Eliška Junková: Google Doodle celebrates Czech automobile racer and Queen of the Steering Wheel’s 120th birthday

Google Doodle celebrates the 120th birthday of a Czech automobile racer Eliška Junková (otherwise called Elisabeth Junek), a pioneer in the history of motor racing known as the “Queen of the Steering Wheel” and the first woman actually to win a Grand Prix race, on November 16, 2020.

Who was Eliška Junková?

Eliška Junková-Khásová was born as Alžběta Pospíšilová on November 16, 1900 the Austro-Hungarian town Olomouc, Habsburg Moravia, today part of the Czech Republic. She was a Czechoslovak racecar driver. She is viewed as one of the best female drivers in Grand Prix motor racing history, and is the first woman to win a Grand Prix event.

At sixteen years old, Eliška Junková found a new line of work at a bank, where she met youthful broker Vincenc “Čeněk” Junek. He was several years older than her, and the two before long started a romance. Upon her union with Vincenc she changed her first name to Eliška (“Beth”) and her family name Junková (the female of Junek in Czech).

Eliška Junková looked into racing cars early on in secondary school, close by her then-boyfriend and inevitable spouse Vincenc “Čeněk” Junek.” With her passion lighted, she took driving exercises in Prague and got one of the first women in the recently Czech Czechoslovakia to get a driver’s permit.

At the point when her husband commenced his career as a car racer, Junková sat adjacent to him as his racing mechanic and co-pilot. In any case, it wasn’t well before she took the wheel herself.

Work took her first to Brno, at that point Prague, at that point abroad to France and Gibraltar, in spite of the fact that bureaucracy prevented her travelling that North Africa, London or Ceylon, as had been her unique expectation.

Eliška Junková got back to Paris to be brought together with her partner, who at this point had gotten affluent enough to enjoy his automotive interests.

Be that as it may, Eliška Junková too early succumbed to the charms of sports cars of the time, particularly Bugattis. They got back to Prague in 1922, where she took surreptitious driving exercises to get her permit. In the interim, Čeněk had begun racing in earnest. He won the Zbraslav-Jíloviště hillclimb in 1922, the year they at long last wedded.

Eliška Junková rose to distinction racing her brand name Bugatti over Europe’s most troublesome courses. She even built up a close personal friendship with the car’s creator, Ettore Bugatti.

Junková was technically adept, she as well as procured a standing as one of the first drivers to do walk-through’s of courses like Italy’s renowned Targa Florio before races to commit tourist spots and goes to memory.

Eliška Junková at that point set first at Zbraslav-Jíloviště in 1925, and the Juneks purchased a second Bugatti to celebrate, together structure a close friendship with Ettore Bugatti.

By 1926, Eliška Junková was certain enough to contend in races all through Europe. She picked up acclaim over the mainland, collecting the nickname Queen of the Steering Wheel, and in the racing press of the day, Eliška got anglicized to Elizabeth.

Eliška Junková resigned from racing in 1928, however her inheritance was deified by Czech writer, Jaroslav Ježek’s, classic jazz composition “Bugatti Step,” as well as by Junková’s personal autobiography, “My Memory is Bugatti.”

Eliška Junková lived a ways into her nineties, long enough for the iron curtain to fall and for the “Queen of the Steering Wheel” to have her place in automotive racing history be perceived. In 1989, at 89 years old she went to a Bugatti reunion in the United States as the visitor of honor.

Eliška Junková passed on January 5, 1994 at the age of 93, in Prague, Czech Republic.

On November 16, 2020, Google celebrates Eliška Junková’s 120th Birthday with Google Doodle.