I cry a lot, but I am so productive

A week later, I flew to a three-day pre-season test.

It should have been an ordinary few days: laps, feedback, data, debriefs. The familiar rhythm of testing, where everything feels both urgent and repetitive at the same time. Then, during one of the lunch breaks, Hans-Jürgen Mattheis, the team manager, walked in.

At first, his expression gave nothing away.

That was what I remember.

There was no panic on his face. Just that controlled, careful neutrality people use when the news is bad and they have already decided not to frighten the room before they have to.

Then he told us Toto Wolff had been in a serious accident at the Nürburgring while trying to break the lap record.

Only later did I understand how narrowly he had escaped.

The car had hit the barrier at more than 290kph, spun through 180 degrees, and ricocheted across the track before slamming into the steel guardrail with such force that nearly every bolt was torn from the seat. It was the sort of impact that sounds impossible when described clinically and even worse when you allow yourself to picture it.

In that first moment, all I knew was that my heart had started racing.

Hans-Jürgen turned to Gary Paffett, who was effectively the team leader, and suggested that one of the drivers should call Toto to wish him a speedy recovery.

Gary barely missed a beat. He glanced at me. Yeah, good idea. Susie, you do it.

Hans-Jürgen nodded as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

Okay, Susie. I’ll send you his contact details.

And just like that, I had Toto Wolff’s number. More importantly, I had a reason to use it.

When I got back from the test, I waited until the right moment. I thought through my opening words, which sounds ridiculous now but felt very important at the time. It was only a phone call, technically. A perfectly normal, professional, well-wishing phone call after a serious accident.

Still, I took a breath before dialling.

The line clicked.

There was a pause — the kind of pause that makes you check whether you have misdialled — and then a voice answered.

Hallo? The voice was soft, accented. Russian, I thought instantly. A woman.

For a moment, I froze. Well, I remember thinking, that was fast. Toto’s last girlfriend, Miss Austria clearly hadn’t been replaced with a long mourning period. Instead Miss Austria has been replaced by Miss Moscow.

Ah — hello, I said, thrown despite myself. I was hoping to speak to Toto Wolff?

A tiny pause followed. He is not available, the voice said. He is resting.

I see, I said carefully. May I ask who’s speaking?

Another pause. Not suspicious exactly. More as though the question had to be processed, categorised, and answered according to an internal protocol.

Anastasia. I am his daughter.

That stopped me. His daughter?

Yes, she replied, with complete seriousness. Papa is sleeping. I will tell him you called.

The supposed Russian mistress dissolved in an instant.

She sounded young then, now that I knew what I was hearing. Young, formal, and very composed. There was something endearing about the way she spoke, as though she had written herself a script for answering the telephone and intended to follow it precisely.

I stumbled through an explanation: who I was, why I was calling, how we had heard about the accident and wanted to wish him well. She listened without interruption.

This is Susie Stoddart. I’m a driver with Mercedes. I just wanted to wish him well after the crash.

Another pause.

In the background, I could hear faint movement. Papers, perhaps. A television turned low. The quiet domestic sounds around a man who had very nearly killed himself in a racing car and was now, apparently, being managed by a schoolgirl with the efficiency of a hospital administrator.

I will tell him, she said matter-of-factly. He is resting. He has ice on his back and he says the pain is— She stopped abruptly.

It was the first time she sounded anything less than perfectly composed. As though she had realised she might have said too much.

He will call you later, she finished.

Before I could say more, there was a clatter, muffled German in the background, and then Toto’s unmistakable voice: 

Anastasia, have you—oh, you picked up the phone? I could hear the amusement in his voice, unmistakable even through the strain. Danke, Sternchen. 

The line rustled, and then his familiar tone came through, warm even under the strain of recovery. Susie! So kind of you to call. I didn’t expect—ah—my daughter to answer. She’s home from school this week.

I found myself smiling. Yes, I gathered. She has quite the accent.

She grew up in Moscow.Her mother is Russian.

The pieces clicked into place. School. Russian mother. The accent. The careful formality.

I didn’t know you had help screening your calls, I teased.

He laughed then.

Yes, she’s far stricter than any assistant.

In the background, I could still hear her. Papa, you have five minutes before you need to take your pills.

