The pages of World Rally Championship history are littered with obscure footnotes, fascinatingly untold stories and feats many of us have grown to forget over the course of time.
One such feat that will never be forgotten was Louise Aitken-Walker’s stellar 1990 campaign in which she won the inaugural FIA Ladies Cup – earning her plaudits well beyond the world of motorsport.
But can you remember who her chief rival was that season?
(Insert game show music of your choice here to soundtrack your thinking).
The answer: Paola De Martini!
It’s no surprise that De Martini’s career is spoken about far less than Aitken-Walker’s given the runner-up never garners the same glory as the champion – why would they?
But De Martini’s was an intriguing, and ultimately successful, career that’s ultimate rewards perhaps didn’t reflect the raw talent she so clearly had.
It all began in 1984 when, aged 20, De Martini got her hands on a modest Autobianchi A112 Abarth. But she’d already added a trophy to the mantelpiece come the end of her maiden season, scooping that year’s Italian Ladies Championship.
That prompted an upgrade. Out went the Autobianchi and in came a Ford Fiesta XR3 and with it an expectation that she would just go up and up.
But fate would intervene. A big crash during 1985 restricted De Martini to just half a season with injuries that forced her out of competition.
But even if she wasn’t competing, it didn’t mean she wasn’t making moves for when she next would be.
Refusing to just sit at home and let her blossoming career be defined by an accident, De Martini used her time out not just to recuperate but to advance her career – negotiating a deal with Audi to drive an 80 Quattro in the 1986 Italian championship.
This marked the beginning of what became a long-standing relationship with Ingolstadt’s finest that would carry De Martini all the way to the WRC via several Italian rallies as well as the European Rally Championship.
1988 was her breakthrough season. Fourth on Rally Catalunya (then an ERC round) and a superb victory in San Marino certainly caught the eye. So much so that De Martini earned her WRC debut and finished ninth overall with her 90 Quattro.
Italian national rallies were now firmly in the rear-view mirror and the bulk of De Martini’s 1989 was spent in the WRC. She entered six rallies and grabbed a pair of fourth places in Monte Carlo and Corsica, but a mixture of mechanical problems in Greece, Italy and the Ivory Coast – added to a crash in Portugal – meant it was a tough learning year.
But then came 1990, and the formation of the Ladies Cup. This gave De Martini a world title to shoot for at a very early stage of her career – fighting toe-to-toe with the more experienced Aitken-Walker.
Engine trouble in Monte Carlo got De Martini’s season off on the wrong foot, and sadly she would never recover the lost momentum. Although she took back-to-back category victories in Portugal and Corsica, Aitken-Walker and her lightweight Opel Kadett (or Vauxhall Astra depending on the event) proved too strong a combination to resist.
De Martini did earn herself a dream guest drive with the works Lancia team in Argentina though, although wouldn’t go further than SS1.
Having missed out on the Ladies Cup title she had shot for, De Martini drastically changed strategy for 1991 – heading back to the Italian championship, bringing in Luisa Zumelli as her co-driver (ending a long-standing relationship with Umberta Gibellini) and leaving Audi behind for Lancia.
In a Delta Integrale she scored a trio of fourth places to end her season, but the brakes were beginning to come onto De Martini’s career.
After a year out in ’92, De Martini contested a few rallies in a Delta in ’93 (partnered with Gibellini once more) and bagged a top six on the San Marino Rally she had won five years earlier.
But that would broadly be that. After a lengthy hiatus, De Martini made a brief comeback in 2001 in a Group N Subaru but soon returned to retirement. Some one-offs in 2007 and ’08 aside, she hasn’t been back behind the wheel since.
And that’s absolutely rallying’s loss.
De Martini was fearless, fiercely committed and passionate about her craft. And in an era where Michèle Mouton unquestionably became a hero for many women all over the world, De Martini proved she was no one-off.
Whatever she is doing with her life now, she can be proud of the impact she had on motorsport during the ’80s and ’90s.
DirtFish Women’s Month aims to educate and inspire – telling the stories of women involved in all roles of motorsport and culminating in the Women in Motorsport Summit on March 11.
