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well in the olympics men and women compete separately, I can't consider as segregation

in the same way there must be a focus in female racers the same way for younger drivers

we would get more racing to watch and a new marketing opportunity. one of Emerson Fittipaldi ex wifes created a racing series just for women years ago with Fiat support, too bad it wasnt successfull

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

That's the thing, it already has been tried. Gaara pointed out Formula Women, which was launched with much fanfare and aplomb.

Then once it started people found out the field was comprised of 15 scrubs and Ralph Firman's sister and it quickly became boring. Any new series would find the same thing would happen again, even on an international basis.

Women have always competed with men in motorsport in the same categories. I do not know why anyone feels this has to change. Bernie's comments are largely irrelevant as he will be dead soon (and he's done far worse to women in motoring competition than to suggest that they aren't strong enough for F1 anyway).

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Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
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Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

Seems like nobody remembers Michèle Mouton whenever this whole "women can't drive on the same level as men" discussion comes up. I'm pretty confident Group-A WRC took a lot more strength, reflexes and ability to ignore self-preservation than today's bubblewrapped version of F1 does.

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Yeaa, had it not been for that transmission she'd have been champion. Back when WRC was really tough.

Rallying is rallying. Yes she was top, like there were some top women in Dutch touring car anf Formula Ford. They could do it, but why? An F1 driver is now active longer, so if a woman decides to have babies?

Find a woman with talent and the dedication, she will make it. Look to indycar. They are mostly there because they are women. Sure, they compete, but they are not super talents on driving skills alone.

It's a bit with the need and requirements in governments to have a ceryain percentage of women. It has nothing to do with equality. Look at tennis. At bigger tournaments, men play best of 5, women play best of 3. Yet, women complain about inequality in prize money? Remember when one of the Williams sisters played a match against a men outside the top 100? The guy was a smoker and beat her easily.

The point is, men are better at some stuff, women are better doing other stuff were men are not so good.

They want equality? I don't see 50% of the garbage men being female. Equality is utter nonsense in every practical way. But that doesn't mean women don't deserve respect.

You wouldn't consider succeeding in International Group-A WRC just a little more impressive than succeeding in a national touring car or fford category?



F1 drivers get injured doing stupid stuff (see: Webber, M and Montoya, J.P.) and somehow return to the sport. I don't think team owners are considering female drivers to hire and thinking 'but hmm, what if the maternal urge kicks in...'



Whereas men have such an advantage in natural abilities they don't need talent and dedication? Both sexes have their examples of being there for talent, and being there for other reasons.



Sorry, but pretty much all of this this has nothing to do with a woman's capabilities behind the wheel.

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I'd like you to expand on this, you said it two times without giving much details?

I understand the athletic differences between women and men, and it completely justifies dividing categories in athletic sports.

In artistic/precision sports, it sometimes go the opposite way (men aren't competitive against women in precision shooting sports, or so I've heard).

But I've always considered motorsports as the one and only sport where girls and boys could be crammed in together like a big orgy. The only physical problem I see is double harnesses vs boobs, but that doesn't impact competitiveness, does it?

How many karting drivers are there in a generation, worldwide? 20 000? if just 1 of the 1000 reaches Formula 1, we get a 20-driver-grid. Now if I look at the results of Finnish karting championship table, there are only 2 female drivers out of 98 drivers (incidentally the other one, Kaisa Eiristö, won the championship). So we Finns need hundreds of generations just to have a total of 1000 female karting drivers, and only then there's a slight change that one of them is good enough for F1. Naturally that hasn't happened yet. But since each year there are 100 males competing, once in a decade or so we get another Kovalainen or Bottas for F1.

Ok, this logic isn't flawless, but I wouldn't talk about inequality as no one is preventing girls from starting a racing career, and yet only few girls do.

I agree JJ, although you may want to factor in the hurdles coming from peer/societal pressure and education, which take longer to change even in the absence of any regulations.

When this subject comes up I always think of this curve (my physics teacher would kill me for not putting labels on axes, so let's say horizontal is a given ability and vertical is number of people who have that ability :-p)

Usually people agree on the principle, except some will focus on how the average man is different than the average female (top of the curves) when others will focus on anecdotal examples (where the curves meet or where they don't intersect) to make a point.

What we tend to forget is that in any given human activity, the curves will ALWAYS intersect. Always. What we really argue about usually is how far they do

If an activity is truly genderless, the curves would be perfectly superposed and you'd get a natural 50/50 distribution between men and women.

It's a cultural thing. People like siggy are doing their best to bully women out of enjoying motorsport, and to perpetuate the very strong patriarchy within motorsport culture, sadly.

That women can't cope physically is also rubbish. Look at Danica Patrick, she's pretty damn ripped, and still out of place in a stock car.

