This is something that came to me when I was reading about the new rules for F1 in 2026.

Lightning in Lilac

When I was born, my parents called me Ryan Samuel Hurst. My father, Samuel Llewellen Hurst, was the founder and CEO of Hurst Industries, an engineering company employing over a hundred tradesmen and office workers. My mother had been Rylie Sanderson, a successful model and kept her beauty as I got older and gained two sisters.

When I was born, we lived in Guildford, with the factory on Walnut Tree Close, but moved to a nicer house in Milford, just south of Godalming, on Sandy Lane, just off the Portsmouth Road and only five miles from Guildford.

For schooling, I started at Stepping Stones and then to the Milford Primary. For fun, I rode a bike. I was six when I heard about the S4P Bike Park and badgered my father to take me there, with my mountain bike on the rack on the back of his Range Rover. It was there that I discovered the thrill of jumping and racing against others. I got a proper BMX bike to be a serious competitor. That was until I was nine and had a very bad landing.

I spent a week in hospital, having various cuts stitched and fractures looked after. That was, as far as my family was concerned, the end of my bike racing and the finish of what I expected to be a successful BMX career. I was ten when we went out for a family outing to the Go-Kart track at Farnborough, an indoor venue with different tracks. It was somewhere that we could all have a go, with my sisters now eight and nine.

What can I say. I was hooked, I had about six sessions, getting moved up to more technical tracks over the day. The manager spoke to my father about letting me race more often, with a view to going into competition. Me, I was frustrated that seven-year-olds were beating me, my competitive streak had reappeared.

By the time I left primary to go to high school, I had my own Kart, with a dedicated trailer, and a father who was happy to take me to wherever the racing was. It was also somewhere that he could talk to other fathers and make contacts, so building the family business.

For the rest of my school days, I was at the all-boys Royal Grammar School in Guildford during the week, and kart racing almost every weekend. There were a dozen, or more, tracks in the local area, in the triangle of Crawley, Reading and London, so I was getting experience at a lot of different tracks. By the time I left school, I had won the Cadet, Mini, Junior and Senior Championships, thanks to the generosity of my family business sponsoring me to start with, as well as getting to drive the best karts as I moved up.

Growing up with a father in business, he taught me how to handle myself in victory or failure, and how to be polite and outgoing for the sponsors that came my way as I progressed. That was, he told me, something that a lot of drivers didn’t understand. I took a year out of racing when I was seventeen, after winning the Super One Championship. I was following others who had gone on to F1 racing.

The reason for my break was in order to have an operation that was forced on me by the BMX crash that I had when I was younger. The damage around my groin, from a violent collision with parts of the bike, had destroyed any chance that I may have had of being a father, as well as eliminating any male puberty that my friends at the all-boys school were going through.

With the help of my mother and sisters, I turned eighteen as Rylie Samantha Hurst, with a name change and revised birth certificate. As a birthday present, I asked for a day at the Top Gear Experience at Dunsfold. I had almost given up on my racing career but was wondering how much I had lost after the latest operation and recouperation. It took me a while to come to grips with being a girl, but seeing the younger image of my mother when I looked in the mirror was both empowering and very strange. The visit to Dunsfold was, I now think, a bit of a rebellion moment.

Everyone else at the venue was lining up to drive the supercars, but all I wanted to drive were the single seaters. I did a few laps in a rear-engine, open-framed Funcup car that was a lot of fun. The organisers looked at my times and gave me a run in a proper racer, a Tatuus GB4 car. I found that I had lost none of my skills and posted a time that was good enough for them to talk seriously to my father.

The family business had grown a lot as I had gone through school. The workforce was now over four hundred, spread over four sites, one of which now made kart frames and parts for the Super Kart racing, thanks to my success. There was room in that factory to work on a GB4 car, and we had the money to get one. All of my previous sponsors were spoken to, and I was racing in GB4 that year, shifting to F4 the year after as I was in the top three in the GB4 championship.

Other girls had driven in F4, but I was the first female to win the championship, in my second year. At twenty-three, I moved up to F3, now in a new building and a team. I wore only lilac race suits, with my name on a lightning bolt, and a good number of sponsors.

