“I’m not out there to prove a point about women. I’m just out there for Susie Wolff”

“You can’t drive an F1 car if you’re not good enough,” says Susie Wolff. “If you don’t have enough talent, if you’re not capable enough, you just won’t survive.”

The 32-year-old Scot is the official test driver for Williams, one of the most storied teams on the Formula 1 grid, and one going through something of a renaissance after years of struggle. Wolff asks us: “Have you been in the Williams museum?” We have. It’s where the cars of Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell and other legends of the sport are kept on display.

“It makes you shiver looking at the history of that team,” says Wolff, whose name could yet join those greats in the museum. “We spent too long in the doldrums and it just lifts a whole team when you’re quick again and getting podiums.”

Williams finished third in the constructors’ championship last season. The team made more history by inviting Wolff to drive their car in a practice session at the British Grand Prix, although this was frustratingly cut short by “the engine blowing up”. This year, her role has been expanded to include two sessions in free practice at Grands Prix, and two test days. That includes one this week, in which she has been helping the team prepare and set up the car for the 2015 season.

“The second test is where we do a lot of hard work getting the data we need,” Wolff explains. “I have a very full day planned.”

Her time in the car (“the best part of my job”) is, however, limited. Wolff says it has been the hardest thing to adjust to in moving up to F1: “The issue is, when you’re only the test driver, you’re not in the car as much. So you have to work twice as hard to get ready on fitness and preparation, so that when you jump in you can perform. In some ways that’s even harder when you’re just not in the car enough.”

“I was only ever offered one chance of driving the F1 car,” Wolff explains as she describes her first experience of the top level of motorsport. She was given 10 laps at Silverstone, and a target time. She made it on the last lap.

“The car is the most advanced racing car in the world,” she says. “It’s a dream to drive. The performance is incredible. How late you can brake? How much downforce do you have? You really have to spend the first few laps just dialling your brain into how quickly everything happens. At that speed, it’s very unforgiving.”

That test led to the young driver test – an official event where teams can put potential candidates through their paces – and then to the ‘development driver’ role she took up for Williams last year.

It’s the latest stage in a journey that started in Oban, on the west coast of Scotland. “My parents have a motorbike dealership so I had my first motorbike when I was two,” says Wolff. “I loved speed. I loved driving the motorbike, and I had an older brother who is only 18 months older – so anything he could do I could do. And we used to follow my dad around while he raced. My brother and I would always be playing on little go-karts when he was racing, and for my eighth birthday my dad bought me a go-kart. And that was really the start of it.”

Now, Wolff is based in Switzerland where she lives with husband Toto. He is the executive director of Mercedes F1 and owns a 10 per cent stake in Williams. Her Scottish accent is liberally scattered with German vowels from years racing in Europe, which lends her voice a slightly menacing tone when she says: “I’m big on revenge.” She follows it up by laughing, because she’s talking about her favourite film – The Count of Monte Cristo – and admits a fondness for TV box sets.

“I really try to convince myself that I’m just a normal woman,” says Wolff. “So, away from the race track, we just do the normal things.”

“It was frightening first of all,” Wolff recalls when we ask whether she took to karting straight away. “The other karts were much quicker, they were hitting me as I was going past and I certainly didn’t set the world alight with my talent. But I persevered, kept going and got better. I never noticed that I was one of only a few girls doing it because, at that age, you just live for the moment; you don’t recognise things like that.

“I loved it with a passion, but it was never more than a hobby until I got taken to watch a Formula Three race at Donington Park, which Jenson Button won. And that’s when it clicked in my head that I wanted to become a racing driver.”

She soon became competitive in karting, and raced against the likes of Lewis Hamilton before moving up to Formula Renault, where she shared a podium with the two-time world champion.

“I couldn’t open my champagne!” she exclaims, remembering how Hamilton had to help her with the cork before she could pour the bubbly over his head in celebration. “The same thing happened to me at the Race of Champions with David Coulthard! We’d made it on to the podium and I couldn’t open my champagne bottle. I need to practise!”

“The hardest part is trying to earn respect when I come into a team”

The lack of practice perhaps stems from a difficult spell in DTM – the German touring car series home to many former and future F1 drivers. Wolff sums up her seven years in DTM, where she struggled to get results, as “incredibly, incredibly tough”.

“I gave it everything I had and didn’t come away with anywhere near the success I expected,” she explains. “It was very demoralising, and it wasn’t until I actually made the decision to leave and actually drove the F1 car that I realised – this is why I’m a racing driver, this is why I love it.