The efficiency in her voice made me smile again.

He asked me about the DTM car, how it was to drive, what I thought of the upcoming season. I asked him about the crash. He told me about the record attempt, about the tyre blowing, about losing his sense of smell, about how bad his back was.

It should not have been an easy conversation.

He had been in a serious accident. I was calling under the flimsiest professional pretext imaginable. His daughter had accidentally convinced me, for one mortifying minute, that I had reached a new Russian girlfriend.

And yet it was easy. Natural. Effortless.

We laughed. I did not want the call to end. Before either of us quite realised it, an hour had passed, and he suddenly remembered he was late for a meeting.

I’ve got to go, he said. But I’m coming to the presentation in Düsseldorf next week. I’ll see you there.

I hung up smiling.

And just like that, Düsseldorf took on a whole new meaning.

***

I couldn’t wait to get there.

The night before the presentation in Düsseldorf, there was a team dinner.

I had spent most of the week pretending not to think about it. That, of course, was a complete lie.

I had thought about what to wear. I had thought about whether Toto would be there. I had thought about what I might say to him if he was, and then immediately told myself to stop being ridiculous because this was a perfectly ordinary team dinner and I was a professional racing driver, not a schoolgirl waiting at a dance.

Still, there was no use denying it. I was nervous.

Not race-day nervous. That I understood. Race-day nerves had a purpose. They sharpened you. Focused you. Gave the body somewhere to put the energy.

This was different. This was butterflies. Ridiculous, uncontrollable butterflies. The sort that no amount of discipline, compartmentalisation, or stern internal talking-to could manage.

By the time I walked into the restaurant, I was trying very hard to look composed. I greeted people, smiled, took my seat, and scanned the room as casually as possible.

He wasn’t there.

At first, I assumed he was late. Toto, I would later learn, was very good at being late. Perhaps there had been traffic, or a delayed flight, or some last-minute work crisis. I kept glancing toward the door, willing him to appear and then immediately pretending I had not been looking.

But he never came.

By the time I returned to the hotel that night, the anticipation had drained out of me completely. I felt foolish, deflated, and disappointed in a way I had no right to be.

What a letdown.

The next morning, I woke up convinced there was a good chance he wouldn’t come at all. So I did what any emotionally mature woman would do under the circumstances: I decided not to make an effort.

I went down to breakfast in my race suit. No careful outfit. No overthinking. No butterflies.

At least, that was the plan. Then I saw him.

He was sitting at one of the tables, smiling and talking as if he had not caused an entire evening of silent internal drama by failing to walk through a door.

My face lit up before I could stop it.

Just like that, the butterflies came back.

I joined his table, trying not to look too pleased. He asked how the dinner had been. I asked why he hadn’t come.

He looked genuinely surprised. Apparently, he had called one of my teammates to ask where the dinner was, only to be told not to bother coming because it was boring.

Boring. I was there!

After looking forward to seeing him, after spending an entire evening wondering whether he would walk in, it turned out he had been in town all along and had simply been advised away from the one place I wanted him to be.

It was so frustrating I almost had to laugh.

But as we talked, my mood lifted. Like our first long phone conversation, it felt easy. Natural. There was none of that awkwardness that sometimes comes when you have built something up too much in your head and reality can’t quite meet it.

With Toto, reality seemed to exceed it.

Before I knew it, breakfast was over and the day had started. I had a packed schedule, including driving the car in a show run, but even while I was busy, I found myself looking for him whenever I had the chance.

During the lunch break, we ended up in a large group. Somehow the conversation shifted, as those conversations often do, toward everyone’s love lives.

I stayed quiet. That seemed safest.

Then our team manager looked at me and said, Susie, don’t you think it’s time you finally tried dating someone from Mercedes?

I forced a laugh. I could feel Toto nearby. I was suddenly very aware of him, very aware of my own face, and very determined not to look in his direction.

Well, I said lightly, there’s nobody from Mercedes.

And then Toto looked at me. He lifted both hands in the air, smiling. What about me?

Everyone laughed.

My face went scorching hot.

I could feel it happen, which somehow made it worse. I didn’t dare look at him properly. I just gave a small laugh and tried to let the conversation move on as if my entire nervous system hadn’t just caught fire.

