Welcome to a new article series on my blog! In the Racing Revisited, I will bring you articles about Susie´s stages in the motorsport, from karting to the moment when for the first time in 22 years Susie became the first woman in F1 at British Grand Prix 2014 where female racing driver participated in the racing weekend. New article will be published every Saturday! Stay tuned!
Karting is an inseparable part at the start of the career for many racing drivers. Susie started karting around 1989 - 1990. In the 1996, Susie was named The British Woman Kart Racing Driver of the year. The following year she joined many different karting series where she was very successful. Susie finished first in the 24hr Middle East Kart Championship and became champion in The Scottish Junior Intercontinental "A" and The Scottish Open Junior Interncontinental "A" categories. She got named British Kart Racing Driver of the year for the second time. To be honest, I never delved deep into karting and its series. Very interesting that like in other bigger series, karting has endurance type of series too.
In 1998, Susie entered the season with moving to the British Junior Intercontinental "A" Championship, where she finished in the 10th place overall. Later that year, Susie also competed in the Federation Cup European Intercontinental "A" Championship and placed 11th overall. Susie got named The British Kart Racing Driver of the year for the 3rd time in a row.
Interesting fact: Do you know what connects Susie Wolff and David Coulthard, two big Scottish F1 stars from the past? They both competed at Golspie´s North Of Scotland Kart Club.
In 1999, Susie started racing in The British Formula "A" Championship where she finished overall 13th and 34th in The Formula "A" World Championship, which also helped her to win the British Woman Kart Racing Driver of the Year for the fourth time.
In the following year, Susie improved her overall results in the series and finished on 10th place in the local Formula "A" and 15th in the World. As the result of the strong season, Susie won The Top Female Kart Driver in the world award. Around this time, she was also racing against Lewis Hamilton, who is known in the present as one of the best racing drivers.
That year marked the end of Susie´s karting career, before she joined her first single seater series in Super Formula, about which I will write in the second part next Saturday!
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