I belive Adrian Sutil has a pit bloke. Not joking - He claims its so he can keep focus for the start of the race but I have yet to see him make a good start
Isn't there a GP where there's both blokes and girls on the grid holding up the driver numbers? Or am I thinking of MotoGP or something?
All that matters for any competitor to get into motor racing, at any level including F1, is that they are competitive. Of course there are physiological differences, but just as F1 has seen big drivers such as Gurney and little guys like Davidson - as well as a couple of female drivers, long ago - every driver needs to make the best of their relative strengths and weaknesses, including any psychological differences; after all, we're all different aren't we? There is absolutely no need for opinions to form based solely on the sex of a driver. It should be obvious that to make such an assumption is indeed sexist. I repeat: it is up to any individual to demonstrate the necessary competitiveness consistently, regardless of whatever physical or mental strengths that individual possesses.
I do not think we will see a female F1 driver for quite a while simply because the vast majority of females are not interested in being a F1 driver, therefore you have a very small pool of professional female drivers and with F1 being so hard to get into with only room for (currently) 24 drivers it is merely a numbers problem which will prevent there being a female racing in F1. For a female to be able to get into F1 I think there has to be a larger grassroots interest in F1 from females.
They just aren't good enough, if one is good enough, fine, but it's bad enough having pay drivers, I don't want to see slow coaches driving out there just because someone thinks it's PC. There is a reason that in most sports there is a male and female version, it's because if they were mixed the women would lose 99.99% of the time. And did you ever notice that the ones that DO get somewhere in racing are attractive? you think a minger would get a chance? such hypocrisy.
Just in case no one has noticed the female of the species is unquestionably built differently, now, for a woman to suceed in F1 the sport would have to change, as it designed for the male of the species, whenever has a female beaten a male in any physical sport head to head, I'm not saying it can't be done, but it can't be done one on one. Woman and men have evolved over millions of years to perform equally essential but different tasks, and it will take another million years of evolution for a female to win a F1 WDC.
oh, how unPC Ernie, but 100% true. The fact is women have raced in F1, and they were ****. It was just a publicity gimick, danica Patrick is an OK driver, certainly nothing special, but I doubt she'd've been given a drive if she'd looked like Jo Brand.
This may be true. However, if a woman does happen to be fast enough, however rarely it may happen, they are of course fully entitled to race. As I have said already, any such decision should be based entirely on merit and nobody, regardless of gender, should ever be felt in any way incapable or uncompetitive beforehand. - To do so would be straight-forward prejudice and everyone should be able to rise above preconceptions if and when reality shows them to be misplaced.
Cosi, what you say is undisputably true, however evolution, not me, suggests it is extremly unlikely for a female to succeed at such a physical sport, bring on the girls, I am waiting and eager to be proved wrong.
Yes Ernie, it may be unlikely, even extremely unlikely. However, I hope you can see that this is not my point. The fact that women tend to be less strong is irrelevant to whether or not any individual can achieve what is ultimately required of them to compete, however difficult that may be. For instance, I can bench-press more than my body weight but some women are stronger than me. There is an equal opportunities policy which must confront what might be termed an 'inner resistance', over and above what might be based on logic, prevailing within male dominated sport. Unfortunately those with these views are further emboldened when they feel that such views are common-place. For instance, some of the jocular views earlier in this thread are widely held by others within the sport. This helps perpetrate any prejudice that might exist because it appears to be commonly acceptable, even when these 'innocent' tongue in cheek comments are 'just having a laugh'. My point is that repeating the stereotypical 'resistance' arguments or any that might be seen in that light, helps maintain whatever prejudices may exist, regardless of how unreasonable it might sound to someone who does not mean it that way. This article is a good one and has every right to form the subject of reasoned debate, in the manner he (norro) clearly intended.
Please identify any serious female competitor who has entered F1 and who was physically capable or otherwise of being a WDC during the past evolutionary short period of 60 years of modern F1
Cosi: As you know, I like women, and would actively and openly support any female capable of achieving at the highest level in F1, but where the hell are they, is it lack of interest, desire, skill, or even male predudice that stops them, maybe you are better placed to encourage them to participate.
Just because there has not been a successful woman driver in F1 does not mean there cannot be one, before Lewis Hamilton would you of used the same argument about black drivers? I also do not think the reason behind there not being a female driver in F1 before is because they can't handle the physicality of driving a F1 car seeing as there are female marathon runner who are aerobically fitter than any male F1 driver on the grid and there are female astronauts which show that woman can cope with a large amount of g-force. No I do not think that any physical reason is preventing a woman entering and being successful in F1, I think it is more a sociological one.
