First Female F1 World Champion
Discussion
How did Pat Moss cope with her Austin 3000 back in the early 60s - a much harder and heavier car to drive than any contemporary sports or rally car. And the rallies were much more physically demanding back then compared to nowadays - with all night driving, in snow, at high altitude etc.
There are no physical or mental limitations as to why women cannot perform every bit as well as male drivers.
Lack of women in motor sport is purely down to lack of numbers and lack of interest amongst girls. End of story.
There are no physical or mental limitations as to why women cannot perform every bit as well as male drivers.
Lack of women in motor sport is purely down to lack of numbers and lack of interest amongst girls. End of story.
Eric Mc said:
There are no physical or mental limitations as to why women cannot perform every bit as well as male drivers.
Exactly, although not in F1 Michelle Mouton was able to throw the Audi Quattro and Peugeot 205 Group B rally cars around very nicely. 1982 World Rally Championship runner up (could have won if gearbox/diff failure hadn't robbed her in the season finale) she won 4 rallies in total.
And.........more recently in 2001 Jutta Kleinschmitt of Germany became the first female driver to win the Paris-Dakar Rally driving a Mitsubishi Pajero, probably one of the hardest races in the world.
Eric Mc said:
Lack of women in motor sport is purely down to lack of numbers and lack of interest amongst girls. End of story.
utter nonsense! the reason is predomminantly that motor sport is considered a mans world and is hugely sexist when it comes to teams choosing drivers. there are a good number of girls in karting and through the ranks, there are also lots of women who attend events and watch on TV and i know a good number who would love to compete, over 2000 women applied for the inital stage of the Formula Woman championship!... is that a lack of interest?!?!?
sadly the sexist approach years ago is still evident and women are not given a fair chance to compete. i recommend you read "the Pits" which gives this subject some good coverage. a team boss is much more likely to choose a fast male driver than a faster female driver. it is considered the safe option.
only very rarely will a team boss take a big chance and go for a female driver, and even in the case of Sarah Fisher, she has had to resort to glamour photo shoots to help boost publicity. Motorsport is sexist and there are far more barriers preventing women from reaching the top.
polrules said:
Missing the point a bit here - It's not that they require immense physical strength to manipulate the controls - is it not the case that an F1 car will subject the driver to immense forces sustained for the race duration? I would reckon the hardest part is not only coping with this but the amount of effort required to still be mentally sharp towards the end of a 2 hour race.
Not being sexist but the female body is not built as well as the male for dealing with this, some of the F1 drivers must be amoungst the fittest people on the planet but at the end of a race even some of them can no longer support the weight of their own head as their neck has given up. I remember Hakkinen pressing his head against the side of the cockpit so he could still look where he was going.
the female body is probably better suited. women have better hand to eye co ordination and also process information quicker than men. F1 is an endurance sport requiring stonr cardio-vascular muscles. there is no reason why a woman can not develop these strentghs to be an equal with a man. take a femal biathalon and an F1 driver and i would imagine there is very little difference between the two in terms of stamina. there are female navigators in fast jets so they can deal with the huge g forces and the pressure on their bodies. i think the issue is sexism and many people hide behind the "bodies" issue. f1 does not require short burst of energy such as sprinting and thus women could build their bodies to cope just as well as a man does in an F1 car.
perhaps it is a case of the females that have made it to F1 were not best suited to it and di not m,ake the most of their opportunity. Giovanni Amati was perhaps more concerned with her looks than her lap times at Brabham in the early nineties! I thik a dedicated woman with a clear training plan could easily hold her own on the grid.
Pablo - I beg to difffer. I do not consider what I said to be "utter nonsense".
I wholehartedly agree that there is a strong sexist thread in motor sport but fundamentally, it is an activity that does not appeal to MOST girls, whereas virtually EVERY bloke fancies himself as a latent Michael Schumacher.
