Nathalie Maillet was a successful club racer from the 2000s onwards, as well as becoming the chief executive of the Spa-Francorchamps circuit.
She only earned her racing license aged 33, in 2004. When she was younger, she concentrated on her growing career as an architect. Despite growing up in a motorsport-oriented family, she never got to compete herself as a teenager and then her studies took over.
Success came fairly quickly. She was the 2006 Belgian VW Fun Cup champion and also won that year's Fun Cup 25 Hour race.
She won a second Fun Cup 25 Hours with the Dubois Racing team in 2008. The same team, comprising Nathalie, Ronnie Dubois and Benoit de Keijser, entered some Belgian Touring Car rounds, with midfield results.
The same team raced an Audi A4 silhouette in the BTCS in 2009 and 2010, and won at least one round. They won the Spa 12 Hours in 2009. In 2011, Nathalie used the same car in the BTCS for three races.
In 2012, she contested the Euro RACECAR series, a European version of NASCAR. She was twelfth overall with one top-ten finish: eighth at Spa.
RACECAR became the NASCAR Whelen Euroseries in 2013. Nathalie was twelfth overall again, with two eleventh places. In 2014, she drove a Toyota Camry in the Euroseries and had a best finish of sixth, achieved at the Nürburgring and Le Mans. She was twelfth in the Elite 2 category.
She did not race in 2015, although she continued to be involved through management. This had begun with the Racing Club Partners team in the Euroseries. She was also the organiser of the American Festival Finals event.
In 2016, she was named as the new director of Spa-Francorchamps.
Nathalie was from France but lived and worked in Belgium. She was murdered at home in August 2021 by her former husband Franz Dubois. She was 51.
(Image copyright Euro NASCAR)
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