In her first media interview since losing her right eye in a crash during F1 testing, Maria de Villota says she has not yet decided if she wants to return to racing.
The Spaniard has been recovering from serious head injuries suffered in a crash of a Marussia F1 car back in July, in which she collided with a team truck. De Villota admits she is unsure whether racing sanctioning bodies will allow her to compete because of her injury.
"I still don't know – it's about the license," de Villota said. "There are drivers in the United States who have lost an eye and still have a license. What's true is that you lose the sense of depth, because it's both eyes that give you the perspective.
"What I'm wondering now is if my future is being a racing driver or if there's something else I have to do with my life. I still don't know what I need to do."
De Villota says she now wants to have an active role in making sure safety is improved in the kind of tests she had her accident in.
"We all want to see if there are lessons to learn from what happened, so we can avoid accidents like that in the future," she said. "My intention is to help with a view to the future, improve safety, especially in aero tests, because at the circuits everything is under control, but not in this kind of test."
She admitted she has been overwhelmed by the support she had received since the accident.
"I felt deeply loved, highly respected by my colleagues and everybody in the world of motorsport," de Villota said. "My new life goes beyond my dreams, because my dream was Formula 1 and I achieved it. I'm a driver, I feel like a driver."