Susie Wolff, Female Drivers and Formula One

[Fenderman]

This was meant to be just a quickie about Danica Patrick and Katherine Legge but I got carried away but what he heck ...

First off, I've deleted what I was going to say about Patrick as it's mostly been said by others above. I will however say that, of the two, Katherine Legge was the better racer. Maybe she still is but I haven't seen much of either women race in the past couple of years.

Legge was pretty impressive to watch in the 2006 Champ Car season, very fast and pulling off some nice, confident and well timed moves (don't ask me which ones 'cause I'm getting old and forgetful) That is until round twelve at Road America. On lap 45 she turned in for the very fast turn 11 kink just as the rear wing fell off of the car. It was hairy enough to watch on the box as the car appeared to disintegrate in a shower of carbon fibre as she piled into the barriers. If it was that horrible to watch, thousands of miles away on a 28" TV screen, heck knows what it was like to be in the car. If I remember correctly, she narrowly missed hitting a bridge at that part of the circuit and the consequences of hitting that don't bear thinking about. So, as it happens, Katherine wasn't physically injured in the crash. However, and this is only my opinion as an armchair enthusiast, I have a feeling that psychologically that prang shaved the edge off of her confidence and aggression.

To me she was a different driver in her rookie season, catching my eye from race one at Long Beach, as she qualified on the back row and finished eighth in a nutty race that saw nearly half the field screw up and prang or break their cars. I confess that I didn't get to see all of the following season (2007) but in the races I did catch, Katherine didn't seem to have the same pace, consistency or commitment and I, to be honest, I don't remember any stand out drives at all.

Katherine Legge is now 34 years of age so I don't see her coming back to F1, although I do think she ought to try her hand at a GT or Le Mans series. Nevertheless, I think she proved that a woman can race open wheelers and it really is just a matter of opportunity. If the Hamilton video that Greenlantern101 posted elsewhere is anything to go by then there is hope for women in F1. My only worry is that Susie Wolff (and this is not meant as a light against her in any way) may not achieve enough to help the cause.

 

[marksawatsky]

In my experience, to get good results in motorsports, it takes a large amount of brains and bravery in equal parts. The women I see racing at my track usually lack bravery, the self preservation instinct is just too great. Once in a while we get a female who is fearless but she is rarely smart enough to pull off the moves she is attempting. Most guys have plenty of bravery, they plant that gas pedal firmly to the floor and hold there until impact is imminent. The smart ones figure out what works and what doesn't and lap times improve. We have a joke at Speedworld, and there's a lot of truth in it: "guys crash because they refuse to use the brakes, girls crash because they can't find the brakes".

The following comparison might be a little awkward but bear with me. Height plays an important factor in the National Basketball Association but there are plenty of players shorter than 6 feet that have had brilliant careers playing basketball. They had to work harder and smarter than the guys who had the height advantage and maybe they never won any slam dunk contests but they still put points on the board. Women can be great drivers but they have to work just a little harder at it. I think any woman who does well in motorsports had to get a little farther outside their comfort zone than the guys, and I applaud them for it.

The previous post has been read and is approved by my wife

 

[Jen]

Strap her child to the front of the car and tell her she has to complete the course in a set time to release him/her and you would have the fastest driver on the grid!

 

[rufus_mcdufus]

I think perhaps attitudes to F1 drivers were different up to the 80s or so. I sometimes think the attitude to the extreme danger was almost a hangover from the fighter pilots of WW2! We expected them to get hurt or die, and so did they. To me this is fairly tied in with the 'maleness'' of the whole scene. I'm not sure 'machismo' is quite the right word.. But was F1 institutionally sexist back then? I'm not so sure. If a brilliant female driver had come along then I don't she would have been rejected by most fans (perhaps the few really neanderthal ones). I suspect what was lacking then was opportunity - perhaps the largest being social attitudes to becoming an F1 driver putting women off.

I'm really curious though as to why we aren't getting more female drivers now? Opportunity in the western world is (debatedly) pretty much equal now. Many F1 drivers still come from wealthy backgrounds (and probably always will) and there's just as many daughters as there are sons from such familiies. Becoming an F1 driver requires total dedication from an early age. Could it be males are just more single-minded towards their career? I really hope the number of female karting drivers referred to earlier will result in female drivers in F1 later down the line. I'm hesitant to suggest positive discrimination as that's usually a bad thing IMHO, but then as mentioned before discrimation due to bringing money to the team etc. is rife in F1 so perhaps teams should have a quota of female drivers on the young driver training programmes? Maybe some already do.

 

[Fenderman]

Um, maybe not Jen . More likely we'd get a full house of crushed nuts, black eyes and a broken nose followed by a stretch in jail for attempted infanticide!

