In my last post, I spoke about Bernie's ridiculous idea to start an F1 championship for women only. I cited several problems which I feel were hindering women's attempts to be taken seriously within the motorsport world, one of which was the continued use of grid girls throughout different world championships, and the general objectification of women within motorsport. Well, yesterday the World Endurance Championship announced that they will no longer have grid girls at their races. This is, I think, excellent news, and largely this has been received positively. However, there are a number of people who disagree, and feel that grid girls don't cause any problem and are an integral part of motorsport. Without wishing to be sexist myself, most of the people saying this are men, who most likely don't feel the effects of female objectification (although perhaps they might experience this in some way when they look at Lewis Hamilton's - frankly ridiculous - posing on the cover of a recent magazine!). Let me explain why the banning of grid girls is a positive thing, and why it won't end motorsport as we know it.
As I mentioned previously, women are now making strides towards getting into the motorsport world - a world which is largely dominated by men. We now have two F1 team principals, several reserve drivers in F1 and a small number of drivers in other motorsport series who happen to be women. Undoubtedly there are a number of women who wish to become mechanics and have a greater direct involvement in the running of a motorsport team. If we accept that we're moving (slowly) towards gender equality in motorsport, then grid girls have no place in this world. Many promotional shots of female racing drivers ask them to pose sexily - something the men aren't asked to do. This is problematic, as it encourages individuals to think of the female racing drivers in terms of their physical appearance, rather than their abilities in the car. If we think take the view that this is unacceptable, and women should be rated for their skill, talent, and literally anything else beyond physical appearance alone, then why should grid girls be objectified at the same time? Objectification of women in many other areas of society is - rightly - condemned, and motorsport has managed to escape this for many years, proudly accepting this outdated practice.
Now, maybe I'm less qualified to speak on the opinion of the female racing drivers (and other motorsport personnel), as I'm not a racing driver myself. However, I can talk about the effect that grid girls has on female fans of motorsport, as I clearly fall within this demographic. I often attend motorsport events at circuits - I like looking at the cars, watching the racing, and generally getting involved in the atmosphere of it all. When the grid girls come out, there are always a group of men who leer, and grab their waists to take photographs. This is not a nice environment to be in. It sends a message that the women present at the event are just there to be looked at. Do you really think that the people engaged in the leeching are going to ask whether any of these women have any other attribute than looking attractive? Do any of these men even stop to ask the names of the girls?! No. These women are here to look good for the blokes - and that's something that is unacceptable in this day and age.
I can already hear the argument of "Well, these women choose to be grid girls". Yes, this is true, and they're absolutely free to do so. However, these women also have lives and attributes beyond looking pretty, and these attributes should be celebrated just as much. There's also the issue of the grid girls being pushed on to those who don't actually want to see this side of the world. People can choose to see models at fashion shows, but I don't go to Brands Hatch to look at the girls.
I've also heard the argument that 2grid girls are just as much a part of motorsport as the chequered flag". Erm, no. This is nonsense. The chequered flag exists to mark the end of a race. The chequered flag doesn't objectify 50% of society. The presence of the chequered flag won't offend anyone, or support an attitude making it difficult for individuals to be taken seriously in motorsport. But seriously, the point here is that motorsport has been around for an awfully long time. Maybe when the sport started it was perfectly acceptable to exclude and marginalise great swathes of society, and to see women as either housewives or sex objects. However, this is no longer the case. Indeed, if grid girls are an integral part of motorsport, then I would invite people to name at least half of the girls present in the WEC. Or F1. Or the BTCC. Or MotoGP. I bet you could do so with the drivers, and I'm sure you could name the team principals, engineers, and maybe even some mechanics. The WEC certainly isn't going to end by removing the grid girls, and in fact this may attract a portion of the audience put off by constant objectification.
The world has moved on, and the motorsport world's attitude to women has to move with it. The World Endurance Championship has started the movement, so let's hope the other sports follow suit.