But my mind stayed there.

Was it a joke?

Was he serious?

Was he teasing?

Was there something underneath it?

Every so often, we glanced at each other, and every time we did, I felt the question rise again.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a hectic blur. Once the presentation was over, I hoped I might see him again, but he was nowhere to be found. Eventually, I got into my car for the long drive back to Switzerland.

For the first twenty minutes, I tried to be sensible.

Then I realised I couldn’t just leave it there.

I didn’t want to spend the next days, or weeks, wondering what might have happened if I had been braver for once. I had spent so much of my life pushing through fear in a racing car. It seemed absurd that a text message could terrify me more than a start grid.

But it did.

I pulled into a fuel station, heart pounding. I typed a message. Deleted it. Typed it again. Deleted that too. Finally, I settled on something simple.

Toto, I just wanted to let you know — if it had to be someone from Mercedes, it would only ever be you. Susie.

I stared at it.

Absolutely terrifying.

I had never put myself out there like that. Not really. Not with such a clear risk of rejection. 

What if he didn’t feel the same? What if I had misread everything? What if I made things awkward? What if the next time I saw him, I had to stand there pretending I hadn’t just sent him the emotional equivalent of handing over my heart in a fuel station car park?

Before I could talk myself out of it, I pressed send.

Then I squeezed my eyes shut, threw the phone onto the passenger seat, turned up the music, and got back onto the motorway as if none of it had happened.

A few minutes later, my phone buzzed. His name flashed on the screen. My pulse shot through the roof.

I pulled into the next lay-by, took a breath, and opened the message.

That’s really nice to hear, Susie. I’m just about to jump on a plane, but I’ll call you as soon as I land.

It wasn’t wildly enthusiastic. But it wasn’t dismissive either.

At that point, that was enough to keep me alive.

The drive home felt endless. Every time the phone lit up, my stomach flipped. By the time I finally arrived home, I had gone through every possible interpretation of his message and several impossible ones too.

Then the call came through. His voice was warm when I answered.

Well, that text was unexpected.

I laughed, partly from nerves and partly because there was nothing else to do. In a good or bad way?

Good. Definitely good.

We stayed on the phone for three hours.

From that point on, we spoke every day.

On one of those early calls, he said something that would set the tone for our whole relationship: Listen, let’s not play games. I will always be honest and direct with you about how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking.

For the first time, I felt my defences being challenged in a way that did not make me want to run.

The armour I had relied on for so long was being met not with pressure, but with honesty. He was asking me to be open, and he was offering the same in return. I started telling him things I hadn’t expected to tell him.

About racing.

About the frustration of fighting to be taken seriously.

About the pink car, the compromises, the constant need to prove myself, the exhaustion of knowing I was capable of more while not always having the machinery or results to show it.

It all came out.

And he listened.

His responses were always straightforward. 

Who cares about the pink car? The only thing that matters is performance. And who cares if you wear a dress or a trouser suit? Wear what feels right to you. Be authentic. Above all, just be you.

It wasn’t that he was telling me something I didn’t already know.

I had always prided myself on being true to who I was.

But somehow, hearing it from him made me feel it more strongly. He had a way of cutting through the noise — other people’s opinions, expectations, commentary, all the endless chatter that surrounds you when you’re a woman trying to make your place in a male world — and bringing me back to the point.

Just keep going your way.

That was very Toto.

After that race weekend, we agreed I would visit him in Vienna. He was heading there to see his family, and I had constructed an entire idea in my head of what his place would be like.

Given he worked in finance, I imagined computers everywhere. Papers. Screens. Probably a mess. Definitely a bachelor pad.

As it turned out, my most urgent concern before the trip was not his apartment.

It was my face.

Whether from nerves, anticipation, or simple bad luck, I developed a massive spot on my chin just before I flew out. The kind no concealer can truly hide. 

When I landed in Vienna and came through arrivals, Toto was nowhere to be seen.

I sent him a message.

I’ve landed.

His reply came back quickly.

Sorry, I’m on my way.

That was my introduction to the fact that Toto Wolff runs late. Always.

Eventually, he arrived. Almost immediately, I noticed him glancing at my chin.

