmination of a plan in which every stage had been carefully engineered, for Wilson’s racing career had been and would continue to be assembled from opportunities seized and obstacles endured. She raced micro-midgets, motorcycles, Formula Vee cars, Formula Ford 1600 cars, Formula Ford 2000 cars, touring cars, sports cars, Indy Lights cars, Indycars and F1 cars, and she did so all over the world; she drove good cars, average cars, bad cars and cars that by her own account were sometimes positively evil. Above all, she developed the ability to arrive at a new circuit, climb into an unknown machine and drive it quickly despite the disadvantage engendered by such unfamiliarity.

Moreover, she competed in an era in which the very idea of a woman behind the wheel of a race car could provoke responses ranging from gentle bemusement to outright hostility. But what makes her story all the more compelling is not that she encountered sexism – that part of it is depressingly unsurprising – but that she regarded sexism as merely an extra hurdle to be cleared. Men could dislike her, sponsors could object to her, teams could close doors in her face and bitter male rivals could push her off the track, but none of it caused her ambition to waver.

But let’s start at the beginning. “I was born in a small town near Brakpan, about 25 miles east of Johannesburg, in the Transvaal [South Africa], and our family was lower-income. I had a great father and a lovely mother, Charlie and Tina [Randall], and I was raised in a racing environment. My dad didn’t earn a ton of money but he was a motorcycle champion so I grew up to love motorbikes and cars and racing and all that. When I was a toddler, my mum would put me in our garage with my dad, after he came home from his work as a mechanic in a local car repair workshop, which was the opposite to my elder sister, Beverley, who wanted to be a ballerina and wasn’t interested in hanging out with Dad in our garage. Actually she raced a bit, later on, but she wasn’t ever as into it as I was.

“I started racing micro-midgets when I was five years old. I also raced motorbikes, but my mum eventually put a stop to that. I did well in micro-midgets, beating many of the boys, and in 1967, at 12, I finished second in the South African micro-midget championship. Then I went to high school. All of a sudden I was surrounded by other teenage girls and they all wanted to do nice girly things, wear fancy clothes, go to parties and have a good time. Well, I had no interest in any of that. What I was interested in was motor sport and indeed any sport, and I was very good at it, especially track and field, and I took it very seriously, training a lot. I won almost everything – running, hurdling, javelin, discus, shot put, you name it I won it.

“I’d begun to love driving on the road, too – and I drove our car in town all the time even though I was too young to have a driving licence. One day a policeman stopped me, seeing that I was too young to be driving a car on the road, and another policeman drove up and said to him, ‘No, no, no. Leave her alone. She’s Charlie Randall’s daughter.’ In those days, in South Africa, if you knew the right people, you were OK.

“Running, hurdling, javelin, discus, shot put, you name it I won it ”

“Anyway, I’d been racing this and that from time to time throughout my teens, but we didn’t ever have our own race car. But there was a guy down the road who owned a garage – I can’t remember his name – and he had a Formula Vee car. So my dad strolled down to see him one day and he asked him, ‘Who races your Formula Vee car?’ And the guy said, ‘My mate Hans.’ So my dad asked, ‘Well, is Hans any good?’ And the guy replied, ‘Well, he’s OK.’ So my dad said, ‘I bet my daughter is better than Hans. Give her a test.’ And the guy agreed, out of curiosity more than anything else I think.

“So we went down to Kyalami to test this rather ancient Formula Vee car. My dad showed me the controls, off I went, and I was immediately faster than Hans. So my dad suggested to the car’s owner that I should race it a few times, and from a proper racing point of view that’s how it all began for me. I started racing in Formula Vee in 1972, at 18, I had a few shunts and my mum got very worried. But we persisted, my dad built me a newer, better Formula Vee car, and I finished second in the championship in my third year, 1974.

