When I was very little, my dad had his own go kart team as well while he was still in F1, so I always joined and riding through the paddock on my bicycle.
While it is a very hard and sometimes very cruel profession, my love for the bike remains as strong now as it was in the days when I first discovered it. I am convinced that long after I have stopped riding as a professional I will be riding my bicycle. I never want to abandon my bike. I see my grandfather, now in his seventies and riding around everywhere. To me that is beautiful. And the bike must always remain a part of my life.
It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of the country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.
Reaching F1 was always the ultimate goal, I suppose, ever since driving a go-kart my father had bought me for my fifth birthday.
The only time I think about life beyond F1 is when I contemplate becoming a dad. But there's no way that's going to happen while I'm still racing. To be successful in F1 you need to be very selfish in lots of ways and you're away from home for long periods. That's not the kind of father I want to be.
Nobody says Nico Rosberg is only in F1 because his dad was a famous racing driver who funded his karting career and helped him get into F1. It s a bit unfair just to focus on the fact that my husband is in F1 and it's the only reason I'm in an F1 car.
I'm proud of my driver test. So many people were waiting for me to test and fail, so they could say that women would never be able to race in F1. I always view my time in F1 as before and after the test. Beforehand, I could sense everybody asking, 'What's she doing in the F1 paddock? Is she good enough?' After my test, that attitude changed.
I thought I would be a go-kart mechanic - not an F1 driver
The first big thing that I did with my dad was the bicycle sequence in "The Great Muppet Caper," where Kermit and Piggy are riding bicycles in Battersea Park in London and that was a complex marionetting and cranes driving through the park, it was a complicated scene, and I did that with my dad.
I was three years old. I had a go-kart that my dad had on a leash so I would not go too quick.
Ever since I knew Dad did pentathlon, I wanted to do it as well. I have seen all his old photos, and he still has his Olympic riding jacket, and that makes this even more special.
I always had that, even when I was a kid in a go-kart or when I was playing soccer or tennis: that need of winning. It was there all my life, and it's still there now.
I was very successful, and I graduated with honors. And then I called my dad, who still lives in London, and I said, 'Dad, thanks for college, but I'm going to go act now.' It didn't go over very well.
I thought of that while riding my bicycle.
A child in his earliest years, when he is only two or a little more, is capable of tremendous achievements simply through his unconscious power of absorption, though he is himself still immobile. After the age of three he is able to acquire a great number of concepts through his own efforts in exploring his surroundings. In this period he lays hold of things through his own activity and assimilates them into his mind.
For me, it was not destiny to make it to where I am now - I thought for a long- time I would become a go-kart mechanic, or a job like this, not an F1 driver.
Honestly, I think they need to work to improve the categories. If the driver goes from the go-kart to F3 one year and then to F1, why do we have GP3, GP2?