Mention the names Lella Lombardi, Giovanna Amati and Desiré Wilson to most people and they’ll assume each is a fashion powerhouse, ready to parade down the runways of Paris this spring, not that they all used to race in Formula 1.
In the history of Grand Prix racing, there have only been five female drivers and of those five, only two have ever started a race. Of those two, the grand total number of points women have scored in Formula One is 0.5. Yes, not even a full point, just half of one. To put that into perspective, even Fabrizio Barbazza has more points than more than three billion women. To add insult to this achievement, he grabbed his career points haul of two all whilst looking like a woman.
So why aren’t there any female drivers presently in F1? In a 21st century world where your minted dad can buy your way into F1 and you can grab a chair at the sport’s top table if you’re mates with the Prez, it seems bizarre that nobody from the female of the species has rolled the dice and bought themselves a drive in an utter sham of a team.
One reason often cited for why no girls have joined the grid this century is due to physically not being up to the job, be it due to a lack of height to see over their nails, muscle weakness or being unable to race one weekend every month. On the face of it they seem relevant points, until you actually engage your brain and realise that a lack of height means a greater centralisation of the driver’s mass and a lower centre of gravity, allowing teams to ballast their cars up to the minimum weight limit more efficiently, leading to better handling.
Throw in that if a woman works out she can look like this and that Sebastian Vettel raced in F1 when looking as weedy as this, and the argument that women are incapable of developing the strength to manhandle an F1 car for two hours becomes brittle at best.
If it’s not the physicality stopping women successfully entering F1 then perhaps it’s to do with perception and prejudices held? Whilst this may have been the case a very long time ago, in 2010 when companies are terrified of media perception and how they are received by the public, no company with any long term ambition to survive can exist with an openly pro-sexist or single gender only outlook. Except perhaps Playboy. Or Hooters. Or FHM.
Anyway, what kills this argument is that there are no barriers to entry for females to enter motorsport. If a girl wants to enter she has to complete all the usual procedures of getting a license in the pissing rain of some backwater track like Anglesey, before then having to stump up the big cash to fund a dream guaranteed to end in extinguishment, tears and Barclays reclaiming her house, car and liver.
Due to the scarce nature of female racing drivers, there is actually an advantage to be gained and leveraged in the form of commercial partnerships, or ‘rinsing a company for all they’re worth’ in old money. IRL’s Danica Patrick signed a $35m sponsorship deal with Motorola back in 2006 which eclipses any personal deal any F1 driver has ever enjoyed and that includes Michael Schumacher’s with his beaky Dekra hats. Companies like to associate themselves with desirable and attractive faces and Patrick as a woman fits this profile to a tee.
What good the Motorola deal has actually done Danica outside of her bank balance is questionable given that she has only won once (and that was just going round in a circle) and that the closest she has come to a full F1 seat is to be praised by truth-stretcher extraordinaire Peter Windsor, sporting director of VapourwareF1. The point however is that motorsport has never been more restricted at its top level by finances, and having something unique as a different gender to your leads companies going giddy and slinging cash and media attention your way, leading to an easier path to stardom.
So if that’s the case, that money is freely available to anyone with long hair, why isn’t the grid at least half full of women? In a sport dominated by male viewership, surely economics powered by males would gravitate towards such a situation? For me, the answer is easy. Quite simply, there aren’t any women in F1 never mind good ones, because there is little motivation to do so for most women. Allow me to get out my enormous brush to tar about 3.5 billion people with in the next paragraph.
Most women grow up wanting to pursue pastimes and hobbies women have traditionally followed – note I dare not cite more examples for fear of breaking the misogyny barrier if I haven’t already done so. With focus and interest in these alternate areas early on in life for many women (where the opposite is true for men who often follow football and cars religiously), there is already a huge advantage to boys vs. girls in terms of the numbers at even before 16 willing to try out karting for example where skills are honed.
Let’s then take those that fall through the net and want to get into motorsport regardless of this, many will fall by the way side as they become frustrated with overly-aggressive male tactics on track or become disillusioned with the male dominated social circle they would have to integrate themselves into to continue progression. Others will break off at around 18 to pursue a fruitful career of education combined with getting utterly hammered.
This then leaves you with your Susie Stoddarts of the world, thoroughly nice people but still around due to privileged financial backgrounds rather than because they’re gushing with talent. Stoddart for example has never won a car race in her life and yet enjoys a well paid DTM career with AMG Mercedes. I’m sure this has nothing to do with her fiancé being Toto Wolff, he of part HWA (tuners of DTM AMG Mercedes’ engines) owner fame.
Ahem, I digress, but the point is that there aren’t any women in F1 or many on the horizon because there aren’t enough of them competing in motorsport full stop. It’s simple mathematics and chance that if you roll the dice enough times you will get a double six and this is the case for women in motor racing’s search for talent – the dice just isn’t being rolled enough for women though. This is not a talent, prejudice or physique issue. Patrick has won an IRL race but she was only ever half decent in junior formulae, but if as many women were in motorsport as men I am sure we’d see not just a few in F1, but also competing up the front all the time. Well 3 / 4 weeks of the month at least.
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