The next hurdle was F2. No woman had ever scored points in that class, and none were expected to. In the first race weekend, I scored a point for coming eighth in the Saturday Sprint and went on to get another ten from finishing fifth on the Sunday, after starting from ninth on the grid.

With the success came sponsors, wanting to get my name on contracts. I was someone that the cosmetic and fashion industries could push as a woman of speed and beauty combined, seeing that I was now very much a clone of my mother in her modelling days. There were many drivers and fans who wanted to get in my pants, but I was determined to be a successful driver. I did go to parties, dinners and events with handsome men, dressed for the occasion in gowns supplied by my sponsors, but always went to my own bed. I’m sure that I had a reputation as an ice maiden, but the better drivers around me didn’t get distracted either.

I finished fifth in the championship, that year, third the year after, and was the champion in my third season, now twenty-seven. I didn’t win a lot of races but was consistent enough to collect the points. At twenty-eight, I won the F2 championship in my rookie year, and was in talks to enter F1 the year after. The papers were calling me Rylie Hurst, the girl with the Thirst for First.

F1 is a very closed game. It’s all about money, and I was able to bring some sponsors to the table that had never had the chance to be involved before. I got a seat in the second car of a team that normally ran in the rear third of the field and was told that I should consider myself lucky to get that, even with my successful past.

The team was based in France, so I moved there and got a nice apartment in Grenoble, as the team headquarters was in the middle of the now-closed race circuit there. If we did track testing, we could go to the Circuit Charade, near Clermont-Ferrand, or to the Circuit De Ledenon, down south. Luckily I had enough school French to be able to understand most of what was being said around me.

We had a week at Clermont-Ferrand, with last year’s cars. The car was a brute to drive, skittish in the corners and easy to get unstuck. My team-mate, a playboy with enough money to buy his way onto the grid, was ham-fisted, and was off the track almost as often as he was on it.

I had two things going for me. The first was my years of experience, working my way to this point, and the second was my new outlook as a woman, and a steady hand on the steering wheel. As the rookie, I would start the season as the number two driver, but my side of the garage worked hard to give me all the extras that went into the lead car.

I wouldn’t get to fully experience the new car until January and the official test days, four days to find out what the engineers had done wrong. For the new season, there were huge changes. The drive was now hybrid, with equal time for the engine and the electric motor. This actually gave more power, but a shorter and thinner wheelbase, plus a drop in the minimum weight limit, would mean that it would be harder to put that power on the ground.

We spent a week down at Ledenon, with one of the old chassis that had the new motor, as well as a new chassis with an older motor. The new chassis was even more skittish, while the new motor was like getting jet powered at times. I was given first try of both cars on the first day, as the other driver hadn’t turned up. I did as much time on the track as I could, giving my garage as much feedback as I was able.

The ’lead’ driver arrived the next day, and promptly went out and destroyed the older chassis by totally overdoing it in a turn and putting the car into the tyre barrier at speed, having no braking once he was in the gravel. Although the cars had every safety feature known to man, shortening the wheelbase by a couple of feet doesn’t leave much room, and he ended up going to hospital with two broken ankles.

By the end of the week, the mechanics had put the new motor in the new car, and I had a few laps to see what I could do with it. We didn’t have the full package, not having the full aerodynamic set-up, but we all went back to Grenoble, happy with what data we had recorded and a lot of ideas on how to make the car more driveable.

For the rest of the year, we brought the teams’ test driver in and set up the computer simulation units with the responses that I had logged for the new car. I sat beside him to talk to him as he gained experience with the new car, racing all the circuits that we had on file. The only one that nobody would have was the new one at Madrid, still being finished.

Mario, the test driver, had come up through the ranks and had a lot more sensitivity than the playboy. We worked hard to get as much time on the simulators as possible, in between giving our time to the sponsors. Mario was a couple of years younger than me, and fun to be with. We did photo shoots, parties, and big dinners together. We danced, and we kissed. We were written about as a good-looking couple. For me, this was new, and made me think hard about what I wanted out of life.

This F1 season, with all the changes made to bring close racing, was likely to be the most dangerous one in years. Even I could see that and didn’t need a serious relationship added to the mix. As far as I was concerned, getting to Abu Dhabi in one piece would be a success.

