![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Sabine_Schmitz_cropped.jpg\")
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As a female motoring blogger, I was very sorry to hear that one of my motoring heroines, Sabine Schmitz, passed away recently.\u00a0 It\u2019s particularly poignant when I realized that she was only a few years older than me.<\/p>\n
If you aren\u2019t sure who I\u2019m talking about, I\u2019m referring to the German motor show presenter who appeared frequently on the British motoring show Top Gear.\u00a0 We first met her in a 2004 episode, where she became Jeremy Clarkson\u2019s nemesis, as she was a German (groan!) woman (gasp!) who beat Jeremy Clarkson around the N\u00fcrburgring (ouch!) in a diesel (eek!) van (aaagh!).\u00a0 I know I definitely loved it when she made it around the Ring in less than 10 minutes.\u00a0 This wasn\u2019t her first appearance on a Top Gear show (she appeared briefly in a 2002 special) and it wasn\u2019t her last, either. In fact, after the ousting of the Unholy Trinity of Clarkson, Hammond and May, she was selected by the BBC as one of the new presenters.<\/p>\n
Sabine was one of three daughters of restaurant owners who lived near the famous N\u00fcrburgring. \u00a0She and her sisters all participated in motorsports, but she was the most successful of the three. During her racing career, she won the 24-hour N\u00fcrburgring challenge twice (both times in a BMW), as well as placing third, ninth and sixth in Porsches (if you\u2019re looking it up, you\u2019ll find her under her married name of Sabine Reck).\u00a0 She operated a \u201ctaxi service\u201d professionally in the N\u00fcrburgring, and later added driver training to her company portfolio.\u00a0 It\u2019s probably no exaggeration to say that she knew the N\u00fcrburgring ring like I know my neighbourhood roads. The track was her neighbourhood road.<\/p>\n
As she was known not only for her driving skills but also for her sparkling personality, she appeared frequently on the German equivalent of Top Gear, a show called D Motor. She also provided commentary for motorsports from time to time, becoming known for her sense of humour.<\/p>\n
I always enjoyed watching the episodes of Top Gear when she appeared, and it was fantastic to see a woman succeeding in what has traditionally been a very male-dominated area \u2013 which is odd, when you come to think about it, given that it was a German woman, Bertha Benz, who brought the motorcar to public attention in the first place. She was a great role model for girls learning to drive and showed the public that driving well is not necessarily a \u201cboy thing\u201d.<\/p>\n
She was, unfortunately, diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer in 2017, although this was not made public until last year. She fought it hard, but lost the battle a few weeks ago.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure I won\u2019t be the only one who misses her and will be disappointed not to see any more of her.<\/p>\n
One more time, let\u2019s enjoy one of her iconic N\u00fcrburgring laps in a van for Top Gear that we loved so much:<\/p>\n
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As a female motoring blogger, I was very sorry to hear that one of my motoring heroines, Sabine Schmitz, passed away recently.\u00a0 It\u2019s particularly poignant when I realized that she was only a few years older than me. If you aren\u2019t sure who I\u2019m talking about, I\u2019m referring to the German motor show presenter who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,280,5121],"tags":[6997,6996],"class_list":["post-13508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-motor-sport","category-women-and-cars","tag-female-racing-car-drivers","tag-sabine-schmitz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13510,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13508\/revisions\/13510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}