Delia Borges

 

Delia Borges is believed to be Argentina’s first female racing driver. 

Delia was from Buenos Aires and did not start racing until she was 50, although she may have competed as a speedway rider prior to that.

She took part in the Argentine touring car championship in 1951, entering seven races. This included the Argentine Touring Car Grand Prix, a multi-day road race with 199 starters. She was not classified at the end, possibly due to some irregularities with her car, a Ford-engined Chevrolet. 

Her best recorded finish was 21st, driving a Chevrolet in the Mil Milhas Argentina, held on the Buenos Aires street circuit. Her co-driver was Manuel Arrouge, who had raced since the late 1920s. He was a policeman and this may have connected him to Delia, who was believed to have worked for the Peronist secret police in Argentina.

Later, in 1954, she registered as an entry for the Carrera Panamericana, but did not race. Newspaper reports in the USA suggest that she put her name down for the event but did not even have a car. She eventually chose one and was due to start in the “small stock” class, but her Argentine racing license had expired. The El Paso Times on November 19th that year describes her selling her house to afford the entry fees and travelling to Mexico City to bargain with officials. She then apparently “went into hysterics and lost consciousness” before being moved to hospital to recover. The same article claims that she gave up a job with the Argentine Secret Service. 

Other sources have her sending her mechanic to the USA to buy a car with the proceeds of her house sale, although she did not know which car he had bought.

Sometimes, she is claimed to be a driver who raced under the pseudonym “Julia Lagos” later in the 1950s and up to 1961, but this apparently stems from an error; Julia Lagos may well have been another woman called Julia Sivori de Montenegro. 

She died in 1961.

Jacqueline Evans de Lopez

 

Jacqueline Evans de Lopez was a British-born Mexican driver who competed in five runnings of the Carrera Panamericana between 1950 and 1954. 

She is most famous for her drives in a Porsche 356 in 1953 and 1954, although she was disqualified for going over time limits on both attempts. In 1953 she was excluded for the offence at Oaxaca, despite appealing the decision with the race directors. The Porsche was her own car and was painted with a tribute portrait of Argentine first lady Eva Peron, who had died in 1952.

Her best result was 37th in 1952, driving a Chrysler Saratoga. 

She used Chrysler models, a Saratoga and a Windsor, for her other two entries, finishing once in 1950, in 45th place. The car was a 1947 model and she started from 17th place to reported huge cheers. Her time was just under 36 hours and she drove the whole distance solo.

She crashed out the following year and retired due to injury, albeit not serious. Her car hit a rock close to Tehuantepec. According to contemporary press reports, her co-driver Sergio Diaz was seriously injured.

Details of other races she may have entered are sketchy. A report in the Manchester Evening News on the 17th of February 1954 describes briefly an accident where her car, a Jaguar, hit a railing in Mexico City.

At one point she claimed to be Mexico’s champion woman driver and that a cup had been named after her, although this has proved hard to verify.

She was born Grace Alice Evans Antrobus in 1915. She may have started acting while she was still in the UK and is sometimes described as having won a singing contest, or having entertained troops during the war. In 1946, she emigrated to the USA and quickly discovered Mexico on a holiday the year after. She often joked that she went for a vacation and stayed 40 years. Newspaper reports, however, suggest that she did return to live in London in the late 1950s, studying method acting at the Stanislavsky Studio in Chelsea in 1960. In 1958, she was reported to be staying in Chelsea with another Mexican actress, who had to rescue her when she was overcome by a gas leak.

Her name was often given as Evans on cast lists, although she included her married name, Lopez, on her early race entries. Her husband Fernando is normally described as being a Mexican bullfighter. They divorced some time in 1951 and some reports suggest she remarried, only to be widowed in 1956.

Away from the tracks, she was an actress in Spanish-language TV and films from 1947. This may have been her link to Eva Peron, who was also a radio and TV actress before her marriage to Juan Peron. She later played Eva Peron’s mother in a 1981 TV film starring Faye Dunaway.

She continued to act until 1986, when she made a rare appearance in a British film, Murder in Three Acts, which was set in Mexico. 

Among her other achievements were reportedly publishing her own newspaper in 1951, which is sometimes described as being a “golf magazine”. She spoke in interviews of writing songs and a play.

She died in Mexico in 1989, aged 74.

Female Drivers in the Carrera Panamericana

Jacqueline Evans in her "Eva Peron" Porsche, 1953

The Carrera Panamericana was a road race, organised by Enrique Martin Moreno, of Mexico. Its inaugural running followed the opening of the Mexican section of the Pan-American Highway. The route initially ran from Ciudad Juárez, via Texas, to Chiapas, on the Guatemalan border, and consisted of nine stages. Later editions ran in the opposite direction. The first race, in 1950, was a single-class affair for sports and saloon cars, but from 1952, a class system was implemented.

The first Carrera attracted a mix of seasoned US, Mexican and South American racing professionals, European circuit racers, rally drivers and amateur thrill-seekers. At least seven women drivers entered, some of whom fell into the latter category. Marie Brookreson was an ageing adventuress who entered in her own Lincoln, which was mostly driven by Ross Barton, a pilot in his seventies whom she had met when he crash-landed on her estate.  Mrs Lammons’ Buick was sponsored by Hi-A Brassieres.

The race gradually became more and more professionalised, and female participation dropped sharply after the first event. Jacqueline Evans, a British-Mexican actress and racer, was the only female driver to compete in all five Carreras. In 1953, she drove a Porsche 356 running in memory of Eva Peron.

From its beginning, the Carrera was an extremely dangerous race, and its cancellation was largely down to this factor. Women did not escape entirely unscathed; in 1951, Teresita Panini’s car was involved in a serious accident. Her father, Carlos Panini, a Mexican pioneer aviator who was driving at the time, was killed. Teresita was not seriously injured.

The Carrera was revived as a classic road rally in 1988.

Below is a list of all the female drivers who raced in the Carrera Panamericana. As ever, in a mixed team, the woman’s name in always given first, for clarity. Names in italics are assumed to be female drivers, although this has not been verified.

1950

Jacqueline Evans (Chrysler Windsor) – 45^th

Lucille Acevedo/Andrea Gonzáles (Buick) – 47^th

Marie Boone/Arthur Daniel Boone (Buick) – disqualified

Merryl Bedford/Mrs H.R. Lammons (Buick) – DNF

“Mrs. Warren”/E.P. Warren (Buick) – DNF

Marie Brookreson/Ross Barton (Lincoln Cosmopolitan) –  DNF

Margie Allen/Buster Anthony Hemesbedy (Mercury) – DNF

1951

Teresita Panini/Carlos Panini (Alfa Romeo 6C) – DNF

Jacqueline Evans (Chrysler Saratoga) – DNF

1952

Jacqueline Evans (Chrysler Saratoga) – 37^th

1953

Jacqueline Evans (Porsche 356) – DNF

1954

Asención Morales/Olegario Perez Pligo (Ford) – DNF

Jacqueline Evans de Lopez (Porsche 356) – DNF

(Image from http://lacarrera2007.blogspot.co.uk/)