It impacts comfort, and causes pain, which in turn impacts competitiveness over two hour period, imagine trying to get through a race with someone squeezing your crutch as hard as they can, it's pretty hard to concentrate when you're in pain, ask you girlfriend if you can push down on her breasts for a bit really hard while she's trying to do something like type a letter or cook dinner, see how long it'll be before she says enough, not long I suspect unless she's into S&M.

I had a female team-mate many years ago, she was pretty dam good, actually quicker than me (which isn't saying much), she was the sister of a very good male driver, it run in the genes, but she had big 'girls' as she put it, and after about half an hour of being strapped in, it became too painful to continue, that was fine for club level events where you're only in the car for 10-20 laps, but there was no way she could run for an hour or more, she realised this, and went off to have a family instead.

Women also have less muscle mass in their upper body by nature, sure they can work on it and improve like most people, but for ever women built like Michèle Mouton there are a hundred more than are not.



Spoken like a true feminist proxy wannabe, nobody here has said anything of the sort, you're just twisting it to what you want us to say. There's not one person on the last two pages who's said anything remotely like Women should be excluded because they are women.

Stating a fact is not being sexist or racist or whatever (i.e. six times as many black men are jailed per 100k of the population in America compared to white folk, just because I am white and stating that FACT does not make me a racist, even though someone might want to say I am), similarly condemning siggy for his view and calling him out on it "because he's a man" (which is your whole point right? nasty man doesn't want women enjoying motorsport) is just as sexist as the sexist attitude you are (wrongly) accusing him of.

He who smelt it dealt it sexism?

I dunno, the story behind the facts are usually more telling. Stories like this one: http://www.dailysportscar.com/2015/04/0 ... pines.html



and with these cringeworthy scenes after each GP, with the podium finishers walking through the hallways lined with grid girls whose only function is to be an object, what kind of values are being perpetuated then?

I've seen enough to not get angry when someone says "equality is utter nonsense in every practical way". Equal opportunity, equal pay, equal cultural apprecation, please.

And how is that different from men? It's the same crap when female CEO's say how hard it was for them to reach their position. Don't you think men have to fight for it too? But this is completely off the topic now.

"When you are used to having priveleges, equality may feel like oppression".

Equality is a strange thing. They demand equal distribution between top functions but you'll never hear women complain that garbage collecting or mining is a male dominated sector.

True equality is getting the job based on your skills and experience, not on having an inny or an outy.

At the same time it's strange that women want equality in racing but it's generally accepted that tennis, football(soccer), hockey, ice skating etc etc is separated.
Only true integrated sport I can think of is korfball. Mixed double in tennis might be #2.

I also think the sexism in racing is hindering women from rising trough the ranks. I'm sure there is a female out there able to do a good job in F1. Maybe not championship material or even race winning but good enough.
Here and everywhere else people still consider racing a male sport so a female has to be really impressive to be respected and getting the support to move up.

It also doesn't help that people like Danica Patrick are getting overhyped by the media and thus generating hatred (probably also because she's a bitch) or people like Carmen Jorda who only moved up the ladder because of her looks (and maybe other "qualities"?).

There is a huge argument about prize money in tennis though.

Discussing with facts is not wanted.

I know it's a huge argument in tennis, and i never can understand it if they play less. Less in sets, less in time. It's like two persons work the same job, but the woman only has to work 3 days in a week and the man 5. I'm not sure what kind of twisted equality is that. It would be interesting if the entrance tickets would be the same. But then the price of the ticket is off. But this i dont know.

Pretty much the same with women in upper management. I know the 'old men's club' and yes, it's stupid. But it's just as stupid that a woman gets a job just because she is a woman. The quality of the work isn't even considered anymore. I've seen this up close and it's stupid. But hey, equality for all. But not in the dirty jobs. Oh no. You don't hear the woman demanding those jobs. Historically, women if they worked, worked part-time jobs. Most still do.

Equality is a fantasy. Nobody is the same (unless you have an identical twin). I happen to be good at math and with numbers in general. Other people are not. Should I know demand an artistic job somewhere because I'm a man in an industry with significant more woman then men? How is the reverse then acceptable and even agressively promoted?

There is a right person for any job. Men or woman, Muslim or atheist, black or white should never matter. Haven't we learned anything??

The point of equality of not giving someone a job or a role because nobody of that gender has it.
It's about giving mean and women the same opportunities and the same likelihoods of being able to obtain the same things and be paid equally.

Also, you talk about the "dirty jobs". Do you think men want to be miners and garbage collectors? They don't, but they are. If women don't go to those jobs it's because they don't want to, like with anything.

How hard is it to comprehend that both men and women are capable of doing the exact same things and, therefore, should be paid the same for what they do?

2016, the flame wars returns. This time it's all about gender equality. In racing but mostly in general. I should have added this to the poll option.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

maybe if the parents could ask their little girls if they want to race karts at early age we could see more women in racing in the future

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now