I am a 37-year-old woman trying to become a racing driver – this is what I have experienced

My husband took me aside recently. Pulling me into a corner of our kitchen, away from the ever-pricked ears of our son, he warned me gently that my latest vagary – a burning desire to become a racing driver – was making my family nervous. I paused, then responded: “Oh, thank God.”

Whether skiing the Rockies, moving to Bahrain or bungeeing off South Africa’s Bloukrans Bridge, I have always known that I feel most alive when doing the sort of thing that might worry other people. Call it capricious, maybe even selfish, for a 37-year-old mum to hurl herself into car racing – a dangerous and expensive pursuit – but after years of wading through the deep waters of buttoned-up parental responsibility, it seemed like a return to form.

I am an adrenaline fiend. I am also a contrarian. Among the pastimes I love to excel in, are the things that might raise eyebrows. I am 5ft 3in, long-haired, fashion-obsessed and as at home sipping martinis at the Connaught as I am diving off bridges. Being underestimated is my rocket fuel. And motorsport being one of the last bastions of male dominance, makes it intensely appealing. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to be part of a movement that proves you can know both what to pair with a Prada slingback and how to throw around a Nissan Skyline GT-R.

Racing is among the few sports in which women can compete against men, and yet we make up less than 10 per cent of motorsport participants globally. This has little to do with talent and more to do with the lack of early exposure for girls. I have always loved anything on four wheels. One of my favourite amusements as a child was to fire up my uncle’s tractor mower, seeing how quickly and tightly I could wind it round his apple trees. But like so many other parents, it never occurred to mine to take me go-karting – the motorsport proving ground.

Ribald and unethical behaviour permeates the darker recesses of the paddock

There are efforts to redress this balance, but a long way to go before women feel welcome in these spaces. The only time I have been to an indoor karting track, I faced a racing grid of 10 mostly grown men, all of them staring at me like I had stepped off a spaceship. Even for me, it was intimidating. Imagine what it would feel like to a young girl.

Although competing is a recent ambition, I am a long-time racing fan. I have done track days, been at grands prix and written plenty on the subject. I have intimate knowledge of the industry, and confidential relationships with some of the women making strides towards the top. Thanks to their candour, I am all too aware of the barriers: financial, cultural and systemic. Some of the sexism is overt – only a fraction of the sport’s sponsorship goes to female athletes, regardless of how quick they are – but subtler forms of exclusion persist. Furtive, ribald and sometimes unethical behaviour still permeates the darker recesses of the paddock, making the Christian Horner scandal look like Teletubbies.

Women are warned about a couple of senior personalities in particular; who to never work for, who to steer clear of at parties and who to never be left alone with.

Knowing this, I sought out a couple of shepherds to bolster my path. Help initially came in the form of Deborah Tee. She is CEO of the Jeremy Clarkson-founded Motoring Press Agency, her children are all in racing and she knows everyone in the sport. A rare gem, committed to making things better for women.

I confided in her my ambitions and within minutes Tee had secured me private track time with race-tuned DMAX karts at a Daytona outdoor circuit in Esher, Surrey, a couple of world-class teachers in Extreme E team-mates Molly Taylor and Kevin Hansen and support from E.ON’s Women in Sport initiative. With Taylor and Hansen I spent hours careening through different racing lines. They taught me to actually use the braking zone, instead of drifting round every corner, and how to delay my turning-in point until the perfect moment. I came away sweaty and aching, but exhilarated and with a sense I might actually have the instincts for real racing.

Karting nailed, I reckoned all I had to do was finesse my car handling. I was wrong. Having done plenty of high-octane driving, I had considered myself quite savvy. But that was all with semi-automatic paddle shifters. The Association of Racing Driver School test – the gateway to a racing licence – and indeed much of racing itself, has to be done with a fully manual transmission. And although I drive a manual daily, I had done it only once on track.

Panicked, I threw myself at the mercy of Lotus Driving Academy. More specifically, motorsport manager Stewart Croucher, a man whose decade in the NHS has given him patience for the wayward and the bedside manner of a saint. Something he needed.

In a first edition Lotus Emira, I was a skittish Bambi on wheels. Hamfisting each downshift and trying to heel-to-toe the pedals without success. All the certainty I had built up at Daytona oozed out of me. Thankfully, under Croucher’s tolerant schooling, I began driving spryly and smoothly, lap after lap.

Then came test day and I did not go unnoticed. As practice began, a BMW M3, Ginetta G55 and Honda Civic Type R broke all the briefing rules to sit on my bumper and harass me round corners, trying to intimidate. Perhaps it was the flash of an Emira, but I suspect it was also because I was the only woman on track. It reminded me of something Susie Wolff recalled from her racing days. Of Niki Lauda telling his son: “Whatever you do, beat her.”

The stigma of being beaten by a girl does not seem to have waned. By contrast, my ARDS instructor was delightful. Inquisitive, but with no hint of scepticism. As the assessment began, I drove five quick, consistent laps. He passed me, then said: “With the remaining time, shall we have a bit of fun?”

When I first set out on this quest, I did not dare dream beyond having a racing licence in my wallet. I wanted an eyebrow-raiser to pull out in the face of anyone’s bigotry. I assumed it would eventually go the way of my ski instructor badge or my lifeguarding certificate: discarded and forgotten. I was not prepared for the staunch allyship of changemakers like Tee and Croucher, nor for this to become, not only the thing I have most enjoyed doing in my life but character defining. I thought test day was the end goal. Today I know what everyone else in racing knows: getting the licence is just the formation lap. Now, it is time to put my foot down and cross the starting line.