 

[soccerman17]

Katherine Legge is now 34 years of age so I don't see her coming back to F1, although I do think she ought to try her hand at a GT or Le Mans series. Nevertheless, I think she proved that a woman can race open wheelers and it really is just a matter of opportunity..

She's racing Formula E for Amlin Aguri alongside Antonio Felix da Costa. I think its a great opportunity for her but Felix da Costa might make her look bad. Not that she is I just think he's really really fast.

Danica Patrick was a world class open-wheel oval racer. Road courses not so much. Legge was the other way around so its hard to compare the two. But I do think Simona is better than both.

 

[Fenderman]

Just remembered what Katherine was doing a little while ago. Here she is in action in the DeltaWing - with a very complementary commentary:

 

[Fenderman]

... and here she is in practice at Sebring ...

 

[Fenderman]

So, now I have to retract something I said earlier with regard to her confidence and aggression. In the first clip above she managed to keep the faster prototypes at bay for most of stint in the DeltaWing against all expectations. Although she lost out her team mate led again later only to suffer the same fate. In the second clip - the practice lap - note how she gives it full welly on the throttle as she clips the apexes. Whatever I thought she might have lost, methinks she got it back, so I apologise. She's still a handy pedaller. This next clip is from 2012 of the DeltaWing being tipped into a roll by a wayward Porsche GT. Notice how easily the DeltaWing is tipped by the contact with the rear quarter. That result is what myself and others predicted the DeltaWing would be prone to from exactly that type of contact due to the triangular layout of the wheels. The reason I mention this is that anyone driving that car after seeing that accident - as I'm sure all the DW's drivers will have seen it - must be either very brave or totally nuts!

Here it is:

 

[soccerman17]

I think a part of the problem there is how light the car is. But awesome stuff at Road America, great track, amazing car, great driving too.

 

[Jen]

Fenderman, what I was trying to say was that women are usually at their bravest when trying to protect others!!

 

[Fenderman]

Indeed Jen , That goes for blokes as well, who also like to protect their own nuts!

 

[FB]

I've just had a look through the list of drivers in Red Bull Junior team and, unfortunately, there currently isn't, and never has been, a female driver. All of the teams have systems for bringing young talent through and you would think that the commercial opportunities of having a talented, high profile female driver would be something they would want.

That said, I think Danica Patrick set back the cause of female drivers by spending as much time flouncing about in a bikini as she did in racing overalls. She's an attractive young lady but he PR team did her a great disservice by focusing more on her looks than her capabilities in a racing car. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to be serious.

Susie Wolff is a great bit of PR for Williams but she will never get a seat in a competitive team. However, Lotus have Merc engines for next season so we might have the Wollf/Maldonado "dream team" with Pastor bringing pots of peso's from his bankrupt homeland and Susie getting them the engines for free. Let's be honest, drivers have got in to F1 with less talent than Susie Wolff and with more dubious benefits to the team - Honda and Toyota used to place second rate drivers in to cars equipped with their engines so why should Mercedes be any different? BTW, Susie is fluent in German so very useful for Mercedes and Lotus' other sponsors in one of Europe's biggest markets.

 

[cider_and_toast]

I understand what you are saying FB about Danica Patrick but, if you google most F1 drivers, you'll find portrait shots of them in "modelling" routine. I think it's no different to sportsmen and women in any field.

As Motorsport has always been a mainly male environment I can understand how a lady flouncing around over a car in her skimpys may have raised a few eyebrows but the blokes have been doing it for a fair while.

I agree with you about the background and route into sport issue but a dream team, it would be more like a scream team.

 

[soccerman17]

Red Bull doesn't care about the commercial opportunities of a woman driver. They will provide the money, the drivers don't have to. All they want from their drivers is results.

 

[RasputinLives]

FB Beitske Visser was previously part of the Red Bull junior team.

I find it odd that Visser is not talked about more when it comes to the subject of female F1 drivers if I'm honest. Whilst she's not setting the world alight in World Series By Renault 3.5 she is certainly holding her own in one of the further the back teams. She is the first woman to score points in a direct F1 feeder series and, at 19, is taking the well trodden path of driver development.

She is certainly in my mind the furthest up the chain and best performing young female driver in single seater racing at the moment. I don't think she's ready for F1 but why is it she is not talked about when the likes of Wolff and Legge are discussed? Certainly confuses me.

 

[Bill Boddy]

Because she hasn't been posing in a bikini or married to an executive director of one of the teams?

I must say that I have never seen a photo of an F1 driver wearing a bikini.

 

[RasputinLives]

If someone posts that picture of Horner or Flavio right now I may delete my account.

 

[RasputinLives]

Oh and Bill Boddy I'm sure she's bern asked.

Think she wants to prove she's a racer first at least.

 

[Bill Boddy]

If someone posts that picture of Horner or Flavio right now I may delete my account.

That was a monokini not a bikini.