Friday, 3 April 2015
Wednesday, 1 April 2015
F1 and Women
F1 returned for its 2015 season last month - and I have to say the first race was troubling. I stopped posting last September, partly because I was too busy, but mostly because I was pretty uninspired. The past few years in F1 have been characterised by the dominance of a single team. For years it was Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel. Now, it's Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton won the 2014 world championship, closely pursued by Nico Rosberg. The dominance of the Mercedes cars was insane. Their engine was clearly fantastic, and the team were usually miles in front of the rest. So much so, that the past nine races (the final eight of 2014 and the first race of 2015) secured 1-2 finishes for Mercedes.
Now, I am a die-hard Vettel fan, and for years I've heard all the excuses in the world - "he's just in the best car!". Well, Red Bull were never as dominant as Mercedes, and largely their success came from finding technical loopholes before anyone else. The Renault engines were never the fastest, but the overall package they had up until the rule changes was enough to secure four world championships. Mercedes are just wickedly fast, and waiting for the others to catch up. I don't agree that the Mercedes cars should be slowed down (indeed, I think F1 should be faster, louder, and more entertaining), but the constant 1-2 finishes made F1 last year a bit of a drag, and many of us were longing for the others to catch up.
However, last weekend's race started to show a glimmer of hope. Sebastian Vettel moved from his beloved Red Bull to Ferrari and everyone was waiting to see whether this was a gamble that would pay off. Ferrari hadn't won a race since Spain 2013, even with Alonso in the car (probably one of the best drivers on the grid), so not many people fancied his chances against the Silver Arrows. However, Malaysia showed that Ferrari was a great move for Vettel after all, and we had our first non-Mercedes win in nine races. Alright, it's early days, strategy and weather may have played its part, but the race overall was superb, with battles all through the field. We can only hope that this entertainment continues throughout the rest of the season.
Now, aside from the races, F1 has had some odd news stories surrounding it lately. Mostly, these have been linked to ideas from Bernie Ecclestone about how to improve the show. The latest madness he's come out with is linked to the idea of a separate F1 championship for female drivers. Looking at the comments on the articles in question (always a terrible idea), this seems to have divided opinion somewhat.
Many people seem to view the matter in the same way as myself; the idea of a separate F1 championship for women is absurd, and women should be given the chance to race in the main championship. Others take the view that the current pool of female racing drivers simply isn't good enough for F1, and that there's nothing stopping women other than their own ineptitude. Alright, I may be exaggerating slightly, but a significant number of comments suggests the age-old argument that women simply can't drive. As a female driver (not in F1 or competition, but someone who just gets behind the wheel on a regular basis), I couldn't disagree more.
In my opinion, there are a number of issues that prevent women from getting into race seats in F1. In recent years we've had several drivers who have made reserve seats and third driver places (Susie Wolff, the late Maria de Villota, Simona de Silvestro, and - controversially - Carmen Jorda), but nobody who has yet made a race seat. One of the biggest problems in my view is the fact that there are so few women at lower levels of single-seater racing. The pool of female single-seater drivers is just too small, and the sport in general is dominated by men. This therefore isn't an F1 only issue. Let's look at the GP2 and GP3 grids over the past few years...
The 2015 grids are still being formed for these feeder series, however, we can have a preliminary glance at the drivers:GP3 has eight teams, each with three drivers. All bar one of the places has been confirmed for 2015 - and all the drivers are men. Even if the final place is taken by a woman, men are clearly overrepresented. GP2 has 13 teams with two drivers each. Again, no women have been confirmed to drive. There are four places left, but again, even if all filled by women drivers, women are woefully underrepresented. In 2014, GP2 featured no women at all, and GP3 featured Carmen Jorda for seven races. The picture isn't much better across previous years either. While other championships do slightly better than GP2 and GP3 in terms of the number of female drivers, overall there are alarmingly few women across the motorsport championships.
