Susie Wolff will step into the full glare of the media on Friday when she takes part in F1’s Young Driver Test at Silverstone. At 30 it is true, she isn’t a spring chicken but as she points out, in F1 racing years she still has a lot to learn.
This will be Susie’s second proper session in the Williams F1 FW35 car…she performed a ‘shakedown’ of the new car ahead of the season starting and has done a few laps for the media at Silverstone at the end of last year when she was announced as development driver for the team.
However, the glare of the spotlight has never been brighter.
Over the three day test some 30 odd drivers will step up to the challenge of driving an F1 car. Some, like Gary Paffett of McLaren will have done hours of testing for their team. Others like Susie and Sauber rookie driver Kimiya Sato are getting their first tentative steps in the formulae.
So how should we be judging Susie Wolff? Is it enough that for the first time 1992 we have a female in an F1 car? Is that all Susie is hoping to achieve? I certainly hope not. Giovanni Amati was the last female to step into the top flight racing in the world. While it was an achievement – it was hardly a dazzling success. She failed to qualify for the three races she attempted for the Brabham team.
For me, it’s not even enough to say that Susie shouldn’t be last in the timing sheet. “No-one wants to get beaten by a girl.” Female racing drivers hear that comment all the time. The truth of the matter is if Susie wants to be taken seriously as a female in the sport she has to come out and end the day on top of the time sheets.
However there are two problems with this…firstly, Susie will be asked to perform tasks and jobs for the team. She isn’t there to go out and just be fast. Like all test and development drivers she will be set a time to meet on almost every lap when she is testing aero parts. She will need to be reliable in her timing and give good feedback. Only at the end of the session are the team likely to take some fuel out and let her see what she can do.
Secondly, and possibly more crucial – the Williams has been a dog of a car this year. In an interview with me on the celebration of their 600th race, Sir Frank told me he was ’embarrassed’ by the team’s recent form. The fact that there have been relatively big changes in senior management (and it looks like this will continue too) shows that the team are far from where they want to be. How can Susie really be expected to go out there and perform in a car that is well below pace.
I think more reflective of what Susie can achieve and her abilities will be direct comparisons to her team mates. On day 1 of the test, fellow rookie Daniel Juncadella completed 55 laps and posted a fastest time of 1,34.098 – almost half a second slower than fastest man Kevin Magnussen in the McLaren.
Day 2 and regular driver Pastor Maldonado posted his time of 1,34.116 – that’s over 1.5s slower than Daniel Ricciardo’s time in his Toro Rosso.
To prove her worth I think Susie will need to post similar times to show that she can be better than the boys, if not just as good.
So how important is this test for anyone who sat there incredulously listening to Sir Stirling Moss say he though “Women didn’t have the mental agility to drive an F1 car”? (Since the Women in Motorsport show aired on BBC Radio 5 Live Sir Stirling has since phoned Susie to apologise). It’s pretty important.
It’s been over a year since a woman had her last foray into F1. It ended disastrously with the Spanish driver Maria de Villota almost dying.
The accident happened when she was driving the Marussia car for the first time in a straight-line test at Duxford Airfield in Cambridgeshire.
After completing one run and returning to the mechanics, the car suddenly accelerated into the back of a team truck with her helmet taking much of the impact.
The 32-year-old underwent lengthy surgery at Addenbrooke’s Hospital after the crash for serious head and facial injuries.
Speaking earlier this year she said “I have motorsport in my DNA and there’s no way I can stay away from that world. I want to keep fighting because I believe so strongly in women being part of motor racing.”
Just before the test started this week she sent Susie a message of good luck saying “It’s going to be a great day Susie. Enjoy it!!! I will be thinking on you. #goodenergy”
Every cynic and doubter of females in F1 will be looking at this test hoping that the image of Susie is stronger than her talent. She is a beautiful woman and speaks brilliantly on her passion and ambition within F1 and also her role as a female in the sport. It has to be said her credentials are the one thing that let her down. She competed in DTM (The German Touring Car Championship) for seven years and failed to make an impact.
This is now the time to make an impact.
