The only female steward in F1 will next year become the race director for Formulas 2 and 3

Silvia Bellot smiles easily, her grin often breaking into the warm, generous laughter of a woman wholly at ease with herself. There is nothing in her manner that suggests she takes anything but pleasure in her role as the youngest and only female steward in Formula One and her forthcoming, history-making challenge. Next season the 34-year-old will take up one of the sport’s most senior positions as the race director of the Formula 2 and Formula 3 championships.

Motor racing is still overwhelmingly dominated by men on and off the track and Bellot is more than aware of the importance of her achievements. “I feel I have an extra responsibility because I am a role model for young women,” she says. “In the FIA Women in Motorsport Commission we believe the best way is to show we have the women already in the sport. If I can do it, it proves someone else can do it. I know it could impact on other women’s lives.”

She has stewarded in F1 since 2011 and the slight shoulders of this young woman have borne this often onerous task, which largely attracts only opprobrium, with a steadfast joy and determination fuelled by professionalism and passion.

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Bellot will be the youngest FIA race director and a pioneer in being the first woman to assume the role that directly controls the drivers, safety and regulations from the moment a race meeting begins to the final chequered flag.

Since she was a child Bellot has had no fear of crashing the boys’ club. Growing up in Barcelona with motor racing in the family she soon followed her father, Joseph, to the track where he was stewarding in Spain. She had always enjoyed motor racing but unexpectedly the technical management of the sport somehow struck a chord.

“I saw how the stewards worked and how one driver lost the championship because he breached the rules,” she explains. “The fact that they look at it carefully and do the right thing I really liked. That they investigated and I felt that they helped the sport, because someone who did something wrong didn’t deserve to win the championship.”

This perhaps unlikely interest proved all-consuming. Bellot became the youngest female marshall at 16, beginning the course on the day of her birthday. Two years later, at the minimum age of 18, she took the stewarding course and promptly became the youngest female steward, exhibiting a singular dedication in so doing.

“My friends would go out at weekends to clubs,” she recalls. “But between the lessons when we had a break I used to do my homework so I could have the weekend free so I could go to races. I really, really loved it. I wasn’t at clubs, I felt the track was much more interesting.”

Race stewarding, the process of assessing whether drivers have broken the rules and, if they have, merit punishment, is an essential part of the sport but one unlikely to appeal to a teenager. Bellot considers carefully what it was that drew her in. Where most find the speed and the danger compelling, it was a sense of bringing order and justice that gripped the Spaniard.

“I like the competition, the technical side, but more the feeling of bringing fairness through the decision,” she says. “We are not the police; we don’t try to search for breaches of regulations. We are there when there is a problem to decide what is right and wrong for the sport.”

Motor sport could not have a more convincing spokesperson in disabusing fans convinced the stewards are always pursuing an agenda against their favourite drivers.

At 25 Bellot was appointed to the stewards panel for her first F1 grand prix, in Turkey, and has continued in the unpaid role on the rotating pool of F1 stewards ever since. She says her experience as a woman rising through the ranks has been largely positive but echoes the oft-repeated belief that women are required to prove themselves more than men.

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The real brickbats in motor racing, however, tend to be at the stewards’ decisions and the controversy they generate rather than their personality or gender, and Bellot has plenty of experience in making hard calls.

The Austrian GP this year was a case in point. A late-race clash between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc meant the result hung in the balance for more than three hours while Bellot and her three fellow stewards investigated before declaring it a racing incident. The time it had taken and the decision itself infuriated many.

Bellot believes she and her colleagues are often unfairly criticised. She points out they must investigate incidents in the order they happen, noting that sometimes it means the most important are left to last, that drivers and team principals must complete media duties before they are summoned. When they are, the process must be scrupulously fair.

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Stewards now have access to a huge volume of information: the television feed, all the F1 feeds, including in-car, all the CCTV from race control, the maps, the GPS, the timing information, all live radio and telemetry from the cars. Examining it takes time and once the drivers and principals have been summoned they are entitled to give their opinion on each piece of evidence.

In a highly technical sport where margins are tiny but can make a huge difference, the determination is to make the right decision rather than rush a wrong one.

“We always give the right to everybody to give their opinion. Sometimes we move on swiftly; it depends on the complexity of the incident we are investigating,” says Bellot.

The contrast often made with how relatively quickly VAR decisions are made does not stand up. With so much to assess, it is the just decision-making, which attracted Bellot to take the part in the first place, that remains paramount.

“It is similar in a way to being in court,” she says. “They have the right to explain what happened so you want to make the process as fair as possible. We want to have the right decision for the benefit of the sport.”

Next season a new role, of an even higher profile, awaits Bellot, who once more laughs brightly as she considers how far her childhood passion has taken her.

“I never dreamed of this,” she says. “But I guess when you get involved you want more and more, and now I am happy to be race director. I never thought it could be a real career. I thought it was a hobby I was just happy to do.”