Women drivers in Formula One tests since 1992

1992 marks the last time that a female driver, Giovanna Amati, drove a contemporary Formula One car in a Grand Prix. Since then, other women racers have been linked with F1 drives, although none has ever materialised.

There have been a few women who have tested F1 machinery, however; in most cases, the tests were well-publicised, but in one case, their status remains unclear. Below are details of these F1 excursions.

Sarah Kavanagh - Irish racer Sarah’s name was linked with more than one active Formula One team in the early and mid-2000s. She may well have undertaken some testing laps for at least one team. Statements made by the teams themselves about her have been ambiguous or lacking, so it is hard to gauge exactly what the nature of the testing was. In 2001, she passed a fitness test organised by McLaren, and confirmed by team director Martin Whitmarsh stating that “there is nothing in the results that suggest that Sarah could not drive a Formula One car right away”. Driving tests at Pembrey followed, but these were done through the Carlin Formula Three team, and did not involve F1 machinery. Again, this was confirmed by a positive statement by team owner Trevor Carlin. The tests did not lead to a racing or development seat.

In 2004, she was linked to a testing and development drive for the Jordan team, following her performances in a Jordan in EuroBOSS. The deal was said to have collapsed at the last minute due to a lack of funding, or due to contractual issues. The Jordan team made no official communications relating to this deal. It is not known whether Sarah ever did test a current Jordan.

At the same time, she was linked to a very similar role at Jaguar, which was confirmed by the team themselves. She was offered a testing and development seat in return for a sufficient sponsorship package to allow her to compete in British F3 with Carlin, as preparation. The package was said to be in the £1 million range. Sarah and her management were unable or unwilling to raise the money, and the testing went no further.

Sarah Fisher - IRL regular Sarah definitely tested a then-current McLaren-Mercedes F1 car in 2002. The test, which was more of a demonstration, was carried out in the very public arena of a support slot for the US Grand Prix at the Indianapolis road circuit.

The test did not lead to any further test laps, and was done more for publicity purposes than as genuine driver assessment. At the time, Sarah was one of the IRL’s most popular drivers, and Formula One wanted to capitalise on her fame, in order to promote itself in the United States.

Katherine Legge - prior to her Champ Car season, Katherine tested for the Minardi F1 team in 2005. The test itself appeared to be a genuine driver assessment, carried out at an official test day at Vallelunga. During the first day, Katherine spun her car after only three laps, damaging the front right suspension. The car was repaired for the second day, and she completed 27 laps, with a fastest time of 1:21:17, only sixteen hundredths of a second slower than official Uruguayan driver, Juan Caceres. She was faster than official Minardi tester, Chanoch Nissany.

Although Minardi boss Paul Stoddart pronounced himself impressed with Katherine, her test did not lead to a race seat. Minardi had already been sold to Red Bull at that point, and the new Toro Rosso squad was selected by them.

Maria de Villota - tested for the Lotus Renault team in August 2011. The tests took place at Paul Ricard as part of official sessions. Maria covered 300km in the 2009-spec R29, which would be enough for her to be awarded a Superlicence, should a race seat be offered to her. Eric Boullier, the Lotus team principal, described her as “not putting a foot wrong all day”. No lap times have been published.

Further to the test, Maria also did some demonstration laps at a World Series by Renault meeting, this time in a 2010-spec car. Negotiations to drive with Lotus were said to be ongoing, but no contract was signed. Maria was instead signed by Marussia, in order to undertake testing duties in 2012. She was seriously injured in an accident at her first test session, at Duxford airfield, and died in 2013.

Susie Wolff - signed as a development driver by Williams in 2012. She mainly concentrated on development work in the simulator, and the wind tunnel, but took to the track for the Friday practice sessions of the British and German Grands Prix in 2014. Her British session ended abruptly after only one lap, when the engine on the Williams failed. The German session threatened to go the same way after an electronic fault stopped her from changing gear, but the problem was rectified. Susie did several practice laps and some practice pitstops, and undertook some aerodynamic testing. She was 15th (out of 22) on the day's time sheets, and her best lap was 2/10 second slower than team-mate, Felipe Massa.

This was the first time since 1992 that a female driver has directly participated in a race weekend. She did some more Friday testing in 2015, but decided to retire mid-season, due to a lack of actual racing opportunities.

Simona de Silvestro - signed as an "affiliate driver" with Sauber, for the 2014 season. This was intended as a year of development and preparation for a possible race seat in 2015. As FIA rules strictly limit testing, her work was done in a 2012 Sauber car. In April, she completed at least 190 laps in a Formula One car, at Fiorano, and now qualifies for a Superlicence. She also tested at Valencia during the summer. No times have been published, although a short video was released of her Valencia test. Sauber managers were very positive about her performances in the media, and engineer Paul Russell stated that she had "drove well, had a good pace and was consistent." Simona herself keeps a relatively low media profile. Unfortunately, Simona's sponsor pulled out, leaving her unable to take up any further Sauber drives.

Carmen Jordá - signed as a development driver by Lotus, in February 2015. Her role in the team was rather vague and her duties appear to have been confined to the simulator. She was quietly dropped from Renault F1's test driver roster in 2016, and was referred to instead as a Renault Sport test driver.

Tatiana Calderon - announced as a development driver for Sauber in March 2017. She initially worked in the simulator, but drove the Alfa Romeo Sauber car on two occasions in 2018, one a demonstration run in a current car and one a test in and older machine..

Rosemary Smith - the veteran rally driver did some practice laps in a recent Renault Formula One car in summer 2017. She was 79 years old at the time. The test was purely a media exercise and was made into an advertising video celebrating 40 years of the Renault marque.

