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Donna Buckley
250px
Nationality American
Born 6 January 1930
Buffalo, New York, United States
Died 13 April 2020
Buffalo, New York, United States
Cause of Death Complications due to COVID-19
World Stock Car Championship
29 races run over 2 season(s).
Rookie Season 1950
Team(s) Homer Brennan
Championships 0
Pole Positions 1
Wins 0
Podiums 2
Top 5s 4
Top 10s 10
Best Finish 2nd
First Start 1950 Icebreaker Sweepstakes
Last Start 1951 Turkey Bowl
Best Result 10th (1950)
WSCC Canon Driver


Donatella Ginevra "Donna" Campari was an American stock car driver who competed in the National Stock Car Series during the 1950's and 1960's under the name Donna Buckley. She was the first woman to run the full schedule in motorsports, which she did four times. Buckley is notable as the first woman to score a podium finish in professional motorsports, which she accomplished at Seekonk Speedway.

Campari died during the COVID-19 pandemic due to complications brought on by COVID-19.

Early Life[edit | edit source]

Campari was in Buffalo, New York to Italian immigrants Gennaro and Isabella Campari; she is the oldest of four children and the only daughter. The family relocated to Danville, Ohio in 1934 after her father found work with the Cooper Company in Mount Vernon. Her mother drowned during a family vacation after being caught in a rip current when Donna was seventeen; Campari recalls her father falling into a deep depression, and she would often drive him to work "so he wouldn't wallow in the house all day."

Campari noted that she would often sneak out to race at the nearby Columbus Motor Speedway, racing under multiple assumed names such as John Buckley, Victor Hughes, and Paul Levain. When asked during a 2010 interview with Logan MacDonald why she used aliases, she stated that:

MacDonald: One of the most legendary parts of your background as a driver is that you raced under assumed names for a few years before you joined the NSCS; can you give us some background on why you decided to do that?

Campari: Back in those days, women weren't allowed in the pits, so if a girl wanted to go out there and beat the boys, she had to pretend to be one of them. I knew a number of girls who would go farther than I did; some of them would tape their breasts down, but I just cut my hair short and stuffed my suit to make it look like I was portly. It worked well enough, and since there weren't really post-race interviews in those days, most of the crowd never knew.

M: And of course, the other part of the story is that you never maintained the same alias for more than a few weeks; I also understand you refused to race as Don Campari.

C: I could have just raced as 'Don Campari', sure, but Italians weren't welcome at many tracks in the area, so my rotating choice of names were generic names I saw on ad boards. Back then, as long as you had a car that could keep pace, most tracks didn't bother to check your background, since most of the racers drove their personal cars to the racetrack.

Campari's father found out about her racing endeavors in 1948; much to her surprise, he enthusiastically supported her. She would recall in the same interview with MacDonald that it "was the happiest I'd seen him in well over a year." To her further surprise, he helped her secure faster cars and entered races as her car owner under the pseudonym Homer Brennan.

WSCC Career[edit | edit source]

1950[edit | edit source]

After racing for several years at Columbus, and with her father's support, she joined the National Stock Car Series in its inaugural season. They purchased a pair of Lincoln Cosmopolitans and made arrangements to run the full season. The elder Campari did not travel to every event - his younger children were still in school - but made the necessary arrangements for his daughter to travel safely, enlisting her cousin Tomasso to travel with her.

She initially planned to race under a male pseudonym, but decided instead to simply use the assumed name Donna Buckley.

During the first race of the season, the Icebreaker, Buckley kept the car out of trouble and managed to bring it home in sixth place; another female driver, Jackie Browning, lead six laps midway through the race, which Buckley described as "inspiring, since she was cheered by the crowd." One month later, Buckley became the first woman to finish on the podium in a professional motorsports race after she finished second to Will Gordon.

1951[edit | edit source]

1951 began slowly, as Buckley continued to use the 1950 Lincolns they had run in the previous season; however, the new Hudson Hornet and the continued speed of the Studebaker and Oldsmobile cars meant that she was often struggling to break into the top ten. A mid-season switch to a Nash Ambassador improved her fortunes, and Buckley was able to record another podium at Syracuse. She became the first woman to win an heat race, a feat she accomplished twice during the season.

Ownership[edit | edit source]

Personal Life[edit | edit source]

Donatella married Santino "Sonny" Martaci in 1958. The couple had two children: Anthony (born 1961) and Gianna (born 1964). She ran largely limited appearances during this time, and stepped out of the car for good in 1966 to raise her children. The Martaci family relocated to Buffalo, New York in 1970, where they still live as of 2020.

Gennaro Campari died in 1976 after a prolonged battle with lung cancer at 68.

Sonny Martaci died of a stroke in 1997 at age 71.