The F1 driver kidnapped and ransomed for $5million

Giovanna Amati with her race engineer at the 1992 Monaco Grand Prix — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 History

The F1 driver kidnapped and ransomed for $5million

Giovanna Amati's kidnapping was a big news story before she even raced in F1

Chris Deeley

Saturday 25 April 2026 21:17

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Being the last female driver to compete in F1 is a pretty cool thing to have on your CV.

For most people, that would be the vast majority of their Wikipedia page, presumably accompanied by one or two blue-hyperlinked parents' names like half the rest of the grid.

For Giovanna Amati though...not so much. Infamously, in 1978, long before she ever stepped foot in an F1 car, she was kidnapped by a trio of gangsters and held for ransom.

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Amati was held in a wooden cage for more than ten weeks by the group, led by Jean Daniel Nieto, with a ransom demand of 800 million lira (around $5m today, adjusted for conversion and inflation) being sent to her father Giovanni Amati, who owned a chain of theatres.

Star Wars receipts helped free Amati from kidnappers

Newspaper reports from the time claim that the family's assets were frozen when the kidnapping occurred to prevent Amati's father from simply paying the hostage-takers (in order to discourage other kidnappers in future), so the family dug around for the cash – selling jewellery, and using the cash coming into the theatre chain from people buying tickets for the first Star Wars film to eventually make the payment.

There were some newspaper reports at the time about Amati's kidnappers and her 'relationship' with Nieto, who was caught and sentenced to 18 years in prison (before escaping in 1989 and spending more than 20 years on the run before being recaptured in 2010).

"All the stories that you have read in the newspaper were wrong, completely wrong," she said in later years. "When I went out I just wanted to come back to my family and to get all the group arrested. These are stories that the media put out."

Amati's brief but historic F1 career

After her ordeal was over, Amati continued working toward her dream of becoming a racing driver – working her way up to Formula 3000 (effectively F2) by 1987. She failed to qualify 17 times in 31 entries, but nevertheless got a nob from Brabham for their second F1 seat in 1991 after Akihiko Nakaya failed to obtain a superlicense.

When she got the call, she was concerned that she wouldn't be able to pull together the funding necessary to run, especially on relatively short notice.

However, in possibly the most '1990s Italy' result possible...her deceased father had been friends with the man who was at that time the country's Prime Minister, the allegedly mafia-linked Giulio Andreotti, who greased the wheels for her to enter the first three races of the '91 season.

"My father was no longer alive but at that time one of his friends had become prime minister of Italy [Giulio Andreotti]," Amati told the BBC.

"He gave me an appointment at 5:45am. I couldn't sleep all night, thinking about what I was going to say. I was desperate. It was the only chance I had and he helped me. At the last minute, I could meet the budget."

She failed to qualify for those three races, running three or four seconds off the pace of team-mate Eric van de Poele – who himself only qualified for one race all year before his mid-season departure. After the third of those failures, Amati was sacked and replaced by future world champion Damon Hill.