Making history!

For the first time in 22 years, Formula One will be seeing a woman take the wheel during an official practice session. Williams' test driver, Susie Wolff will replace Valtteri Bottas during FP1 and will be running the same programme as her teammate Felipe Massa.



Susie Wolff (Stoddart earlier), just like all the others started out karting. She won the 24hr Middle East Karting championship and the Scottish Juniot Intercontinental "A" title in 1997. In the following years she was awarded 'Woman kart racing driver of the year' four consecutive times and then named top female kart driver in the world in 2000.

In 2001, she moved onto single seater championships. Her breakthrough came in 2003 when she finished the Formula Renault UK championship in 9th position with her first podium in the series. In recognition of her efforts, she was nominated for the prestigious BRDC McLaren Autosport's 'Young driver of the year award' and was selected as BRDC's 'Rising star of the year'. The following year, she competed in Formula Renault UK for the third time, finishing 5th with 3 podiums in the season.

She made her way up to British F3 in 2005, but failed to run after 2 races because of an ankle injury she sustained earlier. From open wheel cars, she made a move to DTM in 2006 and stayed until 2012 while playing a significant part in Williams' development as her other job.

In 2012, Wolff was made Williams' development driver (Her husband Toto Wolff already a shareholder) and in 2014 she was promoted to a test driver.

Watch her in action at the first free practice session of the British GP at Silverstone.

~ All the best Susie! An inspiration for all female racers out there! ~

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WHY DON’T WOMEN RACE IN F1?

Image
There are 7 billion people in this world, and there just 22 grand prix drivers. Out of the 22, there isn’t one female racing driver. This does make you think, why aren't there any women Formula One racers? Sexism in motorsport is not new, in fact, it’s it is as old as the sport itself. In a male dominated field of sport such as racing, women, as a group haven’t made their mark yet. And in F1, there has been just one female racing driver to have scored a single point - Lella Lombardi, an Italian racer who raced for March-Ford in 1974 – 75, scored half a point after finishing a good 7 th position at the Spanish Grand Prix of 1975.  Though the breakthrough for a woman was first given to Maria Teresa de Filippis way back in 1958, she failed to impress as much as Lomardi did. But yet, Maria, the former Maserati driver will be remembered as a pioneer for women in motorsport because of her courage and strength to venture into a sport like Formula One in the age when women were tra
Read more

2013 Pirelli Spanish Grand Prix – Lessons we learnt during the weekend

Image
Back to where it all began.. Catalunya. The difference, though, is now we’re going to see racing here. It’s said that the Spanish Grand Prix is where the ‘real season’ starts, because that’s where all the major changes happen, like the upgrades brought in by the teams. But this year, it was an awful lot different. Coming to Catalunya was like the second start to the season. Pirelli, who have been under constant pressure and criticism from RedBull Racing and few other teams, finally decided to make amendments to the hard compound tires, hoping to make it similar to last year’s hard compound. And since Formula One is no more than tyre management now, it looked like a positive step from Pirelli to promote more racing. And the fans loved it! Practice 1 was disrupted by heavy rains and to no surprise, many of the drivers didn’t run. And those who did, unable to hold in the impatience, ran on wet or intermediate tires. The rain did not give any break to the Hard compound
Read more

Countdown to 2014: end season shuffle shenaniganz

Image
There are a lot of reasons we can rewind and reminisce 2013 season. The last season on the V8 engines didn't go as per planned for most of us because there was one man driving with perfection every race - Sebastian Vettel- he was unbeaten, untouchable and dominant. So dominant to such an extent that Red Bull racing didn't need a Mark Webber to win the Constructors at all!  In other words, this German alone could have been a team and finish 2nd in the constructors and won the driver's all alone. But just behind him, half a lap behind were drivers like Alonso, who himself admitted that   "It's always good to know that you are recognised by your peers," Alonso responded, "but I think 2012 was the best in my career.  This season, there were times when I did not do well enough, such as when I could have had a little more performance, or when I made a mistake like in Malaysia." Lewis Hamilton, who made a shift from McLaren to Mercedes, had a phenomena
Read more