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you do know I was being sarcastic right??

F1 should hire some young hotshots to run this show. Hell, even the middle-aged men here would do a better job. Start using Twitter and YouTube for starters.
I'll gladly take 1/10th of whatever they're going to pay Flavio (under the table) to tell them that.

I have a worry Flavio's solutions will be "skimpier outfits for grid girls, more buxom women draped over the cars, tighter white t-shirts for the girls that stand next to the podium when the champagne is sprayed..."

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

...and that's a bad thing because...?

Oh I dunno, maybe that women are trying their hardest atm to prove they have a place in this sport and given the right opportunities can be just as fast as men, then they get to the track and women are just used as decoration in lycra shorts and tight tops?

Which would you want a young girl looking up to as a role model, Suzie Wolff (for lack of better example) or one of the grid girls?

And I know this might well descend into a debate about the merits or lack of merits of Suzie's career, but she's still much more of a example to women than the grid girls and any of the other sexist stuff that makes F1 feel like its stuck in a 1960s timewarp sometimes.

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

I know what you mean. I've walked past the grid girls practicing their routine late on Saturday evening (after GP3 is finished) and it does strike me as a bit outdated.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

It's the definition of sexism. It makes me feel ashamed of the sport I otherwise love so much. Motorsport in general, Formula 1 in particular, love to claim that it's so modern, yet that is acceptable? It's a horrible disgrace.

The role models at races for little boys are very clear, let's make them just as clear for little girls, please.

It's not sexism unless you have a different meaning for the word in your Country, it's sexual exploitation, which is a different thing, but either way, it's an old fashioned tradition that really doesn't have any place in modern society, of course, the girls themselves may disagree with you entirely, getting offended on someone elses's behalf when you don't even know their views, some would say is just as bad.

My girlfriend thanks all 3 of these posts. Since she started watching with me this year, this has really bugged her. And I agree with it, and F1 should set an example. Although BTCC and American series are far far worse.

Seeing those women lined up and applauding as drivers walk up stairs and down a hallway heading to the podium makes me cringe. Calling it old fashioned is one way, calling it sexist or exploitation is another. But whatever, it sets a very poor example and shows how out of touch the sport is with today's audience.

It is fine to use attractive people to advertise and glamorize its product. But have some balance. F1 uses an archaic and embarrassing extreme.

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

For girls on the grid, we need a lot of cars and a prequalify

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FIFA use those women in fancy Emirates suits but is more like sponsorship commitment than putting random women just to show up

women should be taking at least a third of F1 seats not by rule of course but to show they can play a Michele Mouton

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

Fully agree on that applauding routine. It's ridiculous and serves literally no purpose.

However, a lot of the grid girls are model by profession or by semi-profession. I think it's wrong as well to take that opportunity away from them just because 'we' (or some of us) see it as something wrong.

So you're saying that modeling is not an honorable profession? I don't think any of them were forced to do it. Look at them. These are beautiful women, having the time of their life. Everything's exciting, millions of people are going to see them on telly, they are proud as hell. So if you are offended and automatically assume that she is just decoration, then I guess the problem is you and how you perceive things. But then again, it's a society issue, where women are over glorified and there now is sexism against men - for instance law binding women quota in management, etc.
I guess there is a difference between automatically degrading them by assuming they are decoration and admiring their beauty and how they manage to lighten up the event and letting them have the joy of the event. I'm grateful they exist. When I'm going to have a daughter I will be extremely proud of her, regardless if she's a racing driver or a model.

Good lord how I hate this brainless political correctness, taking the fun out of everything and making it dreary, inhumane. I've just seen a woman who races motorbikes and has a man as grid boy. Get over it, see the fun and humor in it, enjoy it. But I guess some people just like being offended.

"Sport largely run and involving old rich white men and young middle class white men features an undercurrent of sexism and homophobia" isn't exactly a groundbreaking statement but it says a lot that this has never really been tackled head on aside from the occasional condescending appearance of a female driver. It still astounds me that someone as bigoted as Stirling Moss is held up as a hero of the sport despite all the awful things that he has said - that's symptomatic of the whole mess

And I'm not just talking about F1 here. There are times when I'm not thinking when I enjoy watching motorsport. But when I am thinking, I want the whole of it chucked in a skip and set on fire - from club racing to the top, and even in forums such as this (see the previous post). There's definitely an aesthetic quality to watching and/or sitting in fast cars but the whole culture that has developed around it over the last century is pretty vile. At least when it comes to the vast amounts of money spent in other sports, most people over the age of 12 don't try to rationalise it and do see it as a bad thing

So maybe FOM are right to aim it at little kids - maybe they know that future general audiences aren't going to be so forgiving towards teams spending 11 quadrillion dollars a year on building little rocket ships on wheels, leaving only unquestioning children and pockets of nerds. If F1 was a TV series, it would have just been binned at the end of 2008 - the economy was fucked, the cars were fucked, and the season was unbeatable in terms of overall drama and quality. It was a fitting conclusion to the Ferrari vs garagistes narrative which had run for most of F1's history. It was always going to be downhill from there. I'm sure Stefano Domenicalli agrees

The way I've grown to see it is that anything that's happened since 2008 is basically The Simpsons post-Season 8 - Zombie F1, reduced to cartoonish exaggerations of the key elements and occasionally being entertaining but usually just mediocre and superficial with lots of shark-jumping, and something that doesn't seem to fit in the modern world

Surely by that logic, the English Premier League should have finished at the end of 2011/12?