There are plenty of girls looking to Susie as their inspiration. No matter what her results tomorrow, she will succeed in bringing through a whole stream of talented females in motorsport if she can have a safe, strong day. I know Susie will want more than that though.
She will want to prove her doubters wrong and show everyone that you can have it all. Looks, connections, talent and pace.
I don’t mean to stand on my powder pink coloured soap box and shout for the girls once again, but actually as a women in motorsport (even if Im a broadcaster and not a driver) I feel I have a responsibility to do just that…a bit like Susie. As a women we can’t shy away from the fact that we have boobs and like handbags or shoes, but that doesn’t mean we are weaker than the opposite sex – we just want to be as good as them and give everyone a chance to show that.
No pressure Susie!
Why should her looks have anything to do with her job?
Isn’t it time we moved past this? She should be judged by her results, not on her relative pulchritude.
Of course the proof will be in the times but as acknowledged her record shouldn’t get her within a million miles of an F1 drive. I can’t see that she has actually won a senior race since karting (although I will happily stand corrected if that’s wrong)!
As for girls looking to her for inspiration the idea of marrying your way to the top isn’t too far removed from those who say their ambition is to marry a Premier League footballer. Surely someone like Leena Gade (whilst not a driver) is much better example to young girls of how to ‘make it’ motor sport (or any male-dominated arena) without needing to marry the right man.
Ending on a positive note I hope she can prove to be a foot in the door for genuinely talented female drivers. making it to F1. That I’d still rather her test seat was being filled by a genuine prospect something that applies to some of the male drivers too but I guess it was ever thus in F1.
Agree, and that´s my issue! why is she getting a ride? She has never won a race!
I´m judging drivers on talent, and I have the same standard for both men and women, and thats equality. This is tokenism and you must adknowledge she is only there because of her husband.
A woman in F1 should be a meaningful event. It took 77 years for a british man to win Wimbledon again, but it was full if meaning and sacrifice.
What has Susie done to prove she deserve this? Her only accomplishment is get married to a rich man!
If any this is a slap on the face of lots of young female drivers and for women to tell them they should get married to a man with means in order to get what they dream for.
Yes, if you were looking for a ‘first woman in F1’, on their records, Danica Patrick, Katherine Legge & Alice Powell would all be ahead of Susie Wolff. All three have won high profile races and/or championships, in single seaters.
It’s not that there are better drivers out there than Susie Wolff, there are clearly better women drivers than Susie Wolff. And at 30, you could argue that Susie Wolff isn’t about to get any better, whereas Alice Powell [to pick the example that is a) In this country and b) Not currently driving in a high profile motorsport series] still has future room to grow.
The risk is that you put a journeywoman racer at best in an F1 car, she’s three quarters of a second off the pace her thrusting young cream of the male crop team mates, and the harrumphing classes wink at each other and claim that that proves women can’t compete in F1… and anther generation is lost, as Alice Powell ends up earning a decent living in Indy Car while F1 mithers on about ‘the search for a woman to drive in F1’.
All of which said, if she does a good job tomorrow, nobody will be happier than me…
I think you need to look at her results and its telling. No guy would get near a F1 car with her results. My biggest concern is that she has not raced open wheel cars in a LONG time. She can test all she wants but I’d rather see her do a race in GP2 so we see how she lines up against her peers.
Will Buxton wrote an article on Simona De Silvestro recently and how she could be the next F1 female. She’s done it the right way. She doesn’t to glamorous/sexy photoshoots, she won in the indycar feeder series and was close to winning the Atlantics championship, and outperformed her underfunded car. No-one doubts in Indycar that she belongs. She earned her way there. Alice Powell seems to be doing it the right wsy too. Susie hasn’t proved anything. That said, I hope she does well tomorrow. But I’d rather see her race in a lower formula than test a F1 car.
With all this talk of sexism, people aren’t realising that that it cuts both ways – you shouldn’t stop women getting into f1 because they are female, but equally you shouldn’t put them in f1 precisely because they’re female.
Firstly, I am not sexist. I would love to see a female racing in f1. I don’t see any reason why they can’t be as quick. Men, with testosterone, have more stamina and so that could have an effect in the second half of a 2hr race, but that’s it. It’s dominated by men because when you have 1000x more men than women in motor sport, its statistically inevitable that the fastest drivers will be men.
