'Formula Equal'

[SBF]

Ex-BAR team boss Craig Pollock is aparrently bidding to field a "gender-equal team" called Formula Equal, with a 50/50 gender split of male and female staff at all levels of the organisation.

This has been in the works since 2018, and Pollock has had to be very careful about who he speaks to in F1 to avoid leaks over the past 4 years.

Aparrently the team will be "Gulf based" so potentially has significant financial resources.

https://the-race.com/formula-1/ex-bar-boss-plans-e...


More information to follow in "the near future".

[sparta6]

He doesn't mention it being a Meritocracy.

Good luck to him

[ChocolateFrog]

Sport is great at weeding this sort of stuff out.

When the difference between winning and being an also-ran is a fraction of 1% building a team based on anything other than performance is creating quite the extra hurdle.

[realjv]

Can't see it myself. The 50/50 split strikes me as a sales gimmick that will never actually be fulfilled but instead will very quickly become 'an aspiration' and then will be dropped all together. Assuming this gets beyond the blue-sky wishful thinking phase.

Clearly nobody is going to submit an expression of interest for setting up a new F1 team and state that they are going to have discriminatory hiring practices.

[Eric Mc]

I thought the whole point of competitive sport was to be UNEQUAL.

[Evercross]

SBF said:

Ex-BAR team boss Craig Pollock....

Pollock is a BS merchant and a parasite who got extremely lucky when he persuaded Jacque Villeneuve to be his cash-cow. This is pure puff and not worthy of any discussion. It is just him trying to appear relevant again - a fishing expedition hoping to ride on the back of rumoured bids by middle-eastern interests to buy F1 from Liberty, hoping to serve them with something to make their bids more politically appealing.

Edited by Evercross on Wednesday 29th March 12:02

[Pixelpeep Electric]

Eric Mc said:

I thought the whole point of competitive sport was to be UNEQUAL.

profound, and also true!

I guess 'everyone gets a prize' is to blame here.... we can just enjoy watching people compete, but no winning, no standouts, no exceptional performances.

[realjv]

Evercross said:

SBF said:

Ex-BAR team boss Craig Pollock....

Pollock is a BS merchant and a parasite who got extremely lucky when he persuaded Jacque Villeneuve to be his cash-cow. This is pure puff and not worthy of any discussion. It is just him trying to appear relevant again - a fishing expedition hoping to ride on the back of rumoured bids by middle-eastern interests to buy F1 from Liberty, hoping to serve them with something to make their bids more politically appealing.

Edited by Evercross on Wednesday 29th March 12:02

With F1 teams/entries now having stratospheric values and revenue sharing making break even operation easier than ever we might be entering a 'golden era' of BS Merchants, parasites and egotists.

[Sandpit Steve]

I think I’d be looking to Andretti and GM, if I were trying to find reliable partners in a new F1 team.

While there are ladies in every role in F1, except for drivers, are there enough to make up half a team?

[TheDeuce]

The results would be laughable from a team assembled of people that are chosen for any other reason than being the best person available for the job. It would be spectacularly bad.



This strikes me as the sort of idea only pursued by someone looking to drum up investment, enjoy the flow of cash into their pockets and some positive media attention and then a few years later announce that they've had to give up on the whole idea because [insert face saving reason] and sadly all the cash put in so far had been used up on business expenses and salaries. Only a madman (or lady madman ) would actually carry through with such a scheme.

[TheDeuce]

Sandpit Steve said:

I think I’d be looking to Andretti and GM, if I were trying to find reliable partners in a new F1 team.

While there are ladies in every role in F1, except for drivers, are there enough to make up half a team?

Probably not. But even if there were, all those ladies are employed by their existing teams because they were chosen as the best person for the job by those teams - so it seems unlikely all those teams will want such employees to disappear for the sake of some bizarre and patronising social experiment..

[oyster]

Pixelpeep Electric said:

Eric Mc said:

I thought the whole point of competitive sport was to be UNEQUAL.

profound, and also true!

I guess 'everyone gets a prize' is to blame here.... we can just enjoy watching people compete, but no winning, no standouts, no exceptional performances.

