A year after almost losing her life behind the wheel of a race car, former Formula One test driver Maria de Villota was found dead in a hotel room in Seville yesterday.

Spanish police said she died apparently of natural causes.

She was 33.

De Villota's manager alerted staff at the Hotel Sevilla Congresos. An autopsy will be carried out.

De Villota was seriously injured last year in a crash during testing for the Marussia F1 team in England, losing her right eye and sustaining other serious head injuries that kept her hospitalized for a month.

De Villota, a Madrid native, was the daughter of Emilio de Villota, who competed in F1 from 1976-82.

Her family used de Villota's Facebook page to say "Dear friends: Maria has left us. She had to go to heaven like all angels. I give thanks to God for the year and a half that he left her with us."

F1 officials and drivers at the Japanese Grand Prix were stunned by her death.

"My deepest condolences go to the de Villota family," said FIA President Jean Todt. "Maria was a fantastic driver, a leading light for women in motorsport and a tireless campaigner for road safety. Above all she was a friend I deeply admired."

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh said as the chairman of the Formula One Teams' Association the "whole paddock is very shocked by the news that Maria is no longer with us.

"She was an inspiration not just to women in this sport, but also to all those who suffered life-threatening injuries."

Sauber's Monisha Kaltenhorn, the first female team principal in F1, said, "If anybody represented strength and optimism, it was Maria. Her sudden death is a big loss to the motorsport world."

Fellow Spaniard Fernando Alonso said: "It's very sad news for the world of motorsport as Maria was loved by everyone. Now, all we can do is pray for her and for her family."

De Villota also had driven in the world touring car championship in 2006 and 2007 plus the Superleague open-wheel series.

She was in Seville to participate in the conference "What Really Matters," whose mission is to inspire and teach young people "universal human values," in the words of the organizers, who canceled the conference on receiving news of her death.

De Villota's almost fatal accident in July 2012 occurred while she was driving an F1 car for only the fourth time — and first for Marussia — and hit a support truck during a straight-line exercise near an airfield in England. An internal team investigation concluded the car was not at fault.

She first drove an F1 car in 2011, a Renault at the Paul Ricard circuit in Marseille, France.

Her death comes when de Villota seemed to be moving past her accident.

She told Hola magazine in February she felt "free" and "back to being me" after returning to driving on normal roads.

In July, she married boyfriend Rodrigo Garcia. She was active in charity work and a member of the FIA's women's commission.

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