Once.

Then again.

Then again.

I tried to ignore it. Really, I did. But after a while, I couldn’t help laughing.

Listen, you can say it. I know I have a huge spot on my chin.

He let out a breath of pure relief.

Thank goodness you said something. That’s a really big spot.

We both burst out laughing. We have never really stopped making each other laugh since.

When we got to his house, I realised very quickly how wrong my expectations had been.

It was not a bachelor pad. Not even close.

Toto had an incredible eye for detail. His home wasn’t just tidy; it was immaculate. Every piece of furniture, every artwork, every design choice had been considered. Curated, even. It wasn’t only about neatness. It was about beauty. About order. About making a space feel intentional.

It surprised me.

Then again, Toto has always been full of those surprises. There is the big personality everyone sees first: the intensity, the humour, the force of him. But underneath that is a man with a deeply precise eye, someone who notices when a picture is slightly crooked, when a light is wrong, when a room is almost right but not quite.

In Vienna, he took me to his favourite restaurants, the places where waiters greeted him like an old friend. We walked hand in hand through grand old streets lined with imperial facades. Everything felt heightened somehow. Romantic in a way I had not expected and could not quite protect myself against.

I could have burst with happiness.

By the end of that weekend, the words had been said.

We were in love.

One evening, we were about thirty minutes into a film when he suddenly paused it.

I assumed he needed the bathroom.

Instead, he walked out of the room and returned with a ladder.

Without a word, he climbed up and adjusted a spotlight on the ceiling by perhaps two centimetres.

I sat there, half amused and half baffled, watching him study the angle, step down, look again, tilt his head, then make one final adjustment before nodding to himself.

That’s so much better, he said.

And that, too, was Toto.

The attention to detail.

The precision.

The need for things to be exactly right.

I remember sitting there, watching him put the ladder away, and thinking that perhaps I had found my match.

***

A few days later, I went to have Lunch with Toto in Switzerland.

By then, Toto and I were speaking every day. On the phone it already felt familiar. Natural. As if we had slipped into a rhythm neither of us had needed to learn.

So when he suggested I come to his house in Switzerland — just for lunch, nothing formal — I spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about what nothing formal meant.

I hadn’t met any of his children yet. I knew he had three: two younger ones, Rosa and Benedict, who lived in Vienna with his ex-wife, Stephanie.  And then there was Anastasia. The daughter whose voice I had mistaken for a glamorous Russian girlfriend when I’d first called after his Nürburgring accident.

Ana was at boarding school in Switzerland then, and because her mother was no longer in the picture, she spent all her school breaks with Toto. 

When he spoke about her, his voice changed. Toto is not exactly subtle by nature, but with Ana there was a carefulness to him. A gentleness. He spoke about her as though he were holding something fragile and immensely precious, while also knowing that she would object to being described as either.

That protectiveness made me nervous in a way I hadn’t expected.

I wasn’t nervous about seeing him. That part felt easy now. It was everything around him that suddenly felt unknown.

When I arrived, I sat in the car for a moment, hands on the steering wheel, trying to calm the butterflies that had apparently survived both racing cars and common sense.

Before I could knock, Toto opened the door. He was smiling. Warm, easy, familiar already. Come in, he said, stepping aside. You’re just in time. Anastasia is baking.

Baking. I had not expected baking.

Inside, the house was exactly what I had already begun to understand about Toto: Immaculate. Intentional. Books stacked neatly, a record player, a piano, carefully chosen furniture. Every object seemed to have been considered before being allowed to remain. 

And then…I saw her.

A small figure, maybe twelve years old, with pale blonde hair tied back in a neat braid and eyes so dark they reminded me instantly of Toto.

She stood in the open kitchen, sleeves rolled neatly, hair tied with a precision most adults never master. She was placing biscuits, perfect little rounds, onto a tray in exact rows. Twelve columns. Three biscuits per row. Not eleven. Not thirteen.

She looked up when she heard me, assessing with an expression far too observant for a twelve-year-old.

Hallo, she said, the same careful pronunciation I remembered from the call. I made tea.

I smiled, suddenly aware that getting the greeting wrong might feel like mishandling a live fuse. Hallo,  I echoed softly. I’m Susie.