“In DTM, in the end, I lost that massively because as an athlete you need some kind of success to show you’re doing things right and that all the hard work is for something. For me in DTM, it was just too long in the wilderness fighting for results.”

“I was driving a pink car in DTM.” With a hint of exasperation, Wolff recounts her time racing in Germany. “I was like a running target on the racetrack.” The pink car was a sponsor’s idea, but Wolff feels it undermined her attempts to be taken seriously as a driver.

“The hardest part for me initially is trying to earn the respect when I come into a team,” she says when we ask if she has encountered any prejudice as she’s risen through the predominately male world of motorsport.

“You’re always going to get characters in the paddock who are very vocal about being against women in F1. I’m never going to change that, and it doesn’t bother me to be honest. Something I come up against a lot is: ‘Well, it hasn’t been done before, so why are you gonna do it? How are you different?’

“There’s this stereotype that it’s not possible, so you’re fighting against that all the time. Many people think I’m not going to be strong enough; that I don’t have the mental capacity; that I don’t last the race distance; that I didn’t achieve enough in the junior formulas to be given the chance. But the truth is it’s not how you get there, it’s getting there. And, once you’ve got there, you’ve got to take the opportunity with both hands.”

The critics point to Wolff’s record in DTM and her single-seater inexperience (she lacks the FIA Super Licence required to race in F1) and ask whether she has been given the chance at Williams only because she is a woman. But they forget that F1 is not, and has never been, purely a meritocracy. Pastor Maldonado, for example, remains in the sport not just because of his racing talent, but also because he brings millions of dollars of sponsorship money to his team.

“The more I’ve been in this sport, the more I’m a believer that it’s about getting the right package,” says Wolff. “You can’t expect to get into Formula 1 based just on your talent because there are a lot of talented drivers. You’ve got bring the complete package to the team – whether that’s through a sponsor you bring with you, or the support of your country, or your character.”

Does having a unique selling point make it easier to get an F1 seat?

“For sure,” says Wolff. “It’s all about USPs. If you have something no one else has, it puts you in a stronger position. The fact that Williams has a woman running the team [Claire Williams is deputy team principal] and the fact that I’m here is a USP. And it undoubtedly helps us as a team. But it’s not something that was engineered that way. Claire is in her job because she is very good at what she does. If she wasn’t, the team wouldn’t have finished third in the constructors’ championship. And, if I wasn’t good enough, I wouldn’t be in the car. It’s as simple as that. It takes a lot before they even let you out in the car – even before I got my first ever test they tested me again, again, again in the simulator to make sure that I was of a standard they felt was good enough to get in the F1 car.”

Wolff has shown that she is on the pace in her all-too-brief stints in an F1 car. She finished just over two-tenths of a second behind Williams teammate Felipe Massa in her first day of testing the team’s 2015 car.

“There was no real role model for me when I was growing up,” says Wolff, although she did have posters of fellow Scot David Coulthard decorating her childhood bedroom. And a membership card for the DC fan club, which must be a difficult thing to admit to.

“But I’m a great believer that it’s not about having one clear role model, it’s about taking different bits from different people,” she explains. “I was incredibly lucky that I had very strong women in my family, and great support from my parents. They said to me: ‘If you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything.’ The problem now is that there just aren’t enough little girls karting for the best to rise to the top. And there’s not enough girls karting because there aren’t enough role models to show girls who have a passion for motorsport it’s something they can do.”

Wolff thinks that recent changes in F1 make it more likely that we will see a woman on the grid: “Five or six years ago, it would have been hellish tough. But the way the sport is developing, where the driver has to be small, weight is so important, the cockpits are tiny... it is all playing in the right direction.”

But will it be her? “That’s the plan,” says Wolff. “I’m gonna keep going as long as I’m successful. As long as I’m good enough to keep my place, as long as I can bring something to the table, then I will keep giving it everything I’ve got. And, when I see that I’ve hit the end of the road, I will be the first to turn around and say: ‘Okay, my time is up.’”

Even if she doesn’t make it on to the grid, the presence of Wolff in F1 is inspiring young girls to take an interest in motorsport.

“It certainly warms me to see little girls dressed up as racing drivers and going to school as Susie Wolff because they think that’s a viable option for them,” she says. “That’s definitely a positive. But I always say I’ve got so much more to achieve. Don’t let me be a role model yet.”