I was standing up for girls when I said that there was absolutely no physical or mental reason why they could not be every bit as good as any guy, if they really wanted to. You only have to look at show jumping to see that, where girls make up a good number of the participants (maybe even the majority), they can, and regularly do, beat their male oponents.
However, in horse racing, which entails fundamentally the same skills, they are nothing like as successful. Why is that? For the same reason they are not so successful in motor sport. There are just not enough females attracted to it.
I admit that for the few girls who really do want to make their way in motorsport they do have additional hurdles to overcome in addition to the problems faced by young male racing drivers. However, the really, really determined girls do often manage to make a living out of it. I actually think the sitaution is harder for them now than it was in the past mainly because in "older" times most motor sport partcipants were amateurs. There were far more girls on the pre-war grids at Brooklands than there ever are at Silverstone.
>> Edited by Eric Mc on Wednesday 15th March 14:09
I wholehartedly agree that there is a strong sexist thread in motor sport but fundamentally, it is an activity that does not appeal to MOST girls, whereas virtually EVERY bloke fancies himself as a latent Michael Schumacher.
I was standing up for girls when I said that there was absolutely no physical or mental reason why they could not be every bit as good as any guy, if they really wanted to. You only have to look at show jumping to see that, where girls make up a good number of the participants (maybe even the majority), they can, and regularly do, beat their male oponents.
However, in horse racing, which entails fundamentally the same skills, they are nothing like as successful. Why is that? For the same reason they are not so successful in motor sport. There are just not enough females attracted to it.
I admit that for the few girls who really do want to make their way in motorsport they do have additional hurdles to overcome in addition to the problems faced by young male racing drivers. However, the really, really determined girls do often manage to make a living out of it. I actually think the sitaution is harder for them now than it was in the past mainly because in "older" times most motor sport partcipants were amateurs. There were far more girls on the pre-war grids at Brooklands than there ever are at Silverstone.
>> Edited by Eric Mc on Wednesday 15th March 14:09
well I thought Katherine was good enough to put my money where my mouth was and sponser her when she moved into single seaters from Karts (well, company money 
) Obviously had nothing at all to do with wanting to get into her pants... She has achieved some good successes in the US, but unless she gets a drive in F1 soon not a hope. Was a real shame she didn't do better in the testing recently.
Shame, lovely girl - bit of a temper on her though.
>> Edited by Davi on Wednesday 15th March 14:18
) Obviously had nothing at all to do with wanting to get into her pants... She has achieved some good successes in the US, but unless she gets a drive in F1 soon not a hope. Was a real shame she didn't do better in the testing recently. Shame, lovely girl - bit of a temper on her though.
>> Edited by Davi on Wednesday 15th March 14:18
I am interested where the additional hurdles come from for females in Motorsport. I agree with Eric that it is purely a numbers thing.
Drives have to be bought at all levels up the ladder (including F1?). Most teams will chose the fastest person available, providing that they can pay. A female raising money, certainly at the upper end of the spectrum, will have a much better chance than a Man, so I would say that the sexism is the opposite way around to what is being aluded to here.
PVK have openly stated that Miss Legge (whatever her considerable talent) got the nod over quicker drivers as she is "Marketable"
Drives have to be bought at all levels up the ladder (including F1?). Most teams will chose the fastest person available, providing that they can pay. A female raising money, certainly at the upper end of the spectrum, will have a much better chance than a Man, so I would say that the sexism is the opposite way around to what is being aluded to here.
PVK have openly stated that Miss Legge (whatever her considerable talent) got the nod over quicker drivers as she is "Marketable"
Sarah Playfair was instructing at the East Fortune track day a couple of weeks ago, had a chat with her.
Like everyone else not in 'elite' motorsport, everything is down to chasing sponsorship, donations, cash, anything, and it takes a combination of skill and cash to win races,
and moreso championships.
Like everyone else not in 'elite' motorsport, everything is down to chasing sponsorship, donations, cash, anything, and it takes a combination of skill and cash to win races,
and moreso championships.
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