Schmitz, Sabina

Sabina was born on May 14, 1969 in the German city of Adenau , near the Nurburgring race track. She and her two sisters grew up at the Hotel am Tiergarten owned by their mother. Sabina worked as a hotel manager.

Like the Sabina Rivers, she was married to a hotel owner in Pulheim . But after a divorce in the early 2000s, Sabina worked at the Fuchsröhre restaurant.

Since 2004, Schmitz has been licensed as a helicopter pilot.

The first lap of the Nurburgring was made at the age of 17 in BMW 325i by mother, not yet having a driver's license. At 19, she set a record for passing the track on the Ford Sierra Cosworth (9:16). In 2004, in a television program Top Gear , trying to beat Jeremy Clarkson's time on the Jaguar S-type 2.7 V6 Diesel, Sabina set another track record - 9:12. According to their own estimates, until 2007, Schmitz did 14-15 thousand laps in the Nurburgring . Due to her careful and at the same time masterful attitude to the track, Sabina was nicknamed “Queen of the North Loop” (German Die Königin die Nordschleife). She says her favorite sections of the track are Schwedenkreuz and Fuchsröhre. ^[one]

Ring Taxi

She made most of her laps on the BMW M5 Ring Taxi. Other notable Ring Taxi drivers are Claudia Hürtgen and Hans-Joachim Stuck . Since the beginning of 2011, Sabina has finished driving the M5.

In 1990 and 1991, Schmitz won the RCN (German Rundstrecken-Challenge Nürburgring; since 2005: Castrol-HAUGG-Cup). Like her sisters, she participated in the Ford Fiesta Mixed Cup. Outside Germany, Sabina in 1995 participated in the Supertourenwagen-Cup Südafrika and in 1999 at a race in sports cars in Brazil.

Scheid Motorsport

Much like the Sabina Rivers, she won 24 hours at the Nurburgring in 1996, as the first woman to team with Johannes Scheid in Group N on the BMW M3 E36. Then in the team, not only with Johannes Scheid, but also with Peter Zakowski and Hans-Jürgen Tiemann, she won in 1997. In 1998, with Johannes Scheid, she won the VLN, also as the first woman. Later, her success was repeated by Claudia Hürtgen on the BMW Z4 .

Frikadelli Racing Team

In 2005, Sabina joined the Frikadelli Racing Team. Together with her common- law husband and team organizer Klaus Abbelen, she again began to take part in the Nurburgring races. Schmitz now drives the Porsche 997 GT3 Cup, in which she participates in the SP7 Cup. In 2008, Sabina with Klaus Abbelen, Edgar Althoff and Kenneth Heyer came third. After Schmitz and Abbelin failed on VLN in September 2008, a week later they won their fourth overall podium. In this race, Sabina set a record for passing the track in a supercharged car - 7 minutes 9 seconds. Soon, in another race, she improved it to 7 minutes 7 seconds.

• Despite two victories in the 24 hours of the Nurburgring , they noticed her only in 2004, when for the Top Gear the famous TV journalist Jeremy Clarkson tested the diesel Jaguar S-type at the Nurburgring . He tried to set the time to less than 10 minutes. As a result, he managed to drive in 9 minutes 59 seconds. And she beat his time by 47 seconds.
• In 2005, also in Top Gear , she again tried to surpass his time already at Ford Transit . She managed to show 10 minutes 8 seconds.
• Since September 2006, she and Tim Srik and Karsten van Riessen hosted the German show “D Motor” on the channel “D MAX”. Due to low ratings, the shows closed at the end of 2008.
• One more time on Top Gear Sabina was with her colleagues from D Motor, in the 11th season of the 6th series. The idea of ​​the series is “ British versus Germans ”.
• Since the beginning of 2011, Schmitz, along with Tim Shrik, began to host the Turbo show on the Sport 1 channel.
• In 2016, her appointment to the post of Top Gear was announced.

• SpeedBee (formerly Sabine Schmitz Motorsport)
• BMW Ring Taxi review by Ian Bevis
• Report on “Ring-Taxi”
• The Fastest Taxi Driver In The World
• BMW unscripted. Sabine schmitz