Ruth Buscombe’s journey to make it in the boy’s own world of Formula One has been as unusual as it has been testing and, as the race strategist at Sauber will happily tell you, it very nearly did not happen at all
“It’s been a difficult road,” she says. “I was in a car accident when I was 18 and nearly lost my life and everything seemed a bit fragile at that point. From now to 10 years ago it’s a massively steep trajectory and you never really think you are going to get there until you finally do.”
Her place at Sauber is confirmation that she has made it and against the odds in a sport dominated by men. At the Spanish Grand Prix last weekend, she was crucial in securing the team’s first points of the season, with Pascal Wehrlein’s one-stop strategy securing him eighth place. Acknowledged by the team principal Monisha Kaltenborn, who described it as: “a great result for our team – with a perfect strategy behind it”. Yet proving up to the task in the face of scepticism and bias has been part and parcel of Buscombe’s challenge.
Pleasingly, however, in the crucial area as a strategist – the engineer who calls the race tactics – she has had nothing but positive experiences. “I have had zero problems with drivers,” she says, “because all they want is to do the best they can. All the drivers I have worked with I have had a very good relationship with and they have been very responsive. It is so competitive in this paddock they don’t care whether it is a woman or a chipmunk talking to them.”
The 27-year-old, who says she “went from wanting to be a princess, to being an astronaut to wanting to be in F1”, had fallen for the sport watching with her father, a McLaren fan, and by the time she was 11 all thoughts of wearing a tiara and space travel had been subsumed by the desire to go racing. Which she pursued with single‑minded clarity. Buscombe graduated from Cambridge University having studied aerospace and aerothermal engineering – a course favoured by F1 hopefuls – and followed it with a master’s specialising in the role of F1’s drag reduction system.
Even making it that far had not been simple. “I used to play all the F1 games and it was noticeable that all of the characters are men,” she says. “At school I had teachers trying to dissuade me from doing engineering, not because I wasn’t good at it but they were questioning whether I really wanted to be doing it. That is most important to change.
“As girls grow up they get an onslaught of ‘this is what women do and this is what men do’ and unless you are very sure and very stubborn like I was, someone that is teetering between choices gets a story from teachers and the media that this sort of career is for boys.”
Fortunately, Buscombe was not to be dissuaded and was taken on by Ferrari at Maranello after university as a simulations development engineer before stepping up into the role of race strategist in 2013. A switch to Haas followed as chief race strategist, overseeing the race tactics for the US team’s debut season last year. Her influence was felt immediately, helping to secure what remains Haas’s best results, fifth and sixth at Australia and Bahrain for Romain Grosjean.
The task, however, has proved more demanding than the straightforward relationship she enjoys with the drivers. “With certain people that I have come across you have a necessity to prove your worth,” she says. “Each time you face that it is a challenge like a race. You have to be sure of yourself. Every time you have that struggle it makes you stronger, strengthens your resolve, and means you can perform better because you want it so much.”
Such has been the regularity of this scenario, she has even named it. “I call it ‘prove it again syndrome’,” she says. “You have to always prove your worth and value more than if you were a man that didn’t have that bias against you.”
The position at Haas did not last and they parted early in the season, but then came the call from Sauber.It was particularly welcome as the team principal, Kaltenborn, had been an inspiration to Buscombe while at university. “At Sauber we have a female principal, which really sets the mood for the whole team. No one at Sauber cares whether you are a man or a woman, all we care about is working as a team and getting the best results.”
The team are at the back of the grid but have new backing and are looking to the future – as is F1, believes Buscombe. “It is slowly changing,” she says. “Having women like Monisha and Claire Williams, which means when you turn on the TV it isn’t just middle-class white men, is fantastic. We have a black triple world champion.
“F1 is changing slower than we would like it to but it has to evolve. We should have the best people, we should be colour‑blind and gender-blind to make sure we have the best people.”
