Amanda
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Posts: 1,739
Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff
Who is YOUR Doctor?: 9 (Christopher Eccleston 05)
Current F1 Driver?: Jenson Button
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F1
Jul 4, 2014 17:06:46 GMT
Post by Amanda on Jul 4, 2014 17:06:46 GMT
I have to agree.
The thing is that there ARE fast women in racing but women in racing is in a minority. Is it because its a boys club? I don't think it is, to be honest personally most of the women I've met who want to work in F1 always wanted to be managers, media players, engineers etc. Not many want to be F1 drivers but plenty wanted to be in F1. Now that will no doubt change and we're seeing it with more and more women climbing up the field.
What is always going to be the problem is that F1 has a limited amount of seats.
We have 22 drivers on the grid.
Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa are all veterans of the Schumi years, they all started over a decade ago in the sport. You aren't going to throw any of them out to replace them with a rookie, you'd fight to have one of them in the team!
That is 4 of the 22 seats gone until either they have a string of terrible results or retire naturally from the sport.
18 seats left.
Now we also have our new guard. Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo.
All champions or future champions. So another four gone.
14 seats left.
You always need quite a reasonable driver in your team as well, the forever midfield team mates etc so the likes of Romain Grosjean, Nico Hulkenberg, Valtteri Bottas, Sergio Perez, Adrian Sutil, Pastor Madonado, Kamui Kobayashi... Even Kevin Magnussen has elevated himself to a "possible star" so that is what another 8 seats?
6 seats.
And I'd like to point out that of the 6 remaining drivers the only one I'd say wasn't F1 material is Max Chilton, but you always need a slow person. No doubt Bianchi, Ericsson etc will make names for themselves.
So 6 seats. Now out of those 6, 4 of them are seats that you have to work twenty times harder to impress in. I personally thought Lucas di Grassi did wonders at Virgin racing but they let him go after one year and no other F1 team has looked at him since, he's one of the best F1 drivers that never really got a chance in my mind.
You are down to possibly two out of 22 seats that year in year out will probably change and not belong to the back of the field teams. 2! Now will they go for experienced drivers like Alguersuari who have proven to be DAMN good drivers or will they go for an unknown? Will they opt for money or will the lost out on money and go for an unknown?
Susie Wolff is in her thirties, no matter what the BBC babble on about her career has not lit the world on fire, her DTM experience was meh and she hasn't driven competitively in two years! I don't care if it sounds mean but she is only there because her husband put her there! Without Toto and I don't think we'd have a Susie in a test position.
There are women out there who deserve a F1 seat, but it won't all come down to their sex. There are a LOT of drivers who deserve, at the least, a chance in F1. Some who have BEEN in F1 deserve a second chance! F1 grids don't tend to change dramatically, they change gradually but the same old same old faces end up being new same old same old faces. Michael, Mika, Damon and Jacques made way for the Fernando's, Kimi's and Jenson's with a bit of a overlap. The Fernando's, Kimi's and Jenson's will fade away and the Jules, Nico's and Daniels (of all kinds) will get their chance. The midfield will be where the biggest changes come the most often but a good driver once proven can return so Alguersuaris, di Resta's etc should never be counted out.
Slowly the people change but not that much and not that fast and that isn't bad! Would you want Vettel to have been kicked out after his first year in place of someone new just to give people a equal chance? No because you'd have missed out on one of the greatest drivers there is!
I'm not sure what the point of my rant is about to be honest but as a women who just supports drivers no matter what their sex I get fed up of people making it out that someone like Susie Wolff will give hope to women. When the balance in lower formulas who don't care who their driver is aslong as they are fast swings to 50/50 then we'll see a big change. Susie being gifted her place in a team then being used as a marketing ploy (which Claire Williams pretty much admitted too! She isn't their third driver so should never have been given a testing date! It should be Felipe Nasr or however you spell his name!) is not something that will make me jump for joy!
The problem with women at the moment getting into F1 isn't so much that people don't believe they belong its because they are in a minority for whatever reason (yeah alright attitudes towards female drivers have only just recently really changed but it hasn't stopped them in the past from getting into F1 has it?) and there hasn't been one that has risen so high so fast like a Hamilton or Vettel that it was inevitable they'd be in F1.
And I really mean that! When they were coming up the ranks all you heard was about them and the others around them (Kubica and co) but I've not really ever heard a women so highly rated, it is usually "look at us how forward thinking we have a women" and then they do a decent if not amazing job behind the wheel. Which is great.... But until as I said half the field are women doing a decent job then they are obviously going to be in the minority of people being picked for F1 when the AMAZING drivers (and I'm not saying a women couldn't be one of them I just don't think any are right now) and the majority of the alright drivers are male.
There are a few women I could see getting into F1 in the future but unfortunately there are also a lot of male drivers who I think should be in F1 as well as the female counterparts. Not many of either sex will get in.
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