Francesca (right) instructing at Yas Marina
Francesca Pardini is most famous for her successes in sports prototype racing in Italy in the early 2000s.
She was the Italian Prototype title-winner in 2001 and has been described as the first woman to win an Italian sportscar championship outright. Her car was a Lucchini-Alfa Romeo, one of the oldest in the field. She won four races that year, starting with the season opener at Vallelunga. Her others were at Misano, Magione and Binetto.
This came after a runner-up spot in the same championship in 2000, following race wins at Mugello and Misano. She repeated this in 2003, having won one race and scored five podium finishes.
At the same time as her winning Protoytpe campaign, she raced in the Italian Ferrari Challenge, doing four events. Her best finish was ninth in a sprint race at Mugello. She also did some rounds of the Clio Cup in Italy.
Her sportscar career developed in tandem with single-seaters. In 2000, when she was 19, she did four rounds of the Light category of Open Telefonica Nissan, at Monza and Ricardo Tormo in Spain. She was driving for the Doors Engineering team. Her best finish was eleventh at Monza.
At the time, her ambitions were high. There was talk of her moving to America at the end of 2003 for either sportscars or the Indy development ladder, but this did not happen.
She came to England to race in Formula Palmer Audi in 2004. This was step down from Formula Nissan, but she had been out of a single-seater for a few seasons. She was a regular fixture in the top ten from the start, coming in seventh and sixth at Brands Hatch in the first round. These were her best finishes in the eight races she did before pulling out, although she was never out of the top ten when she finished. Her season seems to have been ended by an accident at the Nurburgring.
At some point in 2004, she returned to Italy for some Prototype races. Her low final position suggests she only took part in a few races. She did at least the Vallelunga round and appears to have finished seventh.
Her activities since 2004 are less clear. During 2005, she took part in at least one VW Fun Cup event as part of a Uniroyal-sponsored ladies’ team, driving with Fun Cup regular Sabine Dubois and touring car racer Valentina Albanese. This appears to have been a limited programme.
In 2015, she moved to Abu Dhabi to take on an instructing job. Remaining in the Gulf region, she became the only female race instructor to work in Saudi Arabia and the only one to take on female pupils. She also works as the Formula 2 paddock manager for the Gulf-based races and is a qualified steward.
She is the daughter of Guido Pardini, who also raced in Prototypes in the early 1990s. At first, she was not encouraged by her parents and her mother tried to interest her in ballet. She describes having begun racing at 16, in 1997, going straight into cars without any karting experience.
(Image copyright Donna Moderna magazine)