F1 is currently made up of 20 drivers. That's not an awful lot of the total motorsport population. Undoubtedly there are drivers out there who are much better than the current crop of F1 drivers, but who simply don't have the opportunity to compete. This isn't necessarily an issue of gender - there are most likely women out there who would prove much better than men, but the lack of F1 places means it would be impossible for them to enter this strange circus. The pool of potential F1 drivers is huge, while the number of actual spaces is tiny. Given that women make up a tiny percentage of the motorsport population at large, it's not particularly surprising that there are no female F1 drivers. It's not necessarily about ability in this case, but more about opportunity. The solution to this problem? Giving more girls and women the chance to compete from a very early age and working their way up through the ranks - same as the men.
Women face another barrier to F1, and that's the differing expectation that go with the gender. A few weeks ago, I had a lecture on unconscious bias - the judgements we make in a split second upon meeting someone. We assume things. Everyone does this, and it's just human nature - not necessarily indicative of prejudice, but just something we're socialised into believing about people based on their physical traits. During this lecture, we were asked to write down a 'secret' about ourselves, and we all had to guess who had written what. I decided to write about my years spent driving Land Rovers in competitions, and how I learnt to drive age 12. When my 'secret' came up, the majority of my class guessed that one of my male classmates had written this - not the nerdy girl. This is potentially another indicator of why women don't get into top-level motorsport. Young girls are often socialised into liking Barbies and dolls, less cars and F1, just because this goes along with traditional notions of gender. Again, there's nothing wrong with this necessarily, but from the off girls have less inclination to pursue a career in F1.
Similarly, look at how women are represented when they get anywhere close to F1. By and large, the most women we see on the F1 grid are the grid girls. When we see photoshoots of drivers, men stand proudly with arms crossed, looking determined, while women have the wind blowing through their hair, perfectly made-up - sometimes draped across the car in a completely ridiculous manner. The recent appointment of Carmen Jorda is somewhat suspicious - she's not a great racing driver, but she does look very pretty. Every photo posted of her by the Lotus F1 team is of her looking glamorous, rather than getting in a car. I won't even go there with the comments posted under these photos. Now, until women are promoted away from grid girls and models and towards SERIOUS racing drivers, I doubt much will change. The women who do get into F1 are also going to be held to a much higher standard. While it might be acceptable for Will Stevens or Roberto Mehri to race around at the back with Manor, I doubt a female driver would be so accepted - her slow pace would have nothing to do with the car, and everything to do with her gender.
There has been some progress towards gender equality in F1 - but largely in relation to team principals. Claire Williams and Monisha Kaltenborn have been doing a fantastic job in running their teams (alright - ignore the Sauber vs van der Garde scandal recently, and look at what their cars are doing on track), and it's heartening to see women in serious roles within top-level motorsport. I'd be interested to see how many mechanics are women too - although, again, women are woefully underrepresented in this profession generally. While their skill may match the men, there are just too few to have a statistical likelihood of getting into the job.
Overall, there's still much work to be done in getting women into F1 and other championships, and this isn't something that will happen overnight. A women's only F1 championship is ridiculous, and there needs to be a broader attitude shift towards women who choose to like cars. We need to stop viewing women as decorative grid girls, and start taking them seriously as competitors. If women can be taken seriously as F1 team bosses, I don't see why they can't be taken seriously in any other role. It takes work though, and the entire motorsport community should be there to support this change.
Now, I am a die-hard Vettel fan, and for years I've heard all the excuses in the world - "he's just in the best car!". Well, Red Bull were never as dominant as Mercedes, and largely their success came from finding technical loopholes before anyone else. The Renault engines were never the fastest, but the overall package they had up until the rule changes was enough to secure four world championships. Mercedes are just wickedly fast, and waiting for the others to catch up. I don't agree that the Mercedes cars should be slowed down (indeed, I think F1 should be faster, louder, and more entertaining), but the constant 1-2 finishes made F1 last year a bit of a drag, and many of us were longing for the others to catch up.
