Remembering the first lady GP winner

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This is a good one for stock-and-trade knowledge that will likely trump most of your fellow PreWarCar enthusiasts: who was the first woman ever to win a Grand Prix race? Our guesses would be Hellé Nice or Dorothy Levitt or perhaps Violette Cordery or Kay Petre? Well, these are all wrong.

Eliška Junková

It’s Czech racer Eliška Junková (1900-1994) to whom the title belongs. Junková was named ‘Queen of the Steering Wheel’ in the 1920s and not just in her own country. She competed Europe’s top drivers in her day. As a matter of fact, she’d been one of the first women to receive a driver’s licence in 1922 in the Czech Republic – then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Together with her husband Vincenc Junek, they’d travelled Europe and Africa while working for a bank and made enough money to get involved in racing. Initially, she’d become his mechanic and co-pilot in his Bugatti Type 30, but after a while, the time was there to take the steering wheel in her own hands.

Eliška bought her own Bugatti Type 35B straight from Le Patron and entered it in a number races and hill climbs, including the 1927 Targa Florio and the German Grand Prix at the brand new Nürburgring circuit. It was there that she secured a victory in the two-litre class, setting her in the record books as the first woman to win a GP race. With another 35B for the 1928 season, she returned to that years’ Targa Florio where she’d proved to be just 30 seconds behind Bugatti works driver Louis Chiron, but then a puncture threw a spanner in the works. Yet she managed to finish an incredible fifth overall, beating men such as René Dreyfus, and Tazio Nuvolari. Could she have won the race? It’s possible but her racing career was soon to end after her husband Vincenc was killed at the 1928 German Grand Prix. She gave up racing but remained a much-loved figure in Bugatti circles around the globe until her death in 1994.

She is remembered in a number of ways. Her driving style inspired Czech jazz composer Jaroslav Ježek to come up with a piece named ‘Bugatti Step’ and there is a 15-minute long documentary to be found online (in Czech). Even if we don’t understand it we think Eliška Junková is a lady not to be forgotten.

Words by Jeroen Booij. Pictures Skoda Motorsport and Reflex.cz.

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