Her parents never found out, not how she got the money, not where she found the bike, not even the identity of the salesperson desperate enough to accept a child’s money. A bike like that, to a kid like her. But not just any kid. Giovanna’s father owned movie theaters; her mother acted in said movies. All Giovanna wanted to do was play the role of racing driver. For two years, Giovanna kept her Honda hidden behind her friends’ garage, and only took it out for little spins during the late hours of the night, when Roma pretended to sleep and the sleek, narrow streets grew even more austere. Monsters in silk shirts mumbled low in the shadows, watched the kid ride over stone and grime, turn into dark gardens and across the Tevere river, far beyond the reach of the misty moonlight. Up and down, left and right, zigzagging past the Vespas and the yellow bicycles left unattended in the piazzas. A curt glimpse towards the Vatican, a recognition of Spirit, a nod of respect. Total darkness. Giovanna rode through the night like a black horse. Hair like broken hay sticking out of her helmet; sunken eyes the color of whiskey peering through a red visor. Straight, thin lips sucking on rolling paper and blowing out smoke too strong to be tobacco. This was Giovanna Amati in the dark. La principessa veloce de Roma.

3 years later, in 1978, Giovanna Amati was kidnapped in broad daylight. Caught between the considerable wealth of her surname and the diabolical politics of the time, the girl never really stood a chance. She was sitting in her car, parked in front of the Amati villa, perhaps waiting for someone to come join her, perhaps only taking a moment to breathe, listening to some music. We’ll never know. 3 masked men broke through the windshield like hammers and dragged her kicking and screaming into a van nearby. Giovanna was then taken to an apartment just a few blocks away, where she was undressed, assaulted, humiliated, broken and tortured, wrapped in a thick plastic sheet and shoved inside a wooden box. For 74 days, she was kept inside that box. The box only opened for food, for water, for hands, for mouths, for pain, for horrors. 2 months later, the box opened one last time. Against explicit court orders from the Italian government, Giovanni Amati and Anna Maria Pancanni paid for their daughter’s ransom using leftover box-office receipts from George Lucas’ ‘Star Wars’, old family jewelry and some of their servants’ life-savings.

The full cost hit 800 million-lira (almost 3 million US dollars). Soon after her release, Giovanna started receiving flowers and love letters from one her captors, Jean Daniel Nieto, which prompted some to speculate about the nature of their relationship. Giovanna was kept in a box for two months. ‘The box made me stronger.’ She’d tell the BBC, years later. After a few days of radio silence and even more flowers, she phoned Jean Daniel Nieto, and informed him she could no longer live without him, and they should run away together. Jean Daniel Nieto was ecstatic. He showed up to the meeting point right on time, in his best two-piece suit. Giovanna showed up on the back of her Honda. She did not stop for Jean Daniel Nieto. The police cars who’d been following close behind, however, did.

Giovanna Amati began racing cars professionally at the age of 21. Despite successful campaigns in Formula Abarth, Italian F3 and Formula 3000, Giovanna had close to no open-wheel experience, no real backing, no sponsors, and no hopes of a successful F1 stint. Still. She wanted to ride F1 cars the way she rode her bike alone in the streets of Rome. She wanted to play the role. She was an Amati, after all. Her final option was still in the box. Money. A doomed team wobbling on its last leg let her pay for its ’92 seat, and so, with no actual pump and uncomfortable circumstance, Giovanna Amati became the last woman on earth to ever drive for the F1 world championship, and the first and only woman to do so 14 years after being kidnapped. She attempted to qualify for Brabham 3 times: Brazil, Mexico, South Africa. All failed. Brabham kicked her out, obviously, and in came male savior Damon Hill, who then, phew, failed to qualify five times.

In my dreams, la principessa veloce de Roma still rides her Honda at night. Her eyes are red behind the visor, and she doesn’t stop at the Vatican. They’ll never catch her again.

Text by supermaks

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

3. South Africa. By Ercole Colombo.