Sabine Schmitz was born on 14 May 1969 in Adenau, Rhineland-Palatinate, West Germany, the youngest of three daughters. Her parents, Uschi and Ernst Schmitz, owned and ran the Hotel am Tiergarten — a hotel and restaurant located within the perimeter of the Nürburgring Nordschleife in the village of Nürburg, just 300 metres from the circuit. Grand Prix legends including Juan Manuel Fangio and Nelson Piquet had stayed at the family hotel. Sabine took her first laps of the Nordschleife at six months old, in the back seat of her father’s BMW. By 17, she was sneaking the family car onto the track, telling circuit attendants she was 18.

After leaving school, Sabine trained as a hotel manager and qualified as a sommelier (wine specialist) — skills intended for the family business. She also obtained a helicopter pilot’s licence in 2004. Racing beckoned irresistibly: she first competed in karting and the Ford Fiesta Mixed Cup (winning the championship in 1992), then in the BFGoodrich Endurance Championship.

Racing as “Sabine Reck” (her first husband’s name), she made history in 1996 as the first and only woman to win the 24 Hours Nürburgring outright, co-driving a BMW M3 E36 with Johannes Scheid and Hans Widmann. She repeated the feat in 1997. In 1998 she became the first female champion of the VLN (Nürburgring Endurance Series). She was also BMW’s works test and racing driver, and a factory driver for Porsche.

Her global profile exploded in 2004 when she appeared on BBC’s Top Gear, beating Jeremy Clarkson’s Nürburgring lap time in a Ford Transit van — becoming an instant cult figure. She returned to Top Gear repeatedly and became a full co-presenter in Series 23 in 2016.

Away from Top Gear, she co-hosted the German motoring show D Motor, founded Frikadelli Racing with her husband Klaus Abbelen, operated the legendary Nürburgring Ring Taxi (carrying paying passengers at race speeds around the Nordschleife in a BMW M5), and ran the Fuchsröhre restaurant in Nürburg. In July 2020 she revealed publicly that she had been battling cancer since late 2017. She passed away on 16 March 2021 in Trier, aged 51.