Susie Wolff celebrates getting an F1 test drive, using every means at her disposal
DTM racer Susie Wolff has joined the MillionsWILLIAMS
The FW18 with Damon Hill at the wheel, Canada 1996. Anyone fancy a smoke? A phenomenally successful F1 team which won nine constructors' titles in 20 years (it took Ferrari 50 years to do the same) but which usually dispenses with the services of the drivers who win the title for them: Alan Jones, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Damon Hill all took championships and then left the team at the end of the year, for one reason or another. The team hit a purple patch in the 1990s, when a combination of Adrian Newey's ground-breaking designs, some jolly clever electronics and a handful of half-decent drivers resulted in repeated title wins. The 1992 and 1993 Williams are probably the most technologically advanced Formula One cars to date and you could almost say that they drove themselves, without wishing to devalue the titles that Mansell and Prost won with them, of course. This period also produced the iconic blue and white Rothmans livery, which looked great but which was probably responsible for shifting truckloads of their cigarettes. The team did attempt to make amends later, however, by running cars plastered with stickers for Niquitin and thereby promoting something to help you give up what they'd been urging you to become addicted to a few years previously. For the 2004 season, the Williams challenger sported a highly unusual "walrus nose", which did nothing for the car's performance but which did at least mean that Ralf Schumacher was no longer the ugliest thing in the paddock. The innovative nose proved uncompetitive and was replaced by something more conventional in the second half of the year. Ralf also proved uncompetitive and was replaced by someone more talented at the end of the year. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper team as a development driver, the British outfit announced yesterday.
Wolff, who is to contest her seventh season in the DTM this year, will spend time in the Millions simulator, before taking to the track in a test later in the year.
For anyone who thinks they recognise Susie from the photo - and we include ourselves here - she is the driver formerly known as Susie Dizzytart, who has spent several years on the dotdotdotcomma Road To F1™ radar, during which time she has distinguished herself by competing in some of our favourite single-seater series, wearing slightly too-tight overalls and falling over while she's out shopping.
Susie changed her name when she married Toto Wolff, who only happens to be a Millions shareholder and a director there too, which means either that it's a small world or that some pay drivers can offer to pay in kind, rather than in cash.
"Susie is a talented, successful and highly professional racing driver who competes in one of the world's most fiercely-contested racing series," said team boss Frank MillionsWILLIAMS, FRANK
Sir Frank's latest wheelchair design was banned by the 2012 Paralympics organisers Sir Francis Owen Garbatt Williams CBE, a Geordie and former travelling groceries salesman, founded Frank Williams Racing Cars in 1966 and 3 years later was taking podium places in F1. With perennial sidekick and cockney rhyming slang Patrick Head, he created Williams Grand Prix Engineering in 1977, taking their first win 2 years later at Silverstone. Sir Frank is well known for being a wheelchair user following a car accident in 1986 from which his passenger, Peter Windsor, escaped unharmed, the less said about which the better. He is a role model for tetraplegics and other people with disabilities everywhere as a result of his determination to continue his career unabated, and indeed go from strength to strength, right up until he made the mistake of sacking Damon Hill at the end of his championship winning season with the team, after which things went into a bit of a decline, generally accepted to have reached its nadir with Jacques Bloody Villeneuve and then Ralf Schumacher on board. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper, reading from a press release handed to him by one of his shareholders.
The news has also been welcomed by Formula One supremo Bernie EcclescakeECCLESTONE, BERNIE
Bernie and Slavica Ecclestone: it's hard to say who looks more uncomfortable. F1 supremo Bernard Charles Ecclestone owns various bits of Formula One and has done since the 1970s, all of which has made him a very rich man. He also co-owns QPR Football Club, which does at least demonstrate that not all his decisions are spot-on. In his time, Ecclestone has managed drivers, owned teams, sold TV rights he probably didn't have in the first place and married someone 28 years younger and 28cm taller than him. He has also developed a slightly bewildering antipathy towards Silverstone. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper.
"If Susie is as quick in a car as she looks good out of a car", said Ecclescake, "then she will be a massive asset to any team and on top of that she is very intelligent. I am really looking forward to having her in Formula One."
Jesus. Does no one check what he's going to say before he comes out and says it?
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