However, last weekend's race started to show a glimmer of hope. Sebastian Vettel moved from his beloved Red Bull to Ferrari and everyone was waiting to see whether this was a gamble that would pay off. Ferrari hadn't won a race since Spain 2013, even with Alonso in the car (probably one of the best drivers on the grid), so not many people fancied his chances against the Silver Arrows. However, Malaysia showed that Ferrari was a great move for Vettel after all, and we had our first non-Mercedes win in nine races. Alright, it's early days, strategy and weather may have played its part, but the race overall was superb, with battles all through the field. We can only hope that this entertainment continues throughout the rest of the season.
Now, aside from the races, F1 has had some odd news stories surrounding it lately. Mostly, these have been linked to ideas from Bernie Ecclestone about how to improve the show. The latest madness he's come out with is linked to the idea of a separate F1 championship for female drivers. Looking at the comments on the articles in question (always a terrible idea), this seems to have divided opinion somewhat.
Many people seem to view the matter in the same way as myself; the idea of a separate F1 championship for women is absurd, and women should be given the chance to race in the main championship. Others take the view that the current pool of female racing drivers simply isn't good enough for F1, and that there's nothing stopping women other than their own ineptitude. Alright, I may be exaggerating slightly, but a significant number of comments suggests the age-old argument that women simply can't drive. As a female driver (not in F1 or competition, but someone who just gets behind the wheel on a regular basis), I couldn't disagree more.
In my opinion, there are a number of issues that prevent women from getting into race seats in F1. In recent years we've had several drivers who have made reserve seats and third driver places (Susie Wolff, the late Maria de Villota, Simona de Silvestro, and - controversially - Carmen Jorda), but nobody who has yet made a race seat. One of the biggest problems in my view is the fact that there are so few women at lower levels of single-seater racing. The pool of female single-seater drivers is just too small, and the sport in general is dominated by men. This therefore isn't an F1 only issue. Let's look at the GP2 and GP3 grids over the past few years...
The 2015 grids are still being formed for these feeder series, however, we can have a preliminary glance at the drivers:GP3 has eight teams, each with three drivers. All bar one of the places has been confirmed for 2015 - and all the drivers are men. Even if the final place is taken by a woman, men are clearly overrepresented. GP2 has 13 teams with two drivers each. Again, no women have been confirmed to drive. There are four places left, but again, even if all filled by women drivers, women are woefully underrepresented. In 2014, GP2 featured no women at all, and GP3 featured Carmen Jorda for seven races. The picture isn't much better across previous years either. While other championships do slightly better than GP2 and GP3 in terms of the number of female drivers, overall there are alarmingly few women across the motorsport championships.
F1 is currently made up of 20 drivers. That's not an awful lot of the total motorsport population. Undoubtedly there are drivers out there who are much better than the current crop of F1 drivers, but who simply don't have the opportunity to compete. This isn't necessarily an issue of gender - there are most likely women out there who would prove much better than men, but the lack of F1 places means it would be impossible for them to enter this strange circus. The pool of potential F1 drivers is huge, while the number of actual spaces is tiny. Given that women make up a tiny percentage of the motorsport population at large, it's not particularly surprising that there are no female F1 drivers. It's not necessarily about ability in this case, but more about opportunity. The solution to this problem? Giving more girls and women the chance to compete from a very early age and working their way up through the ranks - same as the men.
Women face another barrier to F1, and that's the differing expectation that go with the gender. A few weeks ago, I had a lecture on unconscious bias - the judgements we make in a split second upon meeting someone. We assume things. Everyone does this, and it's just human nature - not necessarily indicative of prejudice, but just something we're socialised into believing about people based on their physical traits. During this lecture, we were asked to write down a 'secret' about ourselves, and we all had to guess who had written what. I decided to write about my years spent driving Land Rovers in competitions, and how I learnt to drive age 12. When my 'secret' came up, the majority of my class guessed that one of my male classmates had written this - not the nerdy girl. This is potentially another indicator of why women don't get into top-level motorsport. Young girls are often socialised into liking Barbies and dolls, less cars and F1, just because this goes along with traditional notions of gender. Again, there's nothing wrong with this necessarily, but from the off girls have less inclination to pursue a career in F1.