Aseel al-Hamad - drove one lap of the Paul Ricard circuit in a non-current Renault F1 car at the 2018 French Grand Prix. Aseel is from Saudi Arabia and her drive was in recognition of Saudi women being given the right to drive in their homeland. No times were published as this was a promotional exercise. In 2022, she did another demo run in an Alpine (Lotus) E20 from 2012, a similar car to the one she used before. The drive was a PR event ahead of hte Saudi Grand Prix and she was joined by recently-recruited Alpine affiliate driver Abbi Pulling. It was a street run and not timed.

Jamie Chadwick - announced as a Williams F1 development driver in May 2019. She has not yet driven the car in public and has mostly worked on the simulator.

Jessica Hawkins - tested a 2021 Aston Martin F1 car in Hungary in September 2023. No times were published, although the team spoke encouragingly of her performance. Jessica is a "driver ambassador" for the team and is not part of its official line-up.

(Image from http://photos.indystar.com/galleries/11311-starfiles-sarah-fisher-s-racing-career)

Sarah Kavanagh

After her first trip to watch the Le Mans 24 Hour race, Sarah Kavanagh's only ambition was to be a professional racing driver. The 18-year-old art student, who was then living in Brighton, bought herself a racing kart and announced herself on the scene with a second position in her first ever race. After a year of kart competition, which yielded some excellent results, she decamped to her native Ireland in 1992 and entered the Irish Formula Ford championship. Her best finish was sixth. She learnt the art of handling a full-size car quickly and moved up to Formula Opel the following season, where she competed on and off for the next three years. Her only full season was 1994, when she picked up some top-ten finishes. Formula Opel was Ireland's top racing formula at the time, and Sarah was the only woman to have raced in the series, which brought her to the wider attention of the Irish press.

Although it was the roar of sports prototype engines on the Mulsanne Straight that first enticed her to the tracks, Sarah's ambition was now clear. She wanted to drive in Formula One, and in 1995 she moved back to England to climb another rung of the junior formula ladder. In Formula Vauxhall she was up against some future stars, including Formula One star Juan Pablo Montoya, and sports and touring ace Peter Dumbreck. The Irishwoman managed to hold her own in a tough field, and it is said that Montoya congratulated her on her prowess. She raced in the 'B' class with Wayne Douglas's team, which had won the B title the year before.

Ever-ambitious, Sarah acquired a much more powerful Reynard-Cosworth 95D for the 1996 season. With this car she entered the British Formula Two Championship. Her lack of funding meant that she only started two races: a gearbox failure put her out at Silverstone, but she was sixth at Donington. The starting grid was not brilliant though, and seeking better competition, Sarah started looking abroad for driving opportunities. The Reynard was eligible for the Japanese Formula Nippon series, and she completed another two races in Japan in 1997. She was fourteenth at Suzuka and did not finish at Mine. Competition for established team seats was fierce, and Sarah's sponsorship problems let her down again.

Staying with the Reynard for another season, she tried her hand at the new EuroBoss series in 1998. This European-based championship was for older, but not historic, F1 and F2/F3000-spec cars, and Sarah entered some rounds in the F3000 class, supported by E-Merge Racing. Her race results have been very difficult to track down, but it is known that she achieved class lap records at the Brands Hatch Indy circuit and at her home track of Mondello Park.

She was showing more signs of her early promise at last, and now had the support of E-Merge, so it was on to better things in 1999. The team bought a Jordan-Cosworth 193 from 1995 and Sarah got her first taste of F1 power for some of the 1999 EuroBoss rounds. After a few trial runs, she was ready to attack the championship in 2000, scoring at least one top-ten position at Donington, and earning some very quick lap times at the same track.

2001 was Sarah's best year yet. There was enough funding to tackle the whole EuroBoss schedule and she was familiar with the Jordan by now. A the end of the season she was ninth in the championship, with two ninth places, a seventh and a superb third overall at Mondello Park. The 28-year-old was now a motorsport news story and her exploits attracted attention from various sources, not least the McLaren F1 team. The British outfit invited Sarah for a performance assessment, and she was judged to be fit enough to tackle F1 competition, to her delight. She now had another string to her bow and this strengthened her claim on a seat in F1 proper.

Unfortunately, nothing came of the McLaren exercise. Although she was linked to drives in F3000 and later, GP2, these did not materialise either, and Sarah did not race competitively for several years. Behind the scenes, she and her manager were trying to put together sponsorship packages and find racing opportunities, but these never came to fruition. In 2004, after more testing and physical assessments, she was said to be close to signing a four-year testing and development deal with the Jaguar Grand Prix team, which could have led to a race seat. However, contractual issues intervened at the last minute, and she spent 2004 on the sidelines again, working as an instructor and motoring journalist.

Sarah's manager has come up with a number of theories as to why her racing career has failed to take off as it might have done. Lack of finances, an issue in itself, has meant that she has rarely completed a whole championship. Despite several years of racing she is still relatively inexperienced, although she has shown flashes of brilliance and clearly has aptitude for driving powerful vehicles. Her perceived reluctance to prove herself in the lower formulae has also worked against her. There are accusations of press negativity in Ireland too which may not have helped her cause.

For 2006, Sarah intended to return to EuroBoss with the Jordan, for as much of the championship as possible. This did not happen. It is a shame that her single-mindedness to succeed as an F1 driver may also be her downfall; if she had opted to prove herself in the more cost-effective fields of GTs or touring cars, she may have had much more of a career by now.

In a 2014 interview, Sarah described herself as "retired". She lives in France.

(Image from www.motorsport.com)