{"id":81409,"date":"2026-02-08T13:39:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T16:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automotive.einnews.com\/article\/890507906"},"modified":"2026-02-08T13:39:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T16:39:07","slug":"former-f1-star-to-compete-in-2026-winter-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/02\/08\/former-f1-star-to-compete-in-2026-winter-olympics\/","title":{"rendered":"Former F1 star to compete in 2026 Winter Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A former racing driver with the Sauber F1 team has made a spectacular sporting switch and will compete in the 2026 Winter Olympics. <\/b><\/p>\n

\nThe 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. <\/p>\n

\nOne racing star, however, has swapped the tarmac for the ice track and will compete in the 2026 Winter Olympics in the bobsleigh. <\/p>\n

\nSimona 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<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\nThen 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. <\/p>\n

\nDe Silvestro then moved to Formula E, where she competed full-time for the 2015\u201316 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.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe 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. <\/p>\n

When will Simona de Silvestro compete at the 2026 Winter Olympics?<\/h2>\n

\nFollowing a stint in Australian V8 Supercars and GT3, de Silvestro announced in 2022 that she would be training in the winter sport of bobsleigh. <\/p>\n

\nDe Silvestro was confirmed as an official entry for the 2026 Winter Olympics in the ‘Women’s Monobob’ and ‘2-woman Bobsleigh’. <\/p>\n

\nThe 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. <\/p>\n

\nOn the switch, she said to the International Bobsleigh Federation<\/a>: “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.\n<\/p>\n

“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.”\n<\/p>\n

\nDRIVE to SURVIVE:<\/b> Season 8 release date and big storylines<\/a><\/p>\n

Related<\/h3>\n

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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 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}