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Tilted Cat Head
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
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Sabine Schmitz: "the fastest taxi driver in the world"
Watch the lady drive a Ford Transit in about 10 minutes in the Nürburgring.
Shows you what a driver can do even with bad equipment.
Sabine Schmitz
Quote:
Nürburgring
Sabine came to mass public attention driving one of the two BMW M5 "Ring taxi" around the 20.8km long race track in an entertaining manner.
According to her own estimates, Sabine has gone around the track 20,000 times, increasing by approximately 1200 per year. Her familiarity with the circuit earned her the nicknames "Queen of the Nürburgring" and "the fastest taxi driver in the world". She says her favourite parts of the track are Schwedenkreuz and Fuchsrohre.[2]
Claudia Hürtgen is her main rival, winning the championship in 2006, and scoring pole and victory in the third VLN race of 2008, with a BMW Z4.
Her company, Nürburgring-based Sabine Schmitz Motorsport, offers advanced driver training and a "Ring Taxi" service for passengers.
Television career
As a result of her popularity as "the fastest taxi driver in the world", Sabine became an occasional motorsport guest commentator, known for her gleefully dry descriptions of driving incidents. Since September 2006, Sabine has co-hosted a motoring show on German television, "D Motor" on the DMAX TV channel. In each show, Sabine takes on another challenge, for example Sabine in a Ferrari 360 vs. a 1200hp Race Truck or Sabine in a Formula Renault race car vs. a race sidecar.
In December 2004, Schmitz gained recognition in the United Kingdom after appearing in the BBC television show Top Gear with presenter Jeremy Clarkson. On her only attempt, using the same car, she beat his best lap time of 9 minutes 59 seconds in a Jaguar S-Type diesel by 47 seconds (Season 5, Episode 5), having castigated his best lap with the comment "I tell you something, I do that lap time in a van".
Thus, in her second appearance on Top Gear, she actually drove a Ford Transit van in an attempt to beat Clarkson's time set in the Jaguar S-Type diesel. Her final time with a slightly stripped (hub caps, spare tyre and toolkit removed and a Dodge Viper driving in front to create 'clear air') Transit van was 10 minutes and 8 seconds (Season 6, Episode 7). When trying to film Schmitz, the team couldn't keep up so they used Jaguar test driver Wolfgang Schubauer to drive the Jaguar S-Type R chase car[3].
Her third appearance was at the 2005 Top Gear Awards to collect the award for 'Best German' (Season 7, Episode 6).
In 2007, she appeared in Clarkson's Supercar Showdown DVD where she raced an Audi R8 against the Stig in a Porsche 911 GT3.
She also appeared in the sixth episode of the 11th series of Top Gear, in a competition between the German show she appears on with British Top Gear. In the double decker car race she beat Jeremy Clarkson and his co-driver a one armed sound recordist. In the Axis vs Allies cars, Hammond came first in the Ariel Atom. The Top Gear presenters arrived in Spitfires for comedic effect.
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