“The following year, 1975, I married Alan [Wilson], and he helped me step up to Formula Ford 1600, which was big in South Africa at the time. We bought a Titan chassis, Dad worked on it and I ended up with a very well-tuned engine because Dad was a brilliant mechanic. I did OK that year, and for 1976 we bought the car that had won the championship in 1975, a Merlyn, and I won the 1976 championship. It was a tight championship, and in the last race of the season, at Kyalami, my car broke down 100 yards from the finish line, so I got out and pushed it over the line. And that was enough: I was 1976 Formula Ford champion of South Africa.

“In those days Ford of South Africa got behind young drivers and I duly became the winner of Ford’s Driver to Europe award, which Jody Scheckter had won in 1970. By 1976 the prize money was much less than it had been in Jody’s day, when he got 1000 rand [about £640 in 1970] and a free flight to England, but Alan and I decided to take a punt and go to Europe anyway.

“Actually we ended up going to Holland, not England, purely by luck, because I was racing an Alfa Romeo touring car at Kyalami one day in late 1976 and after the race we met a Dutchman called Huub Vermeulen, who was a race driver and the Crosslé Formula Ford agent for Holland [and an uncle of Raymond Vermeulen, Max Verstappen’s manager, incidentally]. And Huub said, ‘Come to Holland – it would be great to have a woman racing with us [in the 1977 Benelux Formula Ford 2000 Championship].’ So we did. And it so happened that Huub was also the Dutch importer for Slazenger tennis racquets, Alan offered to design a new racquet for him, and Huub said yes. So we both ended up working for Huub in one way or another – and, because we weren’t allowed to earn money in Holland for visa reasons, Huub paid us in free car parts for my race car.

“My first race was at Zolder, and it was raining. I had practically no experience of racing in the rain, absolutely no experience of the Crosslé car and no experience whatsoever of the Zolder circuit. I managed to qualify about 18th out of about 22. I got going OK at the start and after that I put the hammer down. I passed a few cars and a few others spun off, because it was pouring down by now, and after a while I found myself in fifth place. Then I managed to barge my way into fourth, and ahead of me was Huub, my benefactor, and after a while I managed to get past him as well so I ended up third. Everyone was pretty impressed and I did well that year, 1977: I won Benelux Formula Ford 2000 Championship races at both Zandvoort and Colmar-Berg. I also did some UK Formula Ford 2000 Championship races that season, and I’ll tell you: the Dutch guys generally treated me more or less OK, but the Brits absolutely hated having a quick woman in their races.”

That last paragraph contains in microcosm everything that would follow: Desiré rocks up somewhere new, with little or no money, little or no testing, and little or no institutional support; she climbs into a car that she does not know on a circuit that she also does not know; she races hard, fast and well; wins follow. Yet the reaction of the men in situ is not to doff a titfer and wonder how fast this newcomer might drive if properly backed, but to ask why a woman is there at all.

“After that we went back to South Africa, because we’d run out of money, and the guys back home soon started to hate me, too. South Africa had become very, very macho. Ian Scheckter, Jody’s elder brother, hated me with a passion. Even so, I did a few races and I did OK. Then Alan got a phone call from Alex Blignaut, who was a race driver, race team owner and eventually secretary of SAMRaC [South African Motor Racing Club], and he told Alan to tell me to ‘eff off out of South Africa’. It turned out, we later learned, that the directors of the cigarette companies that had been sponsoring all the male drivers in South Africa, Gunston and Lucky Strike and so on, couldn’t accept their star men being beaten by a woman, and they’d put big pressure on Alex to get me to leave.