Rubbish.
What's to blame is that despite no major obvious physical characteristics to make them unequal, there is still a massive under-representation of women in F1 - highlighted clearly by having no female drivers (and not having had one for decades).

[Sandpit Steve]

TheDeuce said:

Sandpit Steve said:

I think I’d be looking to Andretti and GM, if I were trying to find reliable partners in a new F1 team.

While there are ladies in every role in F1, except for drivers, are there enough to make up half a team?

Probably not. But even if there were, all those ladies are employed by their existing teams because they were chosen as the best person for the job by those teams - so it seems unlikely all those teams will want such employees to disappear for the sake of some bizarre and patronising social experiment..

Well quite. They’d need about 400 women, which would likely clear out not just every F1 team, but half of the advanced engineering companies in the UK. Unless they cheat the numbers, by hiring 100% women for the more traditionally female roles in marketing and catering, alongside a load of back office roles in finance, HR, travel etc. That smiley Kiwi physio we discussed on another thread, might be after a job too.

I’ll go with your other theory, that he’s trying to find a way to get his hands on some money.

Edited by Sandpit Steve on Wednesday 29th March 14:34

[sociopath]

Sandpit Steve said:

TheDeuce said:

Sandpit Steve said:

I think I’d be looking to Andretti and GM, if I were trying to find reliable partners in a new F1 team.

While there are ladies in every role in F1, except for drivers, are there enough to make up half a team?

Probably not. But even if there were, all those ladies are employed by their existing teams because they were chosen as the best person for the job by those teams - so it seems unlikely all those teams will want such employees to disappear for the sake of some bizarre and patronising social experiment..

Well quite. They’d need about 400 women, which would likely clear out not just every F1 team, but half of the advanced engineering companies in the UK. Unless they cheat the numbers, by hiring 100% women for the more traditionally female roles in marketing and catering. That smiley Kiwi physio we discussed on another thread, might be after a job too.

I’ll go with your other theory, that he’s trying to find a way to get his hands on some money.

Not even slightly true. Far more women in advanced automotive research than that.

[Sandpit Steve]

sociopath said:

Not even slightly true. Far more women in advanced automotive research than that.

Okay, I was being a little flippant, but had visions of every woman engineer at Airbus handing in their notice on the same day, and the management wondering why the hell that just happened!

[LukeBrown66]

Pollock is renowned for doing stuff like this, I would not believe a word of it, the sport does not miss him one bit I would imagine!

[anonymous-user]

I think it is unfair that as a 49 year old male with zero racing experience and zero money I am excluded from top level motorsport. I have as much right as anyone else to drive the car so I think it is discriminatory that I don't see anyone like me racing and being a role model to people like me.

I demand I am given a drive immediately.

[105.4]

oyster said:

Rubbish.
What's to blame is that despite no major obvious physical characteristics to make them unequal, there is still a massive under-representation of women in F1

Besides for the fact that kg for kg, women are physically weaker, with lower natural testosterone levels, in a sport where the tiniest fraction of a percent can be the difference between winning and finishing outside of the top ten.

But yeah, besides the glaringly obvious differences, there are no differences at all.

[Evercross]

TheDeuce said:

This strikes me as the sort of idea only pursued by someone looking to drum up investment, enjoy the flow of cash into their pockets and some positive media attention and then a few years later announce that they've had to give up on the whole idea because [insert face saving reason] and sadly all the cash put in so far had been used up on business expenses and salaries. Only a madman (or lady madman ) would actually carry through with such a scheme.

Nail on head. Pollock has pulled this scam before (see P.U.R.E engine development program/vapourware).

[anonymous-user]

105.4 said:

oyster said:

Rubbish.
What's to blame is that despite no major obvious physical characteristics to make them unequal, there is still a massive under-representation of women in F1

Besides for the fact that kg for kg, women are physically weaker, with lower natural testosterone levels, in a sport where the tiniest fraction of a percent can be the difference between winning and finishing outside of the top ten.

But yeah, besides the glaringly obvious differences, there are no differences at all.

Oh and the inconvenient truth that none of them have ever done well enough in a feeder series such as F2 or F3 to acquire enough points to get a super licence.

If you are spending £140 million a year on an F1 team surely you are going to field the best drivers you can on ability and talent rather than trying to meet some woke agenda?