Former F1 star to compete in 2026 Winter Olympics

A former racing driver with the Sauber F1 team has made a spectacular sporting switch and will compete in the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The Milan Cortina Games got underway on Friday, February 6 with iconic events such as Curling, Freestyle skiing and Ice Hockey all making their four-year return to our TV screens.

One racing star, however, has swapped the tarmac for the ice track and will compete in the 2026 Winter Olympics in the bobsleigh.

Simona de Silvestro is a Swiss-Italian racing driver, who was previously linked to Sauber F1 team as their test driver in 2014, completing tests in the car and was working towards achieving her F1 superlicence.

Then team principal Monisha Kaltenborn originally targeted de Silvestro for a Sauber F1 seat, but her driving opportunities were suspended because of a contractual dispute between the team and her management, allegedly relating to the finance of the deal.

De Silvestro then moved to Formula E, where she competed full-time for the 2015–16 season with Andretti and became the first female racing driver to score points in the series with a ninth place in the 2016 Long Beach ePrix.

The Swiss-Italian has also competed in the Indy 500 on seven occasions and achieved a podium finish at the 2013 Shell-Pennzoil Grand Prix of Houston in IndyCar.

When will Simona de Silvestro compete at the 2026 Winter Olympics?

Following a stint in Australian V8 Supercars and GT3, de Silvestro announced in 2022 that she would be training in the winter sport of bobsleigh.

De Silvestro was confirmed as an official entry for the 2026 Winter Olympics in the 'Women's Monobob' and '2-woman Bobsleigh'.

The first heats of the Women's Monobob gets underway on Sunday, February 15 and the heats for the 2-woman Bobsleigh starts on Friday, February 20.

On the switch, she said to the International Bobsleigh Federation: "I always felt really inspired by the Olympics, and maybe 15 years ago I was thinking it would be really cool to go to the Olympics.

"I was looking at different sports and thought maybe bobsleigh is going to be the sport that can help me achieve this dream of going to the Olympics."

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