“But, you know, things often work out, and at that point I received a letter from John Webb [the legendary UK circuit promoter], inviting me to come over to the UK to do some celeb races. The first one was at Brands Hatch, in a Ford Escort, and I won it easily. After that John offered Alan the job of track manager at Brands Hatch and I worked as the circuit’s bookkeeper, and we lived in a trailer a mile from the circuit. I did a few UK Formula Ford 2000 Championship races that year, 1978, and I did OK. John then said he wanted me to do some F1 tyre testing, as a promotion for the 1978 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, in an ex-works March 751 F1 car updated to 761 spec. So I did that. Then I did the last half of the 1978 Aurora AFX F1 Championship, racing an ex-works Ensign N175 F1 car for Mario Deliotti Racing, and I did OK. I did five races, I finished four of them, and my results were sixth at Mallory Park, fourth at Brands Hatch, third at Thruxton, and sixth at Snetterton.

“The following year John arranged for me to race an ex-Patrick Depailler Tyrrell 008 F1 car in the 1979 Aurora AFX F1 Championship for Melchester Racing, the team that had won the championship in 1978 [with Tony Trimmer in an ex-works McLaren M23]. I kicked off with three third places, at Zolder, Oulton Park and Brands Hatch, then I got another third place at Thruxton a bit later, then the car began to flex too much. There was something wrong with it. Even so, I finished off the season with six decent results: fifth at Oulton Park, fourth at Nogaro, seventh at both Brands Hatch and Thruxton, sixth at Snetterton and fifth at Silverstone. Oh and I raced it in a proper non-championship F1 race, my first, the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, and I finished ninth overall and third of the Aurora AFX F1 Championship cars, because the first six cars across the line were all current works F1 cars.”

Then came 1980 and an ex-Jody Scheckter Wolf WR4 run by Teddy Yip, an F1 car with pace and pedigree and, for Wilson, something more important: “I had a feeling.” Many race drivers know it, although few can explain it. There are days when the car seems to dissolve around the driver, when every input appears inevitable and every corner is easy. Wilson had one of those days at Brands Hatch. “That Wolf was a lovely car. Our first race was at Oulton Park, and I DNF’d. Next up was Brands Hatch – and that weekend I had that feeling that some race drivers sometimes experience, but not often, and I can only describe it as invincibility. Honestly, I felt invincible.

“I qualified well, but on my best quali lap the engine went soft at Clearways and everyone said that I’d have had the pole otherwise. Teddy’s boys put another engine in the car for the race, I lined up on the grid, I made a great start, I took the lead into Turn 1 [Paddock Hill], and after that I just drove away from the field. I never saw another car [and she won the 40-lap race by more than 15sec, driving fastest lap en route].”

“Did you realise the gravity of your achievement? You know: to be the first woman ever to win an F1 race?” I ask her.

“To be honest, no, not at all. It never even crossed my mind. All my life all I’d ever done was race men, I’d always done my best and I’d won plenty. Winning was what I’d always wanted to do, and here I was winning again. But the fans went berserk, and waving to them on the podium, alongside Norman Dickson [second in an ex-works Lotus 78] and Eliseo Salazar [third in an ex-works Williams FW07] was a nice experience. I wish I could remember more about that day, but I can’t.

“I made a great start, I took the lead into Turn 1, and after that I just drove away from the field”

“After that I was second at Thruxton and third at Mallory Park, then I was dropped for the rest of 1980 because I didn’t have any money. They went with Kevin Cogan instead because they said he was going to be an F1 driver and I wasn’t [Cogan’s F1 career amounted to two DNQs]. That was the end of my Aurora AFX F1 Championship career.”

From the vantage point of 2026 it seems faintly absurd that in 1980 such a historic moment met with no discernible career advancement for the woman who had achieved it. On the contrary, Wilson’s single-seater drives more or less stopped. Yet, for Desiré, stopping was never surrendering. She moved on to sports cars, for which a different kind of talent was required. “I started racing with Alain de Cadenet. His cars weren’t always the fastest because they were powered by DFV engines that had about 550bhp, no more, but they were always immaculately prepared. He was a great guy. He showed me how to be gentle with an endurance car, particularly with gearboxes and brakes, easing the lever from ratio to ratio with just two fingers, and making do without changing brake pads during races because we didn’t have quick-lift jacks or wheel guns. We finished third in the 1980 Brands Hatch 1000Kms, and we won the 1980 Monza 1000Kms and the 1980 Silverstone 6 Hours.

