Book Review: Driven by Susie Wolff

Release Date: April 26, 2026 (United States)

Driven hits the beats you’d expect from an athlete memoir but I found it especially compelling due to Susie Wolff’s accomplishments as a trailblazer for women in motorsport and the many different hats/race suits she has worn in her career. I’m glad her story is being told and it’s altogether told well.

Wolff has spent over 25 years in motorsport and raced in junior circuits with the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg (she beat both of them in the 2000 World Karting Championship). After some time in Formula Renault and DTM (German sports car racing) she moved to the Williams Formula 1 team as a development driver and became the first woman to participate in a Formula 1 weekend in 22 years when she ran in a free practice at Silverstone in 2014. After her retirement from motorsport she was the Team Principal for the Venturi Formula E team before moving to her current role as the Managing Director of the all-women racing series F1 Academy in 2023. There’s clearly a lot of cool stuff in her CV worth expanding upon.

The book follows the conventional “athlete memoir” structure. You get the in media res intro of a big event (in this case a Williams F1 test), then a chronological overview of her life so far. Every chapter roughly corresponds with a competitive season and/or professional role and you get a rundown of the main details of each. The prose is solid and what stood out to me was the keen eye for detail in describing what it’s like to drive a car on the limit and her emotional openness around the obstacles she faced as a female driver.

As she climbed the competitive ladder Wolff (depressingly unsurprisingly) dealt with her fair share of sexism in the heavily male-skewed world of motorsport. This ranged from numerous instances of casual sexism to practical difficulties (such as uncomfortable rib protectors that weren’t built for female torsos). It’s eye-opening to see how even F1 luminaries like Niki Lauda were dismissive of her abilities (at least at first). The most notable (and objectively terrifying) episode Wolff had to contend with was when a major F1 power broker (unnamed but you can whittle down a shortlist of suspects) drunkenly tried to break into her hotel room at 2am after a sponsor event.

Susie Wolff also happens to be married to Toto Wolff, Team Principal and part-owner of the Mercedes F1 team. This is decidedly not a WAG memoir though. If you’re looking for her take on Abu Dhabi 2021, well, actually, she does share some reflections on that one, but that’s pretty much it. Driven is Susie’s story, as it should be. However, you do get some insight into Toto as a person and there is an amusing anecdote about Toto deciding to get a ladder and move a light fixture an inch in the middle of watching a movie with Susie (that tracks).

I enjoyed Driven a lot, and I just wish there was more detail to certain sections, especially the periods where she was a Williams F1 development driver and her current leadership of the F1 Academy series. I feel like some stories were left in the holster. But that’s really it when it comes to my personal nits which should indicate that it was quite a good read. I’d recommend this to anyone interested in motorsport.

8/10