SPEED QUEEN
WATCH OUT LEWIS AND CO. YOU’RE BEING TAILED BY SUSIE THE ...
FEWER than 50 people a year get to experience the thrill of being behind the wheel of a modern F1 car. A motoring experience unlike any other, it is the most exclusive car club on the planet.
Scotland’s Susie Wolff is a member of that club. In 2012, Susie became the development driver for Britain’s Williams F1 team, which made world champions of Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill.
It’s a job that involves testing the car in the team’s advanced, super-realistic virtual simulators and driving the real thing in test sessions a couple of times each season.
Last year, she became a member of a second, far more exclusive club; the one reserved for women who have taken part in a Formula 1 race weekend. When Susie drove in free practice in front of her home crowd at the British Grand Prix, she became that club’s first new member in 22 years – just one step away from joining Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button on the grid.
Since the 1950s, just five women have driven an F1 car competitively. Of those, three didn’t get past qualifying.
Wolff, 32, impressed the Williams team bosses enough to be promoted to test driver this season. So can the rest of us begin to comprehend how it feels to do her job?
‘I don’t think anyone can until they’ve experienced it for themselves,’ she says. ‘Sometimes I take people for laps in a fast Mercedes road car and some say, “I guess it’s pretty close to an F1 car, right?” But it’s so far away you can’t draw comparisons.’
And mere mortals wouldn’t have the skill to drive an F1 car hard enough to get it working properly anyway.
‘The harsh reality is that someone who just jumps in the car without being at the right level won’t go flat-out and won’t get the temperature in the tyres and the brakes. In Formula 1, the faster you go, the more grip you have because of the downforce.
‘It’s the reverse of a road car and I think that sometimes floors people. If you don’t drive it flatout, it just won’t work.
‘But you never drive at 95 per cent in a Formula 1 car anyway. You’re always at 100 per cent because the competition is too high to only be driving at 95 per cent. Unless you want to be last.’
There is perhaps a little extra pressure not to be last when you’re the only woman on track. But times are changing.
F1 mastermind Bernie Ecclestone is acutely aware that already a significant proportion of the sport’s 425million viewers are women and that more women competing might draw in more female viewers and more advertisers: useful when F1 viewing figures have tailed off slightly in
recent years. Unlike most other sports, motorsport doesn’t have parallel competitions for men and women. Bernie recently floated the idea of a women-only championship but although F1 is physically gruelling, Susie says there’s no reason why women can’t compete directly with men, pointing out that with an average weight of only 60kg, most male F1 drivers aren’t exactly built like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
‘It’s incredibly difficult, particularly on the neck. The guys will tell you how physical it is, so I have to work extra hard to make sure I’m strong enough in the right places,’ she says. ‘Actually turning the wheel is not the difficult part. It’s the G-force generated by the cornering speed and the braking. That’s what creates the strain going down your neck, which then goes down your back. It’s huge.’
Like most F1 drivers, Susie started karting at eight and worked her way up through the ranks, completing seven seasons in the elite GermanDTMtouringcarchampionship before making the move to Williams.Thereweremoments when the sport’s huge male bias affected her: the occasional lack of ladies’ loos, for instance, and the sponsor who insisted on painting her brutal, V8-powered DTM car pink.
‘The gender issue is irrelevant because everything is based on performance,’ she says. ‘I don’t think the problem lies with Formula 1. The opportunities are there – you’ve just got to be good enough.
‘A lot of parents still think motorsport is too dangerous for little girls. But when I watch showjumping... don’t tell me that karting is more dangerous than that.’
Wolff grew up in Oban on the west coast of Scotland. Petrol is in her blood – one grandfather was an engineer with Rolls-Royce and another was a well-known motorcross racer. Her father also raced and owned a motorcycle shop. Her parents met when her mother bought a motorbike from him.
‘She raced quad bikes and she never gave me the feeling that mot- orsport wasn’t an option for me. It wasn’t until much later in my career when I was already racing in European championships that I realised there weren’t many other girls.’
The other major influence on Susie’s career has been her husband, Toto Wolff. The 43-year-old Austrian is an investor and former racing driver who became head of Mercedes-Benz motorsport in 2013. He led the F1 team to its first, crushing World Championship the following year.
‘Not only does Toto support my aspirations on the race track, but having been a driver, he knows what I’m up against. He knows the challenges of being a racing driver and of getting it right. That’s where I do have a huge advantage and I’m very grateful for that.’
Susie and Toto live by Lake Constance in Switzerland. When Susie’s not in an F1 car, she drives something very different.
‘For daily use I have a MercedesBenz SUV,’ she says. ‘For me, it’s just the perfect daily car. I can get my bike in the back.
‘I can get all my luggage in when I’m heading to the airport. But when I’m in a city I don’t need anything more than a Smart car.
‘I passed my test in our family car, a Volkswagen Sharan people- carrier, which is not very glamorous. Then I had a Golf diesel which was my pride and joy, my first proper car.’
So will we see her in an F1 car on the grid one Sunday, racing against Toto’s drivers?
‘I’m ambitious but I’m also realistic,’ she says. ‘But this sport can change very quickly and opportunities can come when you least expect them.
‘It’s going to take a while before we see a woman on the grid. But I get messages from women who are inspired by my story.
‘Maybe one of them will break through.’