“Alain was a gentleman, and he enjoyed winding people up in a lovely way. At Le Mans in 1980 we were driving through the city in his road car, and he was shouting at the fans, ‘We’re going to beat you, you bloody Frenchies!’ Also, he didn’t mind when I was quicker than he was. He was always thanking and praising me. I was going to do Le Mans with him in 1980, and the third driver was François Migault. But the organisers excluded me on a ridiculous technicality, so I didn’t get to drive. Alain and François did the whole 24 hours without me and they finished seventh. I was delighted for them – they drove brilliantly – but I was very miffed for myself.” She would race at Le Mans three times, failing to finish in a Grid Plaza S1 in 1982, finishing seventh in a Porsche 956 in 1983, and failing to finish again in a Spice SE90C in 1991.

Wilson’s career progress was never conventional and never linear, but in the end an apparently bona fide F1 chance appeared. “Yes, it did, if you can call it that. John Webb called me and told me that I had the opportunity to race an ex-works Williams FW07 in the 1980 British Grand Prix with John MacDonald’s RAM Racing. Now that was a current F1 car, and a fast one, so I was excited. It had sliding skirts, which the Aurora AFX F1 Championship cars didn’t, even if they were ex-works F1 cars that had been designed to run sliding skirts, so Johnny Mac’s Williams was a lot quicker around the corners than anything I’d ever driven before.

“Everything was going well when we tested at Brands Hatch. Rupert Keegan was in the other car, but he couldn’t match my lap times. There were 20-odd cars in that test – including all the front-running works cars from Williams and Brabham and McLaren and Ligier and so on – driven by all the superstar F1 drivers like Alan Jones and Carlos Reutemann and Nelson Piquet and John Watson and Alain Prost and Didier Pironi and Jacques Laffite and so on – and I was somewhere in the middle of the pack, about 12th-quickest. So I was happy, because I knew there was more pace in the car that I’d be able to unlock during the grand prix weekend.

“When I climbed into the car for the grand prix weekend, nothing fitted me. The seat was wrong. The pedals were wrong. They said nothing had changed, but I knew that it had. ‘Just drive the bloody thing,’ they said. I was almost 3sec a lap slower than I’d been in the test. ‘This isn’t the same car,’ I said. ‘Of course it is,’ they answered. I did my best – but in qualifying Laffite deliberately nerfed me off the track at Surtees. He was in a Ligier, one of the fastest cars, and I could see him in my mirrors, so I hugged the outside line and lifted off so as to let him through on the inside, but he also lifted off, he placed his car alongside mine, then he just pushed me off the track. That smashed up my car’s sliding skirts, and that was the end of that quali session. Later I gather that he was heard to say, ‘No effing woman is going to be in an F1 grand prix.’

“Laffite pushed me off the track. That was the end of that session”

“The next day I found out that I’d been right all along: I’d been given a different car, and the RAM Racing guys had been lying to me. I tried my best to improve it and I found about 1sec a lap, but the car still felt evil. There was another quali session but I failed to qualify. Rupert, my team-mate, got ‘my’ car. He qualified it, but only 18th. I was gutted.”

There would be one more F1 chance – but even that began to go wrong more or less from the outset. “I was initially going to be driving a third works Brabham in the 1981 South African Grand Prix, alongside Bernie Ecclestone’s regular drivers Nelson Piquet and Ricardo Zunino. I was very excited about that, because that 1981 Brabham was a seriously quick F1 car. In fact Piquet got the pole for that race, and he went on to be F1 world champion in it that year. But three weeks before the race Ken Tyrrell called me to tell me that Bernie wasn’t going to let me drive a third works Brabham after all, but that he – Ken – would let me drive one of his cars instead. OK, the Tyrrell wasn’t as quick as the Brabham, but I was still up for it, and I had a lot of respect for Ken.