She nodded once. I know. Papa told me. Then, with the same matter-of-fact certainty: You should sit. The tea will be ready in exactly three minutes.

There was no questioning tone. No suggestion. Just fact.

Toto gave me a small apologetic smile, though there was far more affection than apology in it. It was the smile of a man both baffled and utterly besotted by the child currently running his kitchen like a research facility.

She’s been preparing since this morning, he murmured as we sat down.

I adjusted the schedule after you changed the lunch time, Ana said from the kitchen without looking up.

Toto blinked. I said around one.

Yes, that was the problem. That’s not a time. 

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

When the timer beeped, she moved with astonishing efficiency. She poured tea, arranged the biscuits, aligned napkins, and handed me a cup with both hands, solemn as a ceremony.

I put the handle at forty-five degrees. It is the optimal ergonomic angle.

That was when I laughed.

Not at her. Never at her. But because the entire thing was so unexpected, so specific, and so perfectly itself that I couldn’t help it.

Ana looked at me sharply, as if checking whether the laugh was unkind.

So I smiled and said, Thank you. That’s very thoughtful.

Her face settled. Apparently, I had passed.

We sat together, the three of us, drinking tea and eating biscuits that were so evenly shaped I felt faintly guilty biting into them.

I tried to make conversation.  Do you like school? 

She looked up, confused by the premise of the question. I like learning. School is the location.

She tilted her head, observing the response like a scientist trying to understand a reaction.

At one point she looked up at me, studying my face like a problem worth solving. You talk to Papa differently.

My eyebrows lifted. Do I?

Yes. Most people either argue with him or agree with him. You… think.

Toto covered his laugh with his hand.

I didn’t know what to say. So I said the truth. Well, he’s worth thinking about. 

She nodded, accepting that response as though she were marking a correct answer on a test.

Later, after she’d excused herself to finish homework, precisely at the time she said she would,  Toto leaned back, watching her vanish with the same expression a man might wear while watching the sunrise: quiet awe, soft pride, and something fiercely protective.

The moment she left, I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding.

Well?

I smiled, heart steadying. She’s extraordinary. 

He looked down at the table, a small, proud smile forming.

That she is, he murmured.

That afternoon in Switzerland, with meticulously aligned biscuits, perfectly steeped tea, and a twelve-year-old who spoke like a scientist, was the moment I realised I wasn’t just falling for Toto.

I was falling for the life connected to him.

***

A few months into our relationship, Toto suggested I meet Benedict and Rosa.

They lived in Vienna with their mother, Stephanie. She and Toto had separated when the children were still very small, but he had never been an absent father. Weekends, birthdays, school events, ordinary afternoons that mattered because children remember who turns up for ordinary afternoons… he was there.

Every time.

I admired that.

I admired, too, the way he and Stephanie seemed to manage it. There was history, of course. There always is. Boundaries. The careful choreography of two adults who had once shared a life and now had to share children without making those children carry the weight of what had gone wrong between them.

From what I saw, they did that well.

It would have been easy to make things difficult. A new woman, a new relationship, two young children trying to understand where everyone belonged… there were a hundred ways it might have become uncomfortable. Instead, it was civil. The children were kept at the centre, which was where they belonged.

Joining those weekends happened gradually.

I had lived for so long like a lone wolf: race weekends, airports, hotel rooms, training blocks, discipline, independence as the default setting. My life had been mine because it had to be.

 Then suddenly there were two small faces watching me with open curiosity, entirely unaware that I had rehearsed how to greet them in a hotel lobby mirror three times before coming downstairs.

I wasn’t their mother.

They had a mother. A present one. A woman who knew their routines, their friends, their favourite foods, the exact shape of their days. I had no wish to compete with that, and no right to. What I wanted was simpler, though not necessarily easier.

I wanted to be steady. Someone kind. Someone who showed up when she said she would. Someone who did not disappear when life became busy, complicated, or inconvenient.

It took time, as it should. You do not walk into a family and immediately belong everywhere. You learn the rooms slowly. You learn which jokes are old ones, which traditions already exist, which stories began long before your arrival.

 With Benedict and Rosa, it happened in pieces: birthdays, Christmases, school plays, drawings shyly handed over, a little hand slipping into mine while crossing a street.