I had Christmas at home, spending time with my parents, my sisters and their own families. My eldest nephew was agog at having an aunt who was also an F1 driver. I made sure that I rested and relaxed. The end of January would see how well we had prepared. In the two weeks before the first official track days, we sat in the simulators until we were able to get around the circuit in times close to last year’s lap record. Next stop would be doing it in real life.

At the end of January, the trucks went south into Spain, while we sat with the management having discussions about how we would spend the four days at the track. This was the longest time we had to test ourselves and get data. The next test days, both at Bahrain, were only three days.

The management was happy with how we were going, so far. The playboy wasn’t going to be missed and was going to have a problem getting his seat back if we did well. The team had never been close to getting the manufacturers prize, and their best season so far had only gained a dozen points. We drivers were told that there would be no team orders, just to do as well as we could without destroying the car.

On the first day of testing, we didn’t push the two cars, just getting meaningful data. On that day, more than one car ended up back in the garage to be repaired. On the second day, Mario sat with the techs, watching the gauges and the graphs, as I tested the limits of adhesion with the different tyre compounds. I was reporting my thoughts as we worked. This day, we did our tyre-change practice and refueling. I stopped for lunch and Marios’ car had the alterations that I had suggested.

He went out in the afternoon and matched my times. At the end of the official testing, we had the only two cars that hadn’t spun or hit anything. We weren’t high on the leader board, but only three seconds behind the bigger, richer, and more experienced teams. Our management were very happy with the two of us, and we were promised equal cars for the next two sessions and the early part of the season.

Two weeks later, we were in Bahrain for the next test days. We were better suited to this track, and both got with two seconds of the leading times. A week later, with new parts airfreighted and fitted, we did good enough times to sit beside each other on the third row of the grid, now the only cars that hadn’t spent time in the garage being straightened out.

After that, we headed to Melbourne, for the opening round, and where things got serious. We qualified third and seventh on the grid. As expected, the new regulations, the extra power, the chassis changes, and the decreased downforce made it very entertaining for the spectators, as well as a lot of highlights for the TV news. Mario got spun around by an out-of-control car in lap nine of the big race, while I tried to keep up while keeping out of trouble, managing to regain any lost distance in the many pace car laps. I was sitting third, some way back, when the second place tried to overtake, resulting in the two cars in front of me going down the escape road in reverse.

I won the Sunday, ending up with twenty-five points for the weekend. Mario got to fifth, giving him ten points. Best of all, we both finished the race, giving the team enough points to lead the manufacturers award for the first time in their history.

We went on from there to China, and then Suzaka in Japan, back to Bahrain and then to Saudi Arabia. At the end of those races, we had both gained points in every race and were on the podium twice. I still had a slim lead in the championship, with Mario running fourth. The team still had a slim lead with the manufacturers championship, but none of us expected our luck would hold out. No matter, the management were happy, the sponsors were happy, and we now had some silverware for the trophy cabinet in Grenoble.

We had two weeks between Saudi Arabia and Miami, allowing for a week in the workshop to tidy up the cars and set them up for the next set of races. Both Miami and Montreal would have the qualifying on Friday and a sprint on the Saturday, then we had nearly two weeks until Monaco, Barcelona, Austria, Silverstone (with a sprint), Belgium and Hungary. We had a summer break of nearly a month and were then back on the road, starting with Zandvoort and a sprint.

You may think that we drivers have an easy life. Party all week, work for a few hours on the weekend. It’s not that simple. You have to keep fit, make sure that you remain healthy, spend time in the simulator getting used to the next track, keep the sponsors and fans happy. It was lucky that Mario and I were able to get on together, something that many teams would love to see with their own drivers.

After Holland, we were at Monza, Madrid, Baku, Singapore for the night race under lights with a sprint to make it interesting. Then we had two weeks to get to the Circuit of the Americas, then on to Mexico, Brazil, back to Las Vegas, and then, finally, to Quatar and Abu Dhabi to round off the season.

This was a really long season for me. The previous year, in F2, there had been less circuits where we had been added to the F1 circus. Twenty-four full races, plus six sprints, needed me to stay close to the team doctor to maintain my health and fitness. At the end of the season, Mario finished tenth in the championship, while I finished third. The team had ended second in the manufacturers championship, due to the fact that we had finished every race where we hadn’t been hit by another driver. Many tried to get by me with illegal moves, with four of the other drivers getting enough demerit points to miss a race.