“I didn’t get to test the car and I hadn’t raced anything for months, but at least I knew Kyalami well. The guy in the other car, Ken’s regular driver Eddie Cheever, wasn’t very friendly to me, and when I first drove the car it felt really bad. Its steering was unbelievably stiff in the fast corners and I spun a couple of times. Ken called me into the pits and he gave me hell. He said, ‘You’re trying to drive my car faster than it will go. You’re overdriving. Calm down. Get it qualified.’

“Anyway, they gave me a new set of tyres, and it felt a lot better. I qualified 16th, just six-tenths slower than Cheever in P12, which wasn’t too bad when you consider that he was a regular F1 driver, I was new to the car and I hadn’t raced anything for months.

“On race day it was drizzling as we drove to the grid, I got the start wrong, and I stalled. That was my mistake and I admit it. But once I’d got going I had a clear track and I had a great race – for a while, until I spun off trying to make room for Nigel Mansell [Lotus] to pass me, which it turned out I needn’t have done because he was a lap behind me. If only I’d known. Later the race was declared a Formula Libre event anyway, because Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Renault, Ligier and Osella all boycotted it, so I can’t say that I ever drove in a world championship-status F1 grand prix.

“Ken then tried to get me to drive for him in the next grand prix, at Long Beach, but in the end Kevin Cogan got the drive. But Ken said, ‘Don’t give up. Get yourself a visa for the next two races, Brazil and Argentina, and I’ll see what I can do for you there.’ I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, as a South African, I wouldn’t be able to get visas for those countries. I don’t know how Jody Scheckter always managed it. Maybe being an F1 world champion helped. Anyway, that was that. No more F1 for Desiré.”

There is a melancholy to that utterance, particularly because Wilson does not deliver it as melodrama. “No more F1 for Desiré”: her F1 career did not end with a spectacular accident or an unequivocal failure of pace; no, it ended through the accumulated weight of circumstances, involving money, politics, nationality and, at various points, the undeniable fact that F1 has never been an especially forgiving place for anyone who does not fit the shape of the opportunity.

Yet it would be wrong to look at Wilson’s racing career solely via the metaphor of an F1 door that never properly opened for her, for to do that would be to reduce a remarkably broad motor sport life to much less than the sum of its parts. “I guess I’d have to say that my racing career was stop-start. I never had a solid run in any team. I’ve raced about 150 different cars altogether, but so many of them were one-off deals, often with no testing. After 1981 I raced in sports cars again, in touring cars again, in IndyCars, in Indy Lights cars, and, much more recently, in Porsche 911 Cup cars, winning races again, which I enjoyed. Through it all I was helped by the fact that I always learned a new car quickly, and a new circuit, too. All in all, I reckon I did OK. I raced men all the time; I won quite a few races; I had a good, natural feel for a race car; and I had good, natural mechanical sympathy.”

‘Stop-start’ is comically modest. Here is a woman who began racing at five; who finished second in a national championship at 12; who finished second in another national championship at 20; who won yet another national championship at 22; who went to Europe with almost no money; who won races there; who returned home, only to be told to leave again because her success had become an embarrassment; and who went back to Europe and won again, in not only a top-class sports car but also a top-class F1 car. Her opponents were men, always men. That she never started a world championship-status F1 grand prix was the result of a nasty mix of mendacious conspiracy and sheer bad luck.

It is tempting to wonder what might have happened: had the money been available in 1980; had the RAM Racing opportunity unfolded as it had initially appeared that it would; had the Brabham seat materialised; had the South American visas been obtainable; and, yes, had the various senior people who controlled the doors to F1 been less picky about the sex of the drivers who belonged on the other side of them. Such questions are unanswerable, and motor sport is littered with stories that might have become much better if even one small twist of fate had turned differently. Wilson’s case is tantalising because there is compelling evidence of what she could do when given the right car.