Amati, Giovanna

The early years

Giovanna, being the daughter of a wealthy businessman Giovanni Amati, from childhood experienced a craving for all sorts of adventures. In particular, at the age of 15, she bought herself a 500 cc motorcycle, which she managed to hide from her parents for two whole years. Moreover, she also secretly managed to unlearn her at a racing school with her friend Elio de Angelis .

On February 12, 1978, she was abducted by a group of three bandits for ransom. A certain Jean Daniel Nieto headed the kidnappers, and conflicting rumors circulated about their relationship during the abduction - it was reported that he raped her, then, on the contrary, it was said that there was a romantic relationship between them. It is not known for certain whether the required ransom of 800 million lire was paid, but after 75 days of captivity, Giovanna returned to her parents. Subsequently, Nieto was arrested and sentenced to 18 years in prison. In 1989, he managed to escape from places of detention, and in 2010, after 21 years on the run, he was again arrested.

Junior formulas

After studying at the school of racing skills, she began professional motor racing with Formula Abarth in 1981. For four years, she managed to win several victories, and in 1985 she moved to the Italian Formula 3. Here, in two years, she also won several times, after which she moved to Formula 3000 for the season-87. Here the successes were not so much smaller - they were not at all, since in three races she was able to qualify only once, and even then finished in the middle of the second ten. In 1988, things went a little better - twice managed to finish the tenth. In 1989, she tried her hand at Japanese Formula 3000, but did not succeed and in 1990 returned to the international championship. Here the results returned to the initial level again - only twice passed qualification and only one finish in the distant 16th place. The next year, however, was the most successful for her entire career - she did not qualify only three times and finished in more than half of the races, and in the penultimate stage she took a relatively high seventh place. At the end of the year, with the help of personal agreements with Flavio Briatore, she was able to organize for herself short tests of the Benetton car, but only 30 laps were possible on the track.

Formula 1

Until that moment, Giovanna's career was developing like a typical rental driver . And so it continued - the signing in January 1992 of a contract with the Brabham team for speaking in Formula 1 was due, according to the public, exclusively for financial reasons. Shortly before that, Brabham intended to pair with the Japanese pilot Akihiko Nakai to Eric van de Poel , but was refused by the FIA ​​- participation in the Japanese Formula 3000 was not enough to get a super license. The press accepted the subsequent announcement of the contract with Amati as a way to attract additional sponsors by having a woman behind the wheel. By the beginning of the first Grand Prix in South Africa, Giovanna’s experience with driving a Formula 1 car was limited to last year’s tests of 30 laps, and the car was still in the process of assembly.

All this led to disappointing results - during the training Amati turned around six times, and in the qualification she lost nine seconds to the holder of the pole Mansell and as many as four to her partner van de Poel, and, of course, did not get to the start. She lost the same amount in Mexico, the lag behind her partner was 3 seconds, which was not very pleasing - van de Poel also did not qualify. This double miss on start happened for the first time in the history of Brabham. In Brazil, things got even worse - more than 11 seconds behind Mansell and almost five seconds behind a partner. More importantly, financial injections from Johanna's sponsors stopped at that moment, so before the next stage she was fired and replaced with Damon Hill - which, incidentally, was also considered an advertising move at that moment.

Subsequent Career

Despite the catastrophic level of performances in Formula 1, in the series with a lower rank, Amati has established herself as one of the best female pilots. In the first year after leaving Brabham, she won the European Championships in Porsche Women's Super Cup. From 1994 to 1996 she performed at the Ferrari Challenge, won several podiums, but then, in 1997, did not participate in races. In 1998, Amati returned to the Ferrari Challenge, also participated in the ISRS sports car races. In the same year, she took part in several endurance races: “12 hours of Sebring” (teammates Craig Carter and Andy Peteri, descent), “1000 kilometers of Monza” (teammates Loic Depaye and Xavier Pompidou), as well as a two-hour race at Le Mans (companions Guido Knitz and Giovanni Gulinelli). In Sebring, she could not finish, in Monza she could not even start, but in Le Mans she finished 11th. In 1999, she again participated in the ISRS, where she became the third in the championship, and in some other sports car races. In the same year, she performed in a demonstration karting race during the CART stage in Homestead, as well as in the race in Bercy in company with Herbert , Duen , Alboreto , Roiteman and many others.

In addition to racing, Giovanna also wrote notes about motorsport, and also commented on racing on television.

• Giovanna Amati (Russian) on wildsoft.motorsport.com
• Amati, Giovanna ( historic ) on historicracing.com