it is not april Ecclestone calls for separate F1 series for women

[CNR]

http://www.autoblog.com/2015/03/30/e...-women-report/
"Bernie Ecclestone is full of a lot of things that we won't list here, but suffice it to say that one of them is crazy ideas. And his latest would create a separate Formula One series for female drivers.

"I thought it would be a good idea to give them a showcase," the 84-year-old F1 chief told the Telegraph. "For some reason, women are not coming through - and not because we don't want them. Of course we do, because they would attract a lot of attention and publicity and probably a lot of sponsors."

The idea would be to have a separate race for women on Sunday ahead of the main event, and though sure to arouse some controversy, it may not be quite as outlandish as it seems at first. For one thing, grands prix already typically include support races from series like the Porsche Supercup or GP2. For another, Ecclestone has long been trying to cast F1 as something of a motorized Olympics, with races taking place around the world and a proposal to replace podium trophies with bronze, silver and gold medals – and at the Olympics, men and women compete in separate events.

The difficulty would be in trying to find enough qualified female drivers to actually make up a full grid. The most promising prospect would surely be Susie Wolff, test driver for the Williams team who became the first woman to take part in an F1 race weekend in 22 years when she participated in the practice session at the British Grand Prix last year. But Wolff told the Mirror that she wouldn't be even slightly interested in taking part in such a series. "First of all, I don't know where you'd find a full grid of female drivers who are good enough. Secondly, I have raced my whole career in motorsport as a normal competitor. Why would I ever look for a race where I was only competing against women?"
"

[Warriwa]

Another money maker for the dwarf to control.

[journeyman racer]

It will last a season. The same time an all female series lasted in Australia. 1996, in Mazda 121s.

[Mark]

It's not a bad idea actually. As long as it's in real F1 cars, not some cheap single seater knock offs. Each main F1 team could be asked to run one car.

[Doc Austin]

After starting 13 cars in Australia, Bernie might want to take care of the existing series.

We had a woman's sportscar series in the US. They all drove Panoz cars and it lasted a single year.

[anfield5]

April fools!!!!

[janneppi]

Only if they have scantily clad men holding the umberellas in the grid.

[CNR]

to me it sounds like he doesn't want any ladies racing in f1

http://www.givemesport.com/560836-ma...-keep-f1-place
"When you are a team that is not in a position to fight for points or wins or championships then you can still offer something to F1 by giving a potential future star a place to start


his career or a veteran driver a place to end it."

Ecclestone an april fool 365 days a year

[Jag_Warrior]

Only if they have scantily clad men holding the umberellas in the grid.

In the interest of political correctness, I see that the WEC has done away with the grid girls from this season on.

One never knows if Bernie is being serious or just letting his mouth say whatever odd idea might be running through his head. I see nothing wrong with having female drivers in F1, or any other racing series. But just as I don't care for rich ride buyers populating too much of the field, I also have no desire to see (unqualified) token females populating the field... strictly in the interest of gender diversity or political correctness. If girls get involved and excel in the lower formulas, and then go on to make their way into F1, then fine. But to run around creating a separate series or mandating that each team support a female racer (as was suggested by a writer in some piece I read last week), strikes me as the worst kind of mandated tokenism that one can imagine.

And while we're on the subject of diversity, here's a third rail topic that the F1 world never addresses, but a blog writer did bring up some time back. To paraphrase his comments, the only place one could find a greater percentage of White people than the Formula One paddock would be a KKK meeting... or the club house at Augusta National (especially now that Tiger is side-lined). I think I roughly got that right. But one can't help but notice that over the past few seasons, almost every F1 team has hired mostly youngish, mostly blonde and almost exclusively White females to walk around behind the drivers as they do their interviews and hold the team voice recorders. Why? Since there is such an immense focus on any and all gender related topics these days, I suspect it's to present females as something other than eye candy in the F1 paddock. So... er... is it going to be called diversity or equality by the feminists and the forces of political correctness if instead of having a field that is 95% White and 100% male, we end up with a field that is 50% female, but still 95% White (let's assume Lewis Hamilton will stick around long enough to contribute that 5%)???

Having a diverse line-up is fine. But much as the European Commission has proposed gender based quotas for the boards of publicly traded companies in Europe and the Indian government has (as of April 1, I believe) mandated gender based quotas for board directors in India, mandated quotas leads to tokenism, which simply leads to mediocrity - and this is why I do not support affirmative action schemes that are based on quotas. If females put the work in and can put up the results, welcome them in. But if it's just going to be a bunch of whiners or cuties who have never, or have barely (lookin' at you, Danica) won any sort of professional level race in their lives, I'd rather see Formula One shut down and go away, if it's no longer going to be the pinnacle of motorsports.

[Jag_Warrior]

to me it sounds like he doesn't want any ladies racing in f1

http://www.givemesport.com/560836-ma...-keep-f1-place
"When you are a team that is not in a position to fight for points or wins or championships then you can still offer something to F1 by giving a potential future star a place to start


his career or a veteran driver a place to end it."

Ecclestone an april fool 365 days a year

No disrespect meant toward you. But how is it that if someone uses the traditional "his" when speaking in general terms, instead of the (now) politically correct "his or her", he's suddenly some sort of sexist??? There is a female financial writer who almost exclusively uses "her" when speaking about consumers. Is she not being sexist? Is she not ignoring the 50% of the consuming public who are not a "her"? And (big one), has she ever been called out for that? The answer to that last one is a definite "no" - the others might be up for debate. But the way in which people are expected to speak these days often produces sort of Pavlovian dog like reactions, if politically correct/socially acceptable language is not used. No offense intended. But that is true. So I'm just sayin'...

Auto racing is one of the few sports where women could compete on equal terms with men... but only if they become involved and are at least as dedicated to honing their racing skills as the men. But until we see females getting into GP3, GP2, Formula Renault or some of the other alphabet lower series formalas, and being successful, why is anyone even asking why there are no women in F1? If women didn't go to high school, would it not be just as foolish to ask why there are no women at Harvard... or Cambridge (since this is a European based board )?