Similarly, look at how women are represented when they get anywhere close to F1. By and large, the most women we see on the F1 grid are the grid girls. When we see photoshoots of drivers, men stand proudly with arms crossed, looking determined, while women have the wind blowing through their hair, perfectly made-up - sometimes draped across the car in a completely ridiculous manner. The recent appointment of Carmen Jorda is somewhat suspicious - she's not a great racing driver, but she does look very pretty. Every photo posted of her by the Lotus F1 team is of her looking glamorous, rather than getting in a car. I won't even go there with the comments posted under these photos. Now, until women are promoted away from grid girls and models and towards SERIOUS racing drivers, I doubt much will change. The women who do get into F1 are also going to be held to a much higher standard. While it might be acceptable for Will Stevens or Roberto Mehri to race around at the back with Manor, I doubt a female driver would be so accepted - her slow pace would have nothing to do with the car, and everything to do with her gender.
There has been some progress towards gender equality in F1 - but largely in relation to team principals. Claire Williams and Monisha Kaltenborn have been doing a fantastic job in running their teams (alright - ignore the Sauber vs van der Garde scandal recently, and look at what their cars are doing on track), and it's heartening to see women in serious roles within top-level motorsport. I'd be interested to see how many mechanics are women too - although, again, women are woefully underrepresented in this profession generally. While their skill may match the men, there are just too few to have a statistical likelihood of getting into the job.
Overall, there's still much work to be done in getting women into F1 and other championships, and this isn't something that will happen overnight. A women's only F1 championship is ridiculous, and there needs to be a broader attitude shift towards women who choose to like cars. We need to stop viewing women as decorative grid girls, and start taking them seriously as competitors. If women can be taken seriously as F1 team bosses, I don't see why they can't be taken seriously in any other role. It takes work though, and the entire motorsport community should be there to support this change.
Sunday, 14 September 2014
Formula One Fans
As usual, it's been a while since I've posted. Hey, I'm a postgrad student (well, now I am anyway), not a journalist. Anyway, tonight I feel compelled to get back to writing about F1 (and motorsport in general). In particular, I want to focus on the lunacy surrounding Formula One Management's strategies of late, and look to the future of the sport. I suspect I may be sued at some point for posting this, but what's life without a little risk?
Tonight, while wasting time on a boring Sunday evening, I was browsing the amusing WTF1 website, looking at various motorsport videos - Nascar, Narain Karthikeyen crashing into something in another formula, that sort of thing - when I came across what I thought would be an amusing video of Russian commentators going mental over Dani Kvyat's save at Monza, when the familiar YouTube error of 'This video contains content from Formula One Management, who has blocked it on copyright grounds' popped up. I've seen this so many times - and it's becoming infuriating.
If you've been following F1 related news in recent months, you may have noticed that many people are starting to worry that the sport is losing fans, one reason being F1, and FOM's reluctance to engage with social media. Many team managers have also expressed concerns that F1 is losing a large audience by not engaging with anything other than TV. Niki Lauda in particular stated that younger people (a demographic I suppose I would be part of, being 22 years old) don't want to spend a Sunday afternoon in front of the living room TV, but are more likely to consume their media on the move, or from sites like Twitter, YouTube or Facebook. It's a reasonable proposition - while I am one of those people who will give up at weekend to watch motorsport on TV (assuming I can't get outside to a circuit and watch it instead), I can see where Niki and all the others are coming from, and can understand that teenagers and kids (and even older people on the move, for example) want new ways of seeing motorsport.
Engagement with social media has worked extremely well for other forms of motorsport. The British Touring Car Championship has its own Twitter feed, full of qualifying coverage and race commentary. In addition, BTCC is shown on free-to-air TV all season (including all the support races all day - my Mum loves it when ITV4 is on for six hours). MotoGP has similar, with a Twitter page and YouTube feed. While this is no longer on free-to-air TV, there's a whole host of ways to follow the sport from its official website, albeit with a subscription fee. Contrast this with F1 - no official, central social media pages (although teams and some drivers do have their own pages), fan-made videos removed because of FOM's copyright, and only half a season available to those who don't wish to pay for a whole Sky Sports TV package. Why? That's easy to answer - money. There's no way of monetising social media at present, and Bernie Ecclestone has stated that until there is, there's no interaction with social media. Huh. What happened to doing things for the love of the sport?