It may have been a hard year, but very lucrative. The team share of the pot for the next year was enough to hire more qualified and experienced engineers. Both Mario and I had a very good salary, on top of our sponsorship money. We were in demand with the fashion houses as a glamorous couple. I didn’t go home that Christmas, spending it with Mario and his family in Italy.

Over the following season, it did make it hard when we were racing in close proximity, trying to make sure we didn’t cause a crash. The team loved it, as we usually brought both cars back to the pits in one piece.

We stayed with the team for another three seasons, without winning the championship but getting very close. I did win seven races over that period, while Mario won five, which isn’t a bad result from one of the lesser teams. The next season was different. Mario had been poached by a bigger team as their number two to replace a retiring driver. Our last day together wasn’t nice.

We had been living together for nearly four years. I had pretended to have periods, with the use of watered down tomato sauce stains in my panties and a box of tampons easily visible in the bedroom. Of course, we hadn’t made me pregnant, which upset him, as well as his family. He wouldn’t go for a sperm check, too proud, and was certain that I was the problem. Of course, he was right, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

His new team was based in Italy, and he loaded his car with his things and just drove away, no thought of what I wanted. It was lonely in the house we had bought, so I put it on the market and looked for an apartment. The lawyers could sort out the finances. For the next season, the new addition to the team was another woman.

Kelly was tall where I was short, blonde where I was darker, and American. She had come from a wealthy family who had made money in oil and had spent several years driving NASCAR. Her best results had been on the tracks that had more turns, rather than the ovals, and her test day was impressive.

That season, we both wore lilac driving suits and had our names over the lightning bolt, but there was no way you could get confused about which was which. Between us, we won two sprints and three races, and had been on the podium eleven times. Our team loved us, the fans loved us, the scribes loved us and the F1 organisers loved us. We were photogenic and accessible, adding a whole new block of racing fans to the circus. We were the only girls on the grid for three years, until more came through the system.

Kelly was a great friend and a great driver. Her only problem was that she was a show-off. Not on the track, as that was work. Her love of cars was her passion. She collected supercars as if they were new dresses, one for every day of the week, in different colours. After our third season, she was at home with her boyfriend in America and must have been out at a party with him. The report that I read estimated that her McLaren road car was doing a hundred and thirty when she hit a patch of black ice in a dip, at around two in the morning. After hitting a tree, bits of the car, Kelly, and her boyfriend were strewn some two hundred yards past the impact point.

I was devastated and told the team that enough was enough. I had been racing for more than eight years at the top level, in my thirties, and had a family business that needed someone to help run it. I sold the apartment and moved back to Guildford, taking a place in the company, now being managed by one of my nephews, with my Dad as chairman of the board.

I bought a small house at the end of Weyside gardens, with the river at the end of my back garden. I had been given three of the cars that I had driven, over the years. The one from my first season was given a spot in the company office reception, with a few of my trophies and a life-size photo of me in the lilac suit. The two others, from later seasons, were on display at Beaulieu, along with other historic cars.

I met a man in the office, one day, and I liked his smile. Jason Reed was also in his thirties, and I found out that he had been married, but was now divorced. He was a representative for one of our suppliers, and a fan. It took a while for me to get him to understand that I was a normal girl who knew how to drive, and then we started having dates.

Things progressed until we were at dinner, one evening, and he looked sad. When I asked him what the matter was, he told me that he had to tell me that he couldn’t have children, which was the reason for his first marriage breaking down. I told him that it didn’t matter, as the pressures and vibrations of race driving had caused me to go through menopause early. He came home with me that night, proving that he may not be able to have children, but knew how to make a woman happy.

He moved in with me a week later and we married six months after that, a big affair in the Guildford Cathedral with a honeymoon in a villa in Palermo. I had the money to ensure that we could do whatever we wanted, but, in the end, all we wanted to do was to build the company. With his knowledge and my contacts, we diversified into different racing codes, ending up running our own team of E-Racing cars. Of course, I just had to test drive them.

I may not have been Rylie Hurst with the thirst for first anymore, but I remained Rylie Reed with a need for speed.

Marianne Gregory © 2026