Scotland's Susie Wolff is poised to make history by becoming the Williams F1 team's test and reserve driver for the 2013 grand prix season.
The 29-year-old from Oban, who has been involved in motor sport since she used to beat the boys as a teenager growing up in the west of Scotland, took the wheel of an F1 vehicle for the first time last Wednesday at Silverstone, and Herald Sport understands she impressed her employers enough to gain elevation to what is effectively the third seat at Williams, behind their principal drivers, Pastor Maldonado and Bruno Senna.
Wolff, who was born Susie Stoddart in December 1982, departed the DTM Series last weekend, but has never made any secret of her conviction that she could progress where no British woman has ever gone before by joining the F1 ranks. Her recent test was carried out under extra pressure, because it followed the terrible injury sustained by Spain's Maria de Villota, who lost her right eye during a testing session at Duxbury Airfield in July. However, Wolff, who has recently been working as a development driver for Williams, demonstrated she can thrive in the spotlight and also carry out the sport's PR duties with aplomb.
"After the publicity, which surrounded Maria's accident, there's no doubt I felt an extra need to go out there, do a good job, and show her accident was a freak, one-off and it shouldn't generalise women in motor sport," said Wolff.
"It was very important for me to do it for both of us [her and De Villota] and show everybody that women can drive F1 cars successfully. And I think I did."
Female drivers have recorded positive results in several branches of motoring in recent seasons, with America's Danica Patrick winning an IndyCar race in 2008, before finishing third at the Indy 500 the following year. But F1 has proved a very tough nut to crack and no women have participated in a grand prix since Italy's Lella Lombardi in 1976. Wolff, though, now has the opportunity to prove her mettle as she prepares for an intensive winter's fitness training.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article