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| Image courtesy of www.tumblr.com |
I've always wanted to talk about this but it was only today as I am writing this that I have a reason, which I will get to near the end. But to talk about the history of women in motorsport, since this is mostly centred on Formula One, how many women do you think may have been in F1? Baring in mind, F1 has officially been around since 1950, so any guesses? Well whatever it is, not sure how close you were, it's five. Only two have started a race, and one of those two who scored half a point in a shortened 1975 Spanish Grand Prix being Lella Lombardi.
In other forms of motorsport, there are many other levels of success for women. The most successful woman in an FIA championship being 1982 World Rally Championship runner-up Michèle Mouton and in junior formulae there is many names that have come on through with a lot of great performances in their own right.
Firstly, someone I rate very highly is Alice Powell, who became the first woman to score points in GP3 and won the 2010 Formula Renault BARC and the 2014 Asian Formula Renault Series. I personally believe that Alice belongs in the British Touring Car Championship, I think a load of sponsors would pay handsomely for a leading lady to race in such a highly televised British championship like the BTCC.
Then we have former Red Bull junior driver and ADAC Formel Masters race winner Beitske Visser who is now a BMW junior driver, there's also 2015 BritCar Silverstone 24 hour winner and GT4 British GT championship Jamie Chadwick who now races in British F3, and finally Simona de Silvestro who used to be affiliated with Sauber F1 and has a wide variety of championships that she has competed in such as IndyCar, Formula E and now the Australian Supercars championship. That is just to name a few.
All of them have had varying levels of success but none have ever jumped out to the point where I'd like to think that they could one day, become a Formula One driver. But there is a major issue that would come with being a woman in a male dominated sport, is exactly that, being a woman in a male dominated sport.
Having mentioned some of the examples, nobody as of yet has ever stood out massively and despite how some have impressed me, I can't help but think that they wouldn't impress me had they been male drivers, or 'the norm' if you will. Both de Silvestro and Tatiana Calderón (F3 and GP3 driver in recent years) were signed up to be a part of Sauber and whilst they've had strong results in the championships that they have competed in, it has never been an overwhelmingly strong record that would warrant their signings.
Despite this though, it isn't enough to stop the criticism that they only got their place because they were women, and whilst I can't sit here and say that's completely true, I can't say it's false either, I know it played a part as ever with this push for a woman to get to F1. So much so, that my worst fear has come to fruition from a few years back.
Back in 2012 when Alice Powell was in GP3, she was joined by two women, one of which was Vicky Piria who I really liked but another woman who, well, let me elaborate.
You may have seen her face whenever the F1 broadcast would pan inside the Renault F1 garage, her name is Carmen Jordá and I can't mince my words, she is absolutely terrible. Having known her from GP3 - where they use all the same car - and well, she was so slow to the point where it seems like a comedy TV show.
For example, qualifying in GP3 at Spa-Francorchamps in 2012, the driver on pole position was Mitch Evans with a 2:10.513 and second to last place qualifier John Wartique did a 2:13.478, a gap of 2.965 seconds, pretty bad by GP3 standards but we then go to Jordá in last place with a time of 2:18.719, which is a further 5.241 seconds adrift of the driver ahead of her. That is inexcusably atrocious, and I'm not trying to remove any context or pin this one instance on her whole career, she's set a qualifying time so slow that she was unable to qualify for a round that same year.
Allow me to hammer home this point, if she was a guy, I'd say these points if Jordá was a man but it just so happens that she's this terrible and a woman, it isn't because she's a woman that she is this terrible. Honestly though, this would be harmless if she had remained off the radar and disappeared like all drivers who churn out such awful results, then I wouldn't batter an eyelid. But.. remember how I said earlier that we would see her in the Renault F1 garage on the broadcast?
Yes that's right, the Enstone based team hired her as a 'development driver' and I remember reading this on Twitter back in 2015 when it was still known as Lotus, I thought it was a joke. A lot of her fellow competitors chiming in saying how it wasn't deserved, and the fair few coming to her defence saying how everyone was jealous and sexist, that of course is a conversation in and of itself but I'll tell you why I was annoyed with this.
F1 is a global sport, I'd say less than 10% of the F1 viewers stick around to watch any of the junior formulae so that's why I said having her drive around nearly seven seconds off the pace is somewhat harmless when nobody outside of a motorsport fanatic is watching you. But when you couple on the casual viewer of F1 who turns up to watch the race in this day and age, if Jordá was ever given a chance to race, her performance isn't put down to her as an individual in the casual F1 viewer's eyes, it's down to the fact that she's a woman.
The difference being that if she was running around at the equivalent pace in an F1 car, in front of the casual F1 fans who don't see some actually somewhat decent driver who just so happens to be a woman in that car, what they see is what all women would do when in an F1 car. This is something that all women who want to be an F1 driver will have to face unfortunately, the inescapable tokenism that would come with being a woman in a male dominated sport.
Which is why we can't just stop at being allowed to make it in F1, we need to find a woman who could become a race winner, or championship contender, and a few days ago, we found just that.
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| Image courtesy of Noda Racing Academy |
Noda tested an FIA grade Formula 4 car at the Okayama Circuit in her native Japan, and apparently has the lap record in that tier of racing car by over a second, with people of age to race an FIA sanctioned championship F4 car to compare against her times. Everyone is talking up this young lady as being a once in a many lifetimes type of talent, and I am rooting for her more than you can believe. Though I have to say one thing.
We have to ensure that she isn't rushed. Thankfully, she legally isn't allowed to race in FIA single seater commissioned championship races until she's 16 so already, she has about five years to develop. I mean, with that already being the case and the fact that she is decimating the competition already and according to her father, she is incredibly determined and willing to work in order to earn her place in motorsport, we still can't forget that we shouldn't put too much pressure on her shoulders. She's just a child.
The great tragedy is, I feel she will be watched upon very slowly and pushed, and we have seen countless examples of people who could have been great at what they did but they fell out of love with it. Noda will undoubtedly be greeted with the typical criticisms of being a woman in a man dominated sport, but should she be able to consistently put in great performances then she will feel the weight of representing women in motorsport.
Then we have the idea of rushing her. Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen is one of the few examples of someone leaping up the racing ladder, in which he did one season of car racing between his final year in karts and then taking a seat in F1, and we see how successful he is. My fear is with Noda being tipped as possibly the first woman to win a Grand Prix and maybe even a championship, that they'll do a Verstappen with her. Let her go at her own pace because we cannot afford to lose this alleged incredible talent.
We need a woman in F1 but not there just to act like a media dream, to make F1 come across as well meaning and all including, but make an absolute mess of it when greeted with the possibility of being able to race. I know I may be jumping the gun on Juju Noda but I've heard how good she is at 11, it might be well over 10 years from now that Noda enters F1 but when she's ready, she will give girls of her age now, an inspiration.
These are my words on women in motorsport, I hope you enjoyed what I had to say. If you want to stick around for anything more I have to say, put your email address in the Follow By Email option at the right of your screen (If you're on laptop that is) and/or follow me on Twitter @TheLucaFormat.
So until we meet again.
Luca.
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