Emma Raducanu — an unlikely petrolhead

I honestly think if I had stuck at it, I could have been pretty good,” Emma Raducanu says. She is musing about how things might have panned out had she chosen motorsport as a career instead of tennis. Rather than seeming arrogant, her assessment comes across as honest and confident. That’s because she knows that success isn’t only down to God-given talent. “I’m extremely determined,” she says. “Whatever I do I’m competitive, so I will invest hours and hours into thinking about it when I’m not actually practising. So yeah, I think whatever I would have done I would have given it a good go.”
What’s surprising about this is not her drive and determination but the idea that someone who looks as natural as she does on the lawns of Wimbledon could have been just as successful in a helmet and fireproof overalls.
She started karting aged six at the suggestion of her father “to try and make me less shy as I was quite introverted”, she says. “It was character-building and giving me loads of skills. Karting was one thing I tried and motocross the other, but then tennis took up too much of my time.”
The perilous worlds of go-karting and motocross would not be every parent’s idea of a character-building activity for a child not yet in double digits, but Raducanu proved her mettle: at Buckmore Park, a karting circuit where future Formula One stars cut their teeth. “I came second in a race out of 40 boys, so I was pretty pleased,” she says.
Then, a short while later, aged 18, she burst on to the international tennis scene by winning the 2021 US Open in New York and became the first qualifier to win a grand slam and the first British woman to win a grand slam since Virginia Wade in 1977. Next she won BBC Sports Personality of the Year and was awarded an MBE. Naturally, for such a young talent, brand ambassadorships soon followed, for Tiffany, Vodafone, Dior and Porsche — the last of which particularly thrills her because it allows her to revisit her racing past and drive her favourite car, a Porsche 911 GT3 RS.
When she was a child, Raducanu happily went with her father to the race track. She has an abiding memory of seeing fans standing up, queueing in the rain to see the cars in action. “So when I came back to Brands Hatch after the US Open and I got to go on the other side of it, it was so cool.”
The “other side of it” involved racing fast cars around the circuit with the likes of the former F1 driver Mark Webber. “We were there for an hour training and I thought, OK, I’m not going too slowly,” Raducanu says. “I was pretty pleased with the progress I’d made. And then he just came in cold and absolutely took off … it was just so impressive.”
F1 and tennis are solo sports, and Raducanu sees parallels in the approach and mentality required to succeed. “I would say both are about fine margins and risks. People don’t really realise how small the margins are between losing the first round and winning the tournament. The similarities, I think, are being brave, taking risks and having mental strength and stamina. Mental endurance is something that people underestimate in tennis.”
Raducanu will require all those traits in the coming months. In the past year she has spent a lot of time in rehab, recovering from a run of injuries that has hampered her progression. Requiring surgery on her wrists and one of her ankles has been far from ideal, but the 21-year-old has been using her recovery time to paint and learn the piano.
With Wimbledon approaching, she is hoping that 2024 will mark a return to form. What that means, she says, “has changed a little from the start of the year to now. Obviously when you first come out of injury, you’re dying to compete and play as many tournaments as possible. But I think the best thing for me this year is to take time to work on developing actual skills … if I build the strongest foundations now, they won’t go away in pressure situations. And if I play fewer tournaments to make that happen, I think for this year that’s the best idea to go with.”
And in that spare time perhaps she can enjoy a more leisurely pursuit — such as driving fast cars.