The pilot Maria de Villota
This Thursday October 11 Five years have passed since the death of the pilot María de Villota, tireless fighter who gave everything to fulfill her dream. With the help of her father, Emilio de Villota , we remember her overwhelming figure and her indelible smile. Her legacy remains as active as she was.
María de Villota had an obvious winning instinct since she began to compete in the circuits in the karting category at the age of 16: first race, first victory. Let's see who was the clever one who took away from an absolutely convinced teenager her fixation for being a pilot. She learned to break all the glass ceilings that her profession / her vocation put in front of her and she achieved her dream of becoming one of the few female participants in Formula 1.
María de Villota at the Monte Carlo circuit in May 2012
Her overwhelming track record in the 12 years after leaving karting speaks for itself and everything indicates that, with a little more time, she would have come to compete and achieve more than brilliant results. Nevertheless, On July 3, 2012, an accident crossed her career and cut short her aspirations as a professional driver.
Interestingly, from then on we began to meet the other champion, she the one who was capable of giving life lessons and overcoming wherever she went her without ever losing that unforgettable and contagious smile. There we begin to understand that María was made of another paste, even more important than that of the winners, who she resided in her incomparable human quality. She devoted herself to improving the lives of children with mitochondrial neuromuscular diseases and she continued to be linked to the world of motor racing and F1, where everyone adored her.
To remember the figure of Mary, we have contacted her father, the pilot Emilio de Villota, that has helped us trace the most personal and traveler profile of a woman who knew how to squeeze life to the last drop, faithful to the philosophy that gave title to his autobiographical book Life is a gift .
Emilio tells Traveler.es that the greatest gift that María has left to the people who were part of her closest environment has been "Her smile of hers and a broader vision of life, of what is truly important and betting on it".
The stars on her helmet were her symbol.
Since she was little, María pursued her dream of being a Formula 1 driver until she achieved it. On that journey there were sweet but also bitter moments and her father is clear about what the main ones were: “The sweetest, the day of her Formula 1 test with the Lotus Renault Team at the Paul Ricard circuit. The most bitter, the day he was told, after coming out of the coma after the accident, the loss of his right eye.
Being the daughter of a pilot, it might seem that María de Villota was predestined to dedicate herself to speed but, as her father reveals, she was not instilled with her paternal passion, rather it seems that she already came as standard: "Until she was fourteen, she was tried to get closer to other sports: tennis, sailing, basketball... Then, after her decision to dedicate herself to motor sport, her family followed in her footsteps."
Throughout her professional career she won many awards, although, as Emilio recalls, “Perhaps the one that caused her the most enthusiasm was her first victory in single-seaters in Formula Junior”.
She always wore a star on her helmet and we wonder why. Her father clears us up: “As a child, on the ceiling of her bedroom there were some stars that symbolized her dreams. After her they always accompanied her in her racing suit and in her helmet”.
Those dreams materialized little by little, like when they named her she ambassador to the FIA Women's Commission in 2010. “That appointment meant recognition”, remembers Emilio de Villota, “and, perhaps, at the same level her appointment to the F1 Drivers Commission alongside Fittipaldi and Mansell”.
After the accident, she turned to children with mitochondrial neuromuscular diseases
Inevitable our curiosity about the traveling facet of María de Villota. Like all pilots she spent a good part of her time here and there. She “she enjoyed the trips, but above all the people from the different places where she went. Her empathy was one of her great virtues”, explains her father.
"When she traveled for pleasure, and not for work, ** Santander was her refuge. In general, the sea and nature wherever they were found. ** Her suitcase was always running shoes ”.
In her reappearance after the accident, María de Villota commented that her first thought after seeing herself in the mirror was: "Who is going to love me now?" Did she become aware that from then on she loved her, even, many more people? Her father is clear that yes: “He affirmed that she had received so many expressions of affection to fill the rest of her life and the one before the accident”.
That affection came to her on many occasions from the children with whom she worked and whom she came to consider her “new team”: children with mitochondrial neuromuscular diseases, whom she met during her work at the Ana Carolina Diez Mahou Foundation. For her, this task was “the way to give the little ones the happiness that she felt and the gift that life is. She received from them more than she gave” remembers her father.
Isabel de Villota during the presentation of 'The Gift of Mary'
Faced with this force, it is inevitable to ask where María got her impulse to not collapse and her father gives us the key: “The sense of humor was the cause of her eternal smile. She never lost him, not even in the worst moments ”.
A smile and a sense of humor that are already part of her memory and that remain more alive than ever throughout the Maria de Villota Legacy , an initiative that does not stop organizing activities, among which Emilio de Villota highlights: “lectures on their values in schools, companies and institutions; fund accounting for the 'Primera Estrella' program, created in 2013 by María to pay for treatments for children affected by degenerative mitochondrial neuromuscular diseases, of the Ana Carolina Diez Mahou Foundation; food collection through popular races, tennis tournaments and musical concerts through the 'Formula 1 Kilo' programme, aimed at soup kitchens and in collaboration with AVANZA ONG and the María de Villota Residence, designed to welcome battered women or women in difficulty , managed by Caritas Parroquial San Ramón Nonato in Vallecas”.
The most recent initiative of the María de Villota Legacy was presented last Monday, October 8, and it is about an illustrated story entitled _The gift of Marí_a, written by her sister Isabel de ella around the life of the pilot and with illustrations by the creative team of Escribario. The book costs 10 euros and for each copy sold a child with neuromuscular and mitochondrial diseases will receive a physiotherapy session, only way to improve her quality of life.
The pilot in a television interview