Life in the fast lane
A new Swiss V8 superstar is proving women can be just as fearless as the men on the track.
It’s an early-autumn day at Albert Park when we first witness the local love for Simona De Silvestro. Melbourne is abuzz with pride. The streets are filled with race-style jackets with “Mercedes-Benz AMG Petronas”, “Ferrari” or “Red Bull Racing”. Above, an air show does a good job of upstaging the engineering below and the balconies of high-rises surrounding the park are probably getting more use than they have all summer. The occasion? The Australian Grand Prix: the first race of the Formula One season and an event that draws around 270,000 revheads to Melbourne every year.
Between the hype of the F1 and the flash of the exotics (Lamborghinis, Porsches, Mercedes-Benz AMGs), arguably the most Australian class of motorsport, the Supercars Championship, cracks around the track with a hellish, unmistakable roar. These are our Supercars; national car racing treasures. Between heats, fans rush to see the V8 beasts lined up in the pits, driver helmets stacked in pigeonholes emblazoned with names of their gods. The most talked about newcomer? Nissan Motorsport’s international superstar and the freshly polished diamond in the Harvey Norman team crown: Swiss-born Simona De Silvestro. An ex-IndyCar and Formula E (similar style to IndyCars and Formula 1, but with electronic-only engines) driver who has had a “one-to-watch” stamp on her back since she was a child, and a “why not?” attitude since birth. The latter somewhat explains what a northern hemisphere single-seat driver is doing here.
“I’ve been learning how to speak Australian,” De Silvestro says, waving off one of her teammates, who yells “flog it” her way. “So I’ll have to try and remember some of the words in my interview,” she jokes. To say that Australia, Supercars (well, cars with a roof, for a start) and the cult of motorsport here is new to her, is to put it lightly. At the time of the Grand Prix, the 28-year-old tells me she has only ever raced these vehicles twice before. “The car is so different than I’m used to, there are just so many things going on,” she says. “It’s crazy, but fun. All my career, I’ve developed a driving style for cars like Formula E and IndyCars and now I have to forget all that and rethink how I’m driving.”
The only child of a car dealership owner and F1 super fan, De Silvestro began go-karting at age six. “My dad used to say that, as a baby, I was only quiet when the racing was on TV,” she smiles. “So I think I caught the bug quite early.” De Silvestro remembers
being four years old and attending a go-kart demonstration with her father, crying because she couldn’t reach the pedals. “I cried the whole day until he put me on his knees and drove around. I wanted to drive and he always said: ‘When you grow a little.’” She laughs. “Every two weeks I’d annoy him with: ‘Ah, I grew a bit!’” Soon, De Silvestro and her family were travelling to France and Italy to race every weekend, mainly due to the fact that racing is banned in Switzerland, karting being the closest you can get. “It was a commitment. We never went on vacation,“she shrugs. “But we had some fun experiences.” One can imagine how proud Papa De Silvestro is now.
Since starting her serious racing career in 2005 with Formula Renault 2.0 Italia, De Silvestro has earned a reputation as a fearless driver. In 2010 she was named Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year; in 2013 she became one of only three women in IndyCar racing history to claim a podium finish; and in 2014 she was named an affiliated driver with Formula 1 team Sauber, a deal which sadly dissolved due to financial reasons and the closest she ever came to the golden goose of F1. And then there’s her impressive Formula E career – cars that sound like elegant sewing machines and a far cry from the ear-bursting Supercars. “Her biggest strength is her experience,” says Nissan Motorsport engineer Blake Smith. “And the fact she really does have no fear. She’s willing to commit to whatever is needed and she’ll go in there with as much bravery as I’ve ever seen in anyone.” Quite literally. In 2010 and 2011 she was faced with a racing driver’s biggest fear: crashes involving fire. The latter incident saw her get back on the track, burnt hand bandaged up and all, to hit 44 laps of the race. The kind of battler competitive spirit we cherish here in our land girt by sea, no?
Most of the discrimination De Silvestro has been up against has been outside of the sport – most significantly when US Customs, concerned over her frequent travels, didn’t believe she was a professional racer and sent her home. She insists that inside the world of motorsport, when the helmets are on and you’re pumping a hairpin turn at 200 kilometres per hour, gender is the last thing you think of. But the question does remain: where are the women in Formula One? We have teenagers – Max Verstappen hit the circuit when he was 17, and Esteban Ocon was 19. Yet to date, only two women have qualified and raced in the category: Italians Maria Teresa de Filippis (1958–1959) and Lella Lombardi (1974–1976). The arguments are rich – the main one echoed by Formula One chief executive Bernie Ecclestone, that women couldn’t handle the physicality needed to drive these cars and that they would not be taken seriously – facts disproven by female test drivers like Susie Wolff and De Silvestro, among others.
Unfortunately, it’s a numbers game, in two senses of the word. Formula One is an expensive sport. It’s plagued with “pay to play” drivers and teams and, well, money talks. It’s also the most elite form of motorsport, and there just aren’t as many women racing or karting as there are men. “Every driver dreams about F1, of course,” says De Silvestro. ”You have to be a good driver first, but you also have to have the sponsorship and be in the right car, right team, at the right time – that’s what happened with me. I had worked towards this goal my whole life and all of a sudden I wasn’t going to make it because of sponsorship. I was quite sad because you are a little dependent on people investing in your career.”
Lucky for us, this is what led De Silvestro to our finest V8s, with the support of Harvey Norman CEO Katie Page behind her. “I came to Australia because there are people who really wanted me here,” confesses De Silvestro. “Having somebody behind you like Katie is incredible. I’m here for three years and she knows it’s not going to be easy and she gets it. It’s a really special feeling.” Of course, then there are the cars … Supercars are notoriously a racer’s race and the purity of skill involved is often underestimated. “Oh yeah! You feel the car through your body, the rear through your back, the front through your hands – it becomes an extension of you,” she muses. “And with Supercars, it is proper racing, too. You’re at the limit every lap, trying to make moves, pushing and shoving – things I’ve never been used to before. But it’s fun and you get to … uh … flog it!”