In 2021, the Indianapolis 500 had a female team including the owner, Beth Paretta and driver, Simona de Silvestro as well as the majority of the crew. But Beth Paretta was not the first woman to own a team which participated in the Indianapolis 500. That honor probably belongs to Lucy O’Reilly Schell.
Lucy O’Reilly was born in Pennsylvania to a wealthy Irish American, Francis Patrick O’Reilly. Before the outbreak of World War I, Lucy met Lawrence “Laury” Schell, the son of an American diplomat. They married in 1917 and settled in Paris.
She was an accomplished driver. In her first effort, she finished twelfth in the 1927 Grand Prix de la Baule. The next year, she finished eighth at la Baule and sixth at the Grand Prix de la Marne and won the Coupe de Bourgogne voiturette race. By the 1930s, she was one of the top female drivers in Europe.
In the 1930s, she and Laury participated in long distance rally racing. They would pick from which location to start and travel to Monte Carlo non-stop. Points were awarded based upon the times and distances traveled. In the 1932 Monte Carlo Rally, the Schells started from Sweden and traveled 2300 miles to Monte Carlo.
As an only child, she inherited her father’s fortune upon his death in 1937. At age 40, Lucy knew that her driving days were over and wanted France to have a racing team competitive with the Germans which dominated European racing. With funds from her father’s estate, the Schells started the Écurie Bleu team. She hired French manufacturer Delahaye to build the car and René Dreyfus as the driver. While Dreyfus was an accomplished pilot, he had difficulty landing a position with one of the top racing teams because he was Jewish.
Their first goal was to win the Million Franc prize offered by the French Government which would award francs to the first French manufacturer to go 200 kilometers with a minimum speed of 91 mph from a standing start at the Monthhéry road circuit. Despite a last-minute challenge from a Bugatti, Dreyfus won the prize. Schell and Dreyfus then set their sights on the 1938 Grand Prix season. The first race of the season was at Pau, France. The Mercedes team with Rudi Caracciola at the wheel was heavily favored as he had a 200-horsepower advantage. During the practice sessions, Dreyfus noticed the rear wheels of the Mercedes would lose traction going through the corners. He also knew that Caracciola would need to make a pitstop while he could drive the race on one tank of fuel. Dreyfus followed his game plan and stayed close behind the Mercedes. When Caracciola stopped for fuel, he took the lead and went on to win the race.
In 1938, Lucy became interested in entering and winning the Indianapolis 500. The plan to bring two Delahaye racers to Indianapolis was interrupted when on a rainy day, Laury was involved in a car crash while driving north from their villa in Monte Carlo. While his injuries did not appear to be serious, he quickly became paralyzed on his left side. The doctors performed brain surgery, but this was not successful in curing his paralysis.
Lucy did not give up her dream to enter the Indianapolis 500. Shortly after Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, she met with the Maserati brothers in Modena, Italy hoping to purchase chassis number 3031 and 3032. These were the “sister” cars to the Maserati with which Wilbur Shaw won the 1939 Indianapolis 500 (chassis number 3030). The cars had been raced before. In the 1939 German Grand Prix, Paul Pietch had finished third while the other car, driven by Luigi Villerosi, spun off the racecourse. While normally the Maserati brothers would not sell their racing machines, they were in terrible financial shape and had just sold the majority of their equipment and moved from Bologna.
After purchasing the two Maseratis, Lucy had the Maserati painted blue (France’s racing color). René Dreyfus finished in eighth place in chassis number 3030 in the 1939 Swiss Grand Prix. She wanted René Dreyfus and his friend René LeBègue to pilot the cars in the Indianapolis 500. Dreyfus, who had joined the French Army, declined. Lucy assured Dreyfus that she had enough political pull that the Army would give him time off for the race. Unbelievably, she pulled this off.
On a rainy day in October 1939, the Schells were travelling from Paris as passengers in their powerful Delage sedan. The chauffeur lost control, the car slammed into a tree head-on and Laury Schell was killed instantly near Pont-sur-Yonne. Lucy sustained serious injuries. She was unable to go to Indianapolis for the race but nineteen-year-old Harry Schell, drivers Dreyfus and LeBègue, and chief mechanic Luigi Chinetti made the trip to Indianapolis.
The two cars were shipped to the United States by steamer and arrived in the Port of Newark, New Jersey. From there, they were put on a B & O railcar and shipped to Indianapolis where they arrived on May 24. The two drivers had less than a week to get the cars ready for the race. IMS president Eddie Rickenbacker and Wilbur Shaw met the team at the Indianapolis airport.
The big challenge for Dreyfus and LeBègue was the track. They initially believed that circling the famous oval would not be much of a challenge. What they didn’t understand and would soon learn was that each corner was one-quarter mile long and the straightaways were three-quarter mile long. This meant that the driver had to negotiate the turns at a speed of 110 to 115 mph to be competitive. The cornering speed was faster than most straightaways on European road courses. Add to that neither driver had driven an oval and were used to traveling in a counter-clockwise motion.
Shaw tried to help the two drivers to master the Speedway but language was an issue as neither of the drivers spoke English. Despite not speaking English, Dreyfus made it very clear that he did not like driving at the Speedway.
During practice, Dreyfus was at the wheel of the car to be raced by LeBègue when its crankshaft broke. With no replacement available, the car was withdrawn. Dreyfus’ unhappiness with the Speedway increased when it came time to qualify. In European Grand Prix racing, the starting position was determined through a drawing rather than having to qualify the car. The car qualified thirty-first. Given the fatigue factor attached to driving five hundred miles, the team decided that LeBègue would drive the first 250 miles and Dreyfus would pilot the remainder.
As the race started, Rex Mays surged to the front. Steadily working his way through traffic, LeBègue was able to pass a dozen cars. At 250 miles when Dreyfus took the wheel, the team was in a position to possibly make a late charge for the lead. It was not to be. At the 375-mile mark, rain started to fall. In accordance with AAA rules when the yellow caution flag came out, speeds were reduced and there could be no passing. The drivers hoped that the rain would cease and that racing could resume. At the time the caution flag came out, Wilbur Shaw was leading and he went on to win the race as the rain increased and the race cars drove lap by lap around the track. The Schell team completed 192 laps and finished in 10th place earning $1,400.
The day before the Indianapolis 500, 200,000 English and 140,000 French were waiting for evacuation from Dunkirk. Within a month, the Nazi sympathizing Vichy government was seized by the Nazis. Unable to return home to France, the Schell team stayed at the Savoy Hotel in NYC. Dreyfus purchased a small restaurant in rural New Jersey and would join the U. S. Army. After the war, he and his brother, Maurice, started the LeChanteclair Restaurant in NYC frequented by motor sports and auto industry celebrities. Chief mechanic Chinetti took a job as a mechanic with an imported car dealership in Queens. After the war, he became the east coast distributor for cars made by Enzo Ferrari. Harry Schell joined the U. S. Army and after the war, returned to France and began a racing career of his own. Lucy Schell died in 1943.