Small invitations. Small permissions. Over time, something settled.

Rosa and Benedict had a framework around them. Roots. Routine. A mother woven into the daily rhythm of their lives. My place with them rested alongside something already whole. There was space for warmth, affection, trust… but not replacement.

Ana was different. With Ana, nothing was simple in that way.

At first, I thought the difference was her age. She was older, no longer a small child who would simply climb into your lap or take your hand because the world was busy and adults were useful for balance. 

She was nearly a teenager, brilliant and self-contained, living in that fragile territory where independence is both a prize and a shield. She did not reach for affection. She observed it first. Evaluated it. Measured whether it stayed the same when no one was watching.

She had Toto, and the bond between them was fierce. I could see that from the beginning. 

But there was space around the edges. A space where a mother should have been part of the ordinary furniture of her life — unquestioned, reliable, present without needing to be requested.

Ana did not have that.

So with Benedict and Rosa, I learned to wait in the background until I was invited closer. With Ana, I learned something else. I learned consistency.

The same tone today as yesterday. The same patience on difficult days as easy ones. The same willingness to sit nearby without making conversation.

There is no handbook called How to Become a Stepmother to a Brilliant Teenage Daughter Who Doesn’t Need One.

If there were, I would have bought ten copies, highlighted them, annotated them, and still got half of it wrong.

Ana could organise herself. Feed herself. Pack her own bag. Solve problems and dismantle bad arguments, and correct adults with such devastating accuracy that people often mistook capability for invulnerability.

Some days, Ana spoke in clear, sharp paragraphs, her logic flawless and efficient. Other days, the world seemed to press too hard against her skin and her words became scarce, clipped down to necessities. I learned not to take silence as distance. Sometimes silence was simply peace. Sometimes it was exhaustion. Sometimes it was the only way she could remain in the room.

So I stayed in the room too. Quietly.

One evening, during one of the first times it was just the two of us in Switzerland, I learned that supervision was not as simple as closing a door and assuming she was asleep.

It was late. The house had gone still. Just quiet, the faint hum of heating pipes, and the occasional creak of wood settling into the cold.

I had made myself a cup of tea and was heading upstairs, ready to read in bed, when I noticed the window on the landing was open.

Only a crack.

Enough for the cold to slip in.

At first I thought Toto had left it open earlier. I crossed the landing to close it.

Then I saw her.

Outside. On the roof.

For one terrifying second, my heart seemed to stop completely.

Ana was sitting on the roof like a small, pale gargoyle, legs crossed beneath her, back straight, head tilted toward the sky. Completely still. Completely calm. As if this were the most reasonable place in the world for a teenage girl to be at nearly midnight.

Ana!

It burst out before I could soften it.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t jump. Didn’t even look startled.

Instead—very calmly—she turned her head toward me. Oh. Hallo.

As if she were sitting on a sofa and not three meters above a stone patio with nothing between her and a very broken leg but gravity and questionable judgement.

I opened the window completely. What are you doing out here?

She blinked at me, confused by the question. Watching the stars.

May I join you? I asked, because with Ana, asking was always better than assuming.

She blinked, processing the question, then gave a small nod. Yes. But sit here. She patted a section of roof tile slightly farther from the edge. You might not have the right balance.

I laughed despite the adrenaline.

As I eased myself out beside her, the cold bit instantly into my skin but the view made it worth it. The stars were impossibly bright, scattered like diamonds across black velvet. The kind of sky that makes you feel both small and infinite.

For a while, neither of us spoke. 

You scared me. I thought you were asleep.

I couldn’t. Too much noise in my brain.

I nodded. I understood that feeling. Above us, the night sky stretched clear and endless… clean, cold, full of constellations she could name without hesitation.

She pointed.  That one is Vega. It’s part of Lyra. Some people used it for navigation.

For a minute, we just sat there, both wrapped in the same dark sky.

Then she said, barely above a whisper, as if she wasn’t entirely sure it was allowed: I used to do this with my grandmother.

Something in me shifted. 

I didn’t lecture her about safety.
 I didn’t tell her to come inside. 

Instead, I said, Then I’m glad I get to do it with you too.