Thirteen Years, Two Seats — Sardinia's Nicoletta Deidda Heads for November's Coppa Italia Final

When she was at secondary school, the rally world set up camp right next door. The service park of the Rally Costa Smeralda was built in the car park beside her school, and the young Nicoletta Deidda would head straight over from school to look at the cars. As a child, she says, she loved cars more than dolls. Her story starts with that scene.

She is a rally competitor from the Italian island of Sardinia, and she races in both seats of a rally car — as a co-driver and as a driver. Her motto is “Mai Mollare”: never give up. And in November 2026, she writes, she will compete in the national final of the Coppa Italia in Tuscany.

Nicoletta Deidda in the cockpit — photo: courtesy of Nicoletta Deidda

Before she ever raced, she built a place for people to gather. In 2011 she founded DS3 Sardegna, a club for owners of the Citroën DS3, and organised meets around the island. In 2012 she organised a meet inside the WRC's Rally Italia Sardegna, inviting every DS3 owner to take part. By her account, the gathering was noticed around the world — it even ended up in the video game WRC 4.

The turning point came from that club. One of its sponsors asked her to race with him. In 2013 she started rallying as a co-driver. “That's where my dream began,” she writes in her FlatOut Support profile.

In 2017 she made her debut as a driver at the Rally del Vermentino, a very demanding gravel event. She went on to start two more rallies as a driver, one of them the Rally Costa Smeralda — the same rally she used to walk over to see from school, now with her own hands on the wheel. Through all of it, she kept moving between the two seats.