This is really harsh, but neither Suzie Wolff or Maria De Villota has done anything like enough to deserve a chance to drive a Formula 1 car, even at the tests. If you go through the careers of all the current f1 drivers and the top GP2 and WSR drivers, they’ve won races and competed for championships throughout most of their career. Wolff and De Villota have not come close to doing this. (Wolff has scored 4 points in 7 seasons in DTM) By being there, they have stopped other quality drivers having a chance to try an f1 car.
It seems people are scared to point this out on camera because they’re afraid of being labelled as sexist. But say if Wolff was on the grid for Williams next season, the stopwatch is not going to lie and after a few races, when the novelty of having a woman racing in f1 wears off, people will start to ask questions.
If f1 fans are cheesed off about pay drivers, then surely they should be just as annoyed that a driver has got into f1 just because of their gender. Sex equality means exactly that, women should have to do as much as the men to earn their chance to compete in f1.
Jennie, I’d very much like to know what you think about this … ?
It would be nice to see Alice Powell testing a F1 car I personally think she a great deal of ability she has won in most classes of motor sport exception being GP3. But she did become the lady driver to score a point. Good luck to Susie I’m sure you can prove a point there’s a place for females in formula 1 .
I really prefer the way used by Michéle Mouton ..
she was not a female in sport car, .. just a rally driver and results was her best references in sport …
I think Susie has not the level to be a F1 racer, she don’t have results to justify that, .. or there is hundreds of drivers who would need the chance to be to ..
hope Susie will have the opportunity to makes good time tomorrow, but I am afraid she have this opportunity only cause she is the wife of Toto ..
And at least, I think that if tomorrow her time is not in line with the standard of a F1 drivers she will discredit the next woman who will try with talent to run a F1 ..
that’s all for my side, Susie is an honest racer, not fast enough to drive in F1 ..
It seems like you’ve got a bit of a chip on your shoulder. Promoting women drivers is all well and good, but just for the sake of it? I reckon if she was a man then we’d care far less and probably consider her a pay driver, what with her connections to her husband and her lack of results in other series. And yes, her age. I think she really is too old now and older than the majority of the teams. If she’s driving next year, then she’ll have a lot to prove.
Though maybe she should change to merc?
She simply has not done anything to deserve an F1 test, this isn’t about women/men its about people who deserve a chance getting a chance regardless of their sex!
Her results are very poor and she did not earn an F1 test on merit.
As much as I want Susie to do well I’ve never been comfortable with how she got into F1. Her record isn’t good enough to justify her position. If she was a male we would be jumping up and down complaining about connections and cash over talent. However if she encourages more females into the sport at all levels then in my opinion that’s not a bad thing.
Danica Patrick has the racing pedigree to justify the drives she has had, and the results to back that up, irrespective of gender. But as a woman, would she have got those drives if she _hadn’t_ been absolutely prepared to shamelessly drape herself over her various sponsor’s products in her undercrackers? It’s a moot point. Danica has proved, by winning in Indycar, that she was a racing driver entirely worth the seat she was sitting in on merit alone, but some people said it was all devalued because of the whole ‘draped over the bonnet of a pickup truck like an underwear model thing’. Apparently, it would show far more integrity for Danica Patrick to never have had a drive in Indy Car, and never proved that she could race and win at that level, having never offered to get her kit off for her sponsors.
Yes, Alice Powell seems to be a potential female racing driving star of the future, complete with a prestigious British Championship in single seaters on her CV, but she appears to have no budget to go into any decent formula this year and no F1 team has offered her a driving development role as far as I know; Danica Patrick is clearly far more talented a racing driver than Susie Wolff, but perhaps the common bond that links them inextricably is that in neither case was it their talent as drivers that got them to the pinnacle of their chosen sport, assuming Wolff does make it there (In Patrick’s case because it was ignored or discounted, in Wolff’s case because… err…), in both cases willingness to drape themselves over a car in their pants seems to have been ultimately persuasive. And that’s revelatory of a more sexist situation than anybody might like to admit!