Two woman - one blonde and pretty, one podium finisher

https://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blog...nde-pretty-one-podium-finisher-162724579.html

Interesting article here documenting the respective careers of Simona de Silvestro and Susie Wolff. Both of them are of course getting Friday runs later in the season, and Simona is increasingly being tipped to step up to F1 in 2015.

So what do we think?

I do rate Simona quite highly from IndyCar, moreso than Danica, and I for one hope that she does show everyone up when she does take part, especially Susie, who has no right to be getting the publicity she has been getting...

 

Simona was behind Seb Bourdais, that phenomenal guy that drove for Toro Rosso but was dropped for sucking too much. She does have more potential though, being only 25. Susie is 31, realistically the only reason she'd get into F1 is marketing (and her husband being affiliated with the team). Also, the fact she never finished above 7th in a DTM race is rather unimpressive. Gary Paffett has won multiple DTMN races and been runner up in the championship twice but has never gone further than a test driver for McLaren.

I have no problem with female racing drivers, I just feel they should be there on merit rather than because they are women. Crashtor is an example of someone being in the sport for financial reasons and he's making Lotus look like a laughing stock, and he won GP2, is there any REAL evidence that either of these two ladies are capable of the step up required to grab one of the few F1 seats that is going to be available in 2015?

 

They won't be any worse than some of the drivers on the grid, but any female that gets into F1 will always have to overcome the perception that they are there just for a marketing exercise.

 

Have you noticed that the only female racing drivers to get any sort of recognition are the ones that are photogenic? It doesn't seem to matter that they're completely out-classed and none of the 'famous' ones have got anywhere close to winning a title. Out there is a woman good enough for F1, for her sake I hope she's attractive because otherwise she won't get in.

As to Bourdais, he won 4 indy titles on the trot, that doesn't make him suck.

 

Agreed some of the current crop are shockingly bad. There's quite a good crop in GP2 though, so it'd be nice to see them come up. On the subject of women and earning it, there's currently a Spanish driver in GP3. That's definitely a good sign, GP3 -> GP2 -> F1 is definitely the best route I'd guess so getting women into the feeder series will both increase exposure of women in racing and also give those there some of the best experience possible

 

Stoddart certainly hasn't made an arse of herself in the two tests she has had for Williams (aside from her early spin last time out). Barcelona was also the first time she had driven the new type of F1 car.

Not super quick, but certainly able to put in representative times against the others.

 

That woman is 25 and somewhat useless...she has finished 17th and below in every race she had competed in at GP3 level, except one (a 13th place finish at Valencia in 2012). Somehow I wouldn't hold your breath on her getting into F1

 

Katherine Legge also showed well in Indycars for a while, but is unfortunately now more remembered for walking away from a horrific crash at Road America.

She did race in DTM and was average, but DTM is hardly a yardstick as lots of drivers seems to struggle for no apparent reason.

 

Yes he did, you're right. But IndyCar and F1 are very different. Montoya said in a piece for Sky that what sets F1 cars apart are their agility. IndyCar series does involve circuits with corners, but the driving is still very different which may go some to explain why he did badly over here, and F1 drivers have struggled to adapt to IndyCar.

 

Shame, breathing has resumed.

 

True, it did bring Paul Di Resta to the forefront though.

 

I think a lot of the problems with the perception of STR's drivers is that they're compared to the others who have driven there, which Include a 4 x WDC and Ricciardo, who I'd be surprised didn't get one sometime in the future (unless he goes all Alesi). I think most of the rest probably would've been okay in a different team.

 

Yeah, thanks DTM

I forgot that moron even exists.

Regarding the article, i'm all for women drivers, regardless of looks. If you're good enough, you're good enough, regardless of what's between your legs.

 

Quite possibly. STR have always been a bit quick to dispose of drivers. I know they are there to find the next RB driver but given the line up the big team has now what are STR going to do? They aren't going to be looking for the next WDC as they've got two strong candidates.

 

DTM seems to be such a specilaised series that judging someone solely based on that is not realistic.

As said ............ di Resta............ good in DTM........F1........... well, he was good at making excuses for himself.

Very few F1 drivers have done well in DTM. Hakkinen, Ralf, Coulthard, Petrov, etc have all shown (or are showing) that it is a difficult series and none of those were considered truly crap drivers, but based on DTM they are average.

There is also massive disparity between the cars. I think Wolff never had a current spec car and was always running 1 or 2 year old spec cars.

Until either de Silvestro or Wolff get to drive in a full weekend, the jury will always be out as Friday FP1 has so many variables so would still be hard to judge exactly how good they are, but would be easy to write them off if they were bad.

 

He wasn't THAT bad. Okay, he got beaten in 2011 and 2012 but he soundly beat Sutil in 2013.

 

It's more to do with his ego than lack of talent. Check out some old threads from this board, he was our whipping boy for many reasons.


Did you know he beat Vettel in F3?

 

Interesting article, and it'll be interesting to compare them both over the next few years.

For me, Wolff is unlikely to progress any further. In Bottas and Massa Williams have drivers they'll be keen to hold on to, and if Wolff is providing reasonable feedback as their test driver, then I suspect she may continue in that roll for several seasons. Should Massa/Bottas leave, I don't think Wolff is capable of driving to the same standard, so I can imagine Williams looking elsewhere in F1 before turning to her.

Silvestro on the other hand appears to be more talented, younger, and with a team that could promote her. Neither Sutil or Gutierrez are putting in stand-out performances at Sauber, so I can't see Sauber being too keen to hold onto them both next season. Ignoring her gender, she might be a slightly odd choice for a race seat, but with money and being Swiss there's some sense in Sauber signing her. I wouldn't see it as being much more surprising than Caterham signing Ericsson, for example.

Good luck to her.

 

Thanks for the heads up! And no, I did not know that. Then again, Robbie Kerr beat Kovalainen in '02 and look how well that went

 

Lower formula is not always a good barometer of form in F1.

If that were true, Kamui would never had got into F1, and what would we have missed during his first few years!