Off the Line

Before | I

The lights in the next room seemed to shimmer slightly - almost as if there was heat coming off the track in Bahrain, or Saudi, or any of those tracks that seemed to be now within her grasp. Maybe it was the way that the heat of the journalists stood, elbow to elbow in the plush room where it felt like they'd all been squirrelled in at the last minute. Central London had plenty of conference rooms, with their looming ceilings and bright lights that made everyone's skin look a little sallow. But for this announcement - her announcement -, James had insisted on the F1 Arcade with its themes and flags and aggressive marketing.

Phoebe wasn't stupid, despite what she knew people would say. Being the first female F1 driver in the twenty-first century would bring fanfare. It would bring attention. It would bring sponsors, and plenty of money to go along with the companies banking on the 'woke agenda' she apparently now signified. For years, F1 had been a man's game, a man's world, a place where Grid Girls had been a regular feature up until Phoebe had left school at 18, her head still in pieces. A Grid Girl used to smile, hold umbrellas, squeeze herself into the various tiny outfits, shake her head primly when asked if objectifying herself was a bad thing, posing for photos knowing no-one would know her name. When Phoebe had announced she wanted to be in F1 as a child, an uncle corrected her:

"It's called being a Grid Girl, Pheebs. Girls can't drive."

F1 was in fact so devoid of women that even the leading teams could only come up with awkward reasons for so long - a gentle shrug followed by some regurgitated chat about biology, and logistics. Women had their own racing series, eventually: segregated to try and at least even the playing field, to the chagrin of most male commentators. A series of slow women? Not even worth the watch for most fans. Most F1 fans didn't watch any of the feeder series that dragged their favourite drivers from child stars to seasoned drivers, so female drivers had to be grateful that people even tuned into their series. At least that was what the press officer told them.

Having a female only feeder series made sense if the system worked - if women actually made their way up through F3, and F2, and then finally to the pinnacle of F1. And then everything would be better, everything would feel better in the grand scheme of things and no-one would dare call the big teams sexist. Phoebe was 20 when she restarted her driving career, and joined the W Series: she had unsuccessfully tried not to be jealous of her childhood friends starting F1 the same year. She tried to reason with herself that at least she was racing, after the better part of four years off. She tried to remember that if she hadn't crashed, she'd be there too. Lifting a trophy on a podium is the same everywhere - except it's not. Lifting a podium on tracks that even four years ago she would have deemed beneath her didn't quite settle right on her stomach.

So Phoebe pushed harder. She pushed harder on her sponsors, on those men with endless pockets and wives with tender empathy in their eyes. She showed up over and over, setting more hours in the racing simulators than anyone else she knew, pushing her body to the point that the scar on the back of her head would bleed onto her perfect white race suits. Before the end of the W Series, she was a racer under the Williams Driver Academy - finally an acknowledgement that she was working just as hard as the boys on the grids in F4.

Phoebe had received a text from George the day that news broke that she'd be racing with Williams emblazoned on her car, one of the boys she'd sat with at karting all those years ago.

George (SuperStar): Hey, well done on Williams! Looking forward to seeing you at races this year :) My mum says hi as well btw

The text had broken her. Growing up karting, there were always the same faces on the tracks - always the same boys with dodgy haircuts and big cars and dads a bit older than hers. Before the crash, Phoebe was a chatterbox, always being told by her mum that she was too noisy but it meant that the other kids gravitated towards her. She would sit on the side of a track, up on a grassy bank with her Nintendo DS in hand, battling the other boys on MarioKart. She quite liked the easy rivalries she fell into, the way that her mum would be able to sit with the other mums on their camping chairs and the way her dad was always late getting back to their car because he'd got talking to someone. Sure, sometimes she hated those boys, sometimes she hated that they had new helmets more than she did and newer pieces for their karts - but she didn't stay jealous when she was a kid. No, instead she was much more easy going, and had all the time in the world.