For Sabine Schmitz, it was like going to school to the deepened Nürburgring motorway in West Germany. She grew up near the track, one of the most famous in the world, and has always loved speed and, according to her own account, completed more than 20,000 laps of the track.
“I never had to learn the job,” she once said. “It’s in my blood.”
Schmitz, a popular German racer and former presenter of the BBC show ‘Top Gear’, known for her striking comments and a lively personality that stood out in an industry dominated by men, was in a hospital in Trier in southwestern Germany died. . She was 51. Her half-brother, Beat Schmitz, said the cause was cancer.
Schmitz, a cheerful and enthusiastic driver, has been called ‘queen of the Nürburgring’ and the ‘fastest taxi driver in the world’ – because he drove exciting racing enthusiasts around the track in a BMW. She won the popular Nürburgring 24-hour race in 1996 – becoming the first woman to do so – and then again the following year. She became known to an even wider audience when she joined ‘Top Gear’ in 2016 after several appearances in the program.
She and her husband, Klaus Abbelen, founded the racing team Frikadelli Racing.
Sabine Schmitz was born on May 14, 1969, in Adenau, West Germany. The daughter of a wholesaler and a hotel manager in the village of Nurburg, near the border with Belgium, grew up less than a kilometer from the Nürburgring complex, and although she trained as a hotelier, she has since wanted to become a racer. she was 13, she said.
The famous main track of the Nürburgring, the 12.9-mile-long Nordschleife, is known as Green Hell for its 73 turns as it weaves through the forest in the Eifel hills. The track has been running since 1927 and hosted the Formula 1 races, but was later considered dangerous and redesigned.
The new Nordschleife, adapted when Schmitz was 2, became her playground. She could recite the names of the 73 turns wholeheartedly, and she only completed them at the age of 17 – with her mother’s car before she had a driving license.
“They put on race tires, took off the license plates and raced on the track,” Beat Schmitz said of Sabine and the family. “My mother would drive to the hairdresser with the same car or do groceries.”
He added: “It’s just like the kid who was born next to the football stadium and is in a football team at 5.”
After participating in amateur racing with her two sisters, Schmitz joined a BMW team in the early 1990s. She is still the only female driver to win the Nürburgring’s 24-hour race, which draws more than 200 review teams and tens of thousands of fans every June. She finished third in the 2008 edition. The event is part of the VLN endurance race series, in which Schmitz was a regular participant.
She became one of the main attractions at the race complex as a driver of a BMW ‘ring taxi’, in which she took paying customers on a quick lap around the track. She boasted of being ‘the fastest taxi driver in the world’.
“It’s really fun to scare people,” she said on Top Gear in 2010. “They like to be scared, so they pay me for it.”
Schmitz’s time on ‘Top Gear’ brought a non-British onslaught to a show mostly run by men and aimed at them. She preferred escapades in which she would try to overtake other drivers while driving with a less powerful car than them.
One of her most popular moments on the program took place in 2009 when she tried to complete a round in the Nürburgring track in less than ten minutes – with a Ford minibus. She did it within 10:08 minutes.
“I think she really liked how she could shock middle-aged men who thought they could drive a little – until they saw what she could do,” said Chris Harris, another presenter of ‘Top Gear’ .
Schmitz left ‘Top Gear’ last year and announced she’s been treated for cancer since 2017.
In addition to flying cars and later helicopters, she was passionate about animals, and her half-brother, Beat, said he believes her love of animals kept her going through her cancer battle.
In addition to her half-brother, she is survived by her husband, her mother and two sisters.
Many in the racing world paid tribute to Schmitz on Wednesday. Sophia Floersch, a 20-year-old German driver who became the first woman to take part in Formula 3 last year, calls Schmitz’s races inspiring and motivating.
On Twitter, Nürburgring said he had lost his most famous female racer, adding: “Sabine Schmitz died far too soon after a long illness.”
Christopher Schuetze reported.