From a brief taste of Formula 1 with Sauber at Fiorano to a new life on the ice: Simona De Silvestro will compete at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics in bobsleigh. With a career that includes IndyCar, Formula E and Supercars, she will now represent Italy at the Winter Games.
At the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, scheduled from 6 to 22 February, there will also be a story coming straight from the world of motorsport. Simona De Silvestro, 37, former Sauber Formula 1 test driver, has officially qualified and will race for Italy in both the monobob and the two-man bobsleigh as a pilot.
Her name is well known to racing fans. De Silvestro built her reputation in the United States, with 71 IndyCar starts between 2010 and 2022. Her strongest season came in 2013, highlighted by a podium finish in Houston, before moving on to experiences in Formula E and Australia’s Supercars Championship. In November 2024, she also returned to a Formula E cockpit for an all-female test at Jarama.
Her connection to Formula 1 dates back to 2014, when she joined the Sauber programme as an “affiliated driver” and completed a test at Fiorano with a single-seater from the Swiss team. That experience was part of a pathway that could have opened the door to a place on the Formula 1 grid in 2015, before that route ultimately came to an end with the separation between driver and team.
Today, the target is very different: the ice. In a social media post following her qualification for the Games, she wrote: “We officially did it. We’re going to the Olympics. Proof that a little bit of madness, combined with faith, can make the impossible real. It all started with a dream I wasn’t afraid to chase. I can’t wait to represent Italy at Milan-Cortina 2026.”
She herself explained the reasons behind this choice in a recent interview with Corriere delle Alpi, talking about her connection to Italy and how the Olympic idea developed over time. “The Olympics have been a dream for me for a long time. I thought about bobsleigh and started getting in touch with that world,” she said. Speaking about sporting ambitions, she added: “I believe we can get close to the top ten.”
In practical terms, De Silvestro will compete in the monobob, a single-athlete sled, and in the two-man bobsleigh, with a two-person crew. Technical skill and speed remain crucial, but the physical aspect also plays a major role. She has underlined this herself, explaining that the toughest challenge was “building” the necessary power and strength.
De Silvestro also keeps a foot in motorsport as a commentator, but her focus is now clearly marked in both her diary and the calendar: Milan-Cortina 2026. It is an opportunity for a former Formula 1 tester to try to rewrite the ending of her story, racing this time on a very different kind of track.
It is not, however, the first time this has happened in history. There is a notable precedent linking motorsport and bobsleigh at the Olympic Games: Alfonso de Portago. The Spanish marquis, a Ferrari Formula 1 driver in the mid-1950s, was also a high-level bobsleigh athlete. At the 1956 Cortina Winter Olympics, he finished fourth in the two-man bobsleigh, missing out on a podium by just a handful of hundredths, before taking his revenge at the World Championships the following year.
A rare and almost unrepeatable crossover that now becomes relevant again with Simona De Silvestro: the same “double life” as a speed specialist, the same pull of Olympic Italy, but with a modern trajectory that starts in Formula 1 and ends on the ice of Milan-Cortina 2026.
Leave a Reply