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

The many grid girls are much taller than me(180cm), they will not fit in the cockpit

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Remember that the world is quite a lot bigger than the F1 paddock. The problems we see there can be exaggerated many times throughout all of society. It is a bummer that so few women are interested in this otherwise so wonderful and intriguing and imaginitive sport.



I think you are the problem. You are obviously okay that human beings are offered as prizes. You are obviously okay with the fact that some people are solely judged by how they look and how "sexy" they can be in front of mostly male audience. You obviously have no problem with the fact that 50% of the world's population are being discriminated/refused opportunities in the working market to the extent that gender quotas has been deemed necessary.



You obviously think that looks are just as important/legit as qualification for work, as ambition, as intelligence, as personal achievement. What does looks do for sporting achievement?



Is it fun that models have to stand in the mud at a rainy motocross event in a short skirt?
What do you think the little girl who her father (I'm being realistic, see?) has brought along when she's that most of the women that works there are only for decoration? Meanwhile, for her brother, the sky is the limit.
Why do you think I'm a racing nut while my sister couldn't give two shits about any form of motorsports. When we were the age 0-10 we were brought to the same amount of races. How could we have ended up so different?

Season 13 was pretty funny (whichever started with the Pierce Brosnan Treehouse of Horror and had Homer and Bart tied together anyway)

I get your point, ironically I'm a lot more positive now and I believe F1 puts on a better show now without those aero flick ups everywhere, grooved tyres TRACTION CONTROL and refuelling.
I made my piece with DRS earlier on, I think what Pirelli have done for the sport (ie exactly what asked) has been phenomenal and,case in point, we used to dread the Hungarian Gp every year and now, rain or not, it's a knockabout, overtaking full, high adrenaline race.

F1 on track is in ruder health than it has been for ages, it's just the way it sells itself is falling apart.
And to compare again with the era of 10 years ago, back then it thought it was the bees knees and everyone should feel privileged
to be able to watch it.
Now it feels like its on its knees desperately begging you to give it a chance.

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

They aren't making goalposts wider or making wins count double on the final day of the season in football, though. By 2008 it was pretty clear (in hindsight, admittedly) that F1 had gone as far as it could within its own internal structure - the cars were as fast as they could safely go and were facing increasing restrictions, they couldn't overtake each other, the venues that had hosted F1 for decades were being fundamentally altered to make way for these machines, and the drivers were facing arbitrary penalties either due to mechanical problems they had nothing to do with or driving mistakes

The whole idea of "the show" had taken over the guidance of the sport - it had moved beyond the sport for the sake of the sport and onto the sake of entertainment. You could probably debate when this took place and everyone's perspective on it would be different - you could argue that Ferrari killed it off in 2002 or 2004, or even that Williams ended it all in 1993. But the 2009 batch of changes was the clincher. After that, it was a free-for-all in new rule changes, for the sake of "the show"

Football hasn't yet been corrupted because it's still fundamentally the same sport it was 100 years ago. Compare F1 now to F1 12 years ago and it's totally different - while it's not totally unrecognisable, the ideas of DRS, grid penalties, double points, knockout qualifying and boost buttons would have been unheard of and probably thought of as absurd

F1's a relic from the past. The people running F1 know this - it's why they trade off it so much. They have to because what they have is boring - it's flat, soulless and superficial. It's like the Star Wars prequels - it's trading off its name and imagery because that's all it has to go on

F1 has gone as far as it can go - the restrictions it has put on itself by saying what F1 can and cannot be mean it's in a position that can't be resolved without destroying itself. Instead of thinking up more ham-fisted ways of trying to fix it, those running it should take their money and can the whole thing, leaving something more interesting to fill the void. They won't, because those running it will think they can save it. Bernie's demise, be it in a coffin or a police van, will be huge - he is the one unifying force left

I agree, to an extent.

But then you have the situation this year where Formula 1 is perhaps more road relevant than it has been for years. So there's a trade-off.

I hate the idea of double points, but DRS when managed properly can work. In Hungary it was pretty much perfect. Grid penalties are necessary if we're going to keep to the regulations. Knockout qualifying is entertaining and it still rewards the fastest driver. There aren't boost buttons this year as such either.

One rule I'd change is the tyre compound rule. I know we were helped by the rain yesterday, but allowing teams to choose whatever compound they wanted made for a super finale.

I'd find it difficult to argue that any year of racing has been better than 2014. It has been superb. So there is a trade-off. The fastest car is still usually winning.

On-track, the product is fine. Off-track is the problem.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011