Marguerite Mareuse

Marguerite Mareuse raced at Le Mans in 1930 and 1931 with Odette Siko, in a Bugatti. Alongside Odette, she was one of the first women to enter the famous 24-hour race.

They were seventh on their first attempt in 1930, but disqualified in 1931 for refuelling too early after Odette misunderstood a pit signal. If their result had been allowed to stand, they would have been ninth. The Bugatti was a T40 and belonged to Marguerite.

Marguerite entered the 1933 race with Jean-Pierre Wimille, but did not start. Marguerite had been sponsoring him for the previous year in his racing endeavours.

At the time of her first Le Mans 24 Hours she was already 41 years old, older than her team-mate Odette Siko.

As well as Le Mans, Marguerite entered a few Grands Prix, including the Tunisian and Oranie events of 1932 in North Africa. The Tunisian race was held at Carthage in April and she was fourteenth overall, sixth in the Voiturette class.

A few weeks later, she crashed out of the Oranie race in Algeria; her Bugatti T51 suffered a collapsed front wheel, which triggered a tyre blowout and ended with the car flipping over. Its driver received facial injuries that needed hospital treatment. She was understandably missing from the Casablanca Grand Prix in May.

Her car made it to the Dieppe Grand Prix but it was mostly driven by Pierre Leygonie, as Marguerite had not really recovered. She raced wearing a protective leather mask, in red to match the rest of her outfit.

She was not averse to the publicity-focused, female-only events that proliferated around Paris at the time. Driving her Bugatti, she was fifth in the 1931 Grand Prix Feminin at Montlhery, two places behind Odette Siko. She was an early member of the Club Automobile Feminin and took part in its Paris-Cannes Rally in 1930. A little later, she was fourth in the Paris-Brussels Rally, another ladies-only event, driving a Peugeot.

She and Odette sometimes drove together, as they did for the 1930 Circuit des Routes Pavees, then run as a six-hour race. They competed over 560km in their Bugatti, but the race was stopped a few minutes from the end due to a serious accident in which spectators were killed. Marguerite returned to the event in 1931, driving solo. She won the Coupe des Dames from two other women and took the prize in the 1600cc racing car class.

She was also an accomplished rally driver and won the Coupe des Dames in Monte Carlo in 1933, driving a Peugeot and starting from Tallinn. Her co-driver was Louise Lamberjack and they were thirteenth overall. The Peugeot was her favoured car for rallying, and she entered the Monte again in 1934, starting at Umea and with Simone Gonnot as navigator. Her earliest victory was probably her Coupe des Dames in the 1932 Paris-Juan les Pins Rally, in which she was sixth overall.

It was not such plain sailing on the 1935 Monte, in which she suffered another terrifying accident. The Peugeot burst into flames after hitting a lorry that Marguerite’s co-driver Mlle Cormet tried to swerve. They were on the first leg of their journey between Umea and Stockholm in Sweden and the car was completely destroyed. Neither crew member was seriously injured.

Occasionally, for faster events such as the 1934 Criterium Paris-Nice, she still used the Bugatti. Later, she tried other cars, including a Hotchkiss in which she finished the 1936 Monte Carlo Rally, with Fernande Hustinx. She used the same or a similar car for that year’s La Turbie hillclimb, competing against the likes of Rene le Begue.

Her car for the 1937 International Morocco Rally is not recorded, but she shared it with Anne-Cecile Rose-Itier. They did not finish.

It is occasionally mentioned that Marguerite’s daughter or daughters was also involved with motorsport, and that one of them may have been married to rally driver and film-maker Christian de Cortanze, according to posters on the forum-auto message board.

She died in 1964, aged 75.

(Image from http://www.les24heures.fr)