The recent stirrings over the lack of fan engagement have reached a point where Tata Communications have launched the F1 Connectivity Innovation Prize, a series of challenges based around communicating more with fans, and engaging people more with the sport. A $50,000 prize is available for someone who comes up with a good idea. Well, here's an idea for you, Formula One Management (you don't even need to give me the prize money), how about dropping the profiteering for a second, and allowing people to follow the sport away from subscription-based TV?
It seems that F1 in particular is more concerned about what the sponsors think, and if ideas don't make money, they don't happen, even if they could do wonders for viewing figures and engagement in general. There are a huge amount of things that could be done to help F1 through this strange patch of its life - we could get away from mad rules (standing safety car restarts next year, anyone?), and back to proper racing. This, however, is another issue. What could be done now though is remembering that motorsport is built on the support from fans. If we don't engage people - dare I say, 'the youth of today' - through something so simple as a Facebook or Twitter page, they're not likely to pay for a Sky Sports subscription later. Sure, Bernie won't make his millions through chucking a tweet out now and again, but in a multimillion industry, does this matter? What we need to remember is that motorsport - of all forms - started not because people wanted to make buckets of cash, but because people had an inherent love for what they were doing. People were passionate about the sport: fans, drivers and officials alike. There was admiration for what people could achieve in a car or on a bike. Instead of focusing on bank balances, perhaps FOM would do well to remember this fact, and start to give something back to the fans, without whom the sport wouldn't exist in the first place.
Tonight, while wasting time on a boring Sunday evening, I was browsing the amusing WTF1 website, looking at various motorsport videos - Nascar, Narain Karthikeyen crashing into something in another formula, that sort of thing - when I came across what I thought would be an amusing video of Russian commentators going mental over Dani Kvyat's save at Monza, when the familiar YouTube error of 'This video contains content from Formula One Management, who has blocked it on copyright grounds' popped up. I've seen this so many times - and it's becoming infuriating.
If you've been following F1 related news in recent months, you may have noticed that many people are starting to worry that the sport is losing fans, one reason being F1, and FOM's reluctance to engage with social media. Many team managers have also expressed concerns that F1 is losing a large audience by not engaging with anything other than TV. Niki Lauda in particular stated that younger people (a demographic I suppose I would be part of, being 22 years old) don't want to spend a Sunday afternoon in front of the living room TV, but are more likely to consume their media on the move, or from sites like Twitter, YouTube or Facebook. It's a reasonable proposition - while I am one of those people who will give up at weekend to watch motorsport on TV (assuming I can't get outside to a circuit and watch it instead), I can see where Niki and all the others are coming from, and can understand that teenagers and kids (and even older people on the move, for example) want new ways of seeing motorsport.
Engagement with social media has worked extremely well for other forms of motorsport. The British Touring Car Championship has its own Twitter feed, full of qualifying coverage and race commentary. In addition, BTCC is shown on free-to-air TV all season (including all the support races all day - my Mum loves it when ITV4 is on for six hours). MotoGP has similar, with a Twitter page and YouTube feed. While this is no longer on free-to-air TV, there's a whole host of ways to follow the sport from its official website, albeit with a subscription fee. Contrast this with F1 - no official, central social media pages (although teams and some drivers do have their own pages), fan-made videos removed because of FOM's copyright, and only half a season available to those who don't wish to pay for a whole Sky Sports TV package. Why? That's easy to answer - money. There's no way of monetising social media at present, and Bernie Ecclestone has stated that until there is, there's no interaction with social media. Huh. What happened to doing things for the love of the sport?
The recent stirrings over the lack of fan engagement have reached a point where Tata Communications have launched the F1 Connectivity Innovation Prize, a series of challenges based around communicating more with fans, and engaging people more with the sport. A $50,000 prize is available for someone who comes up with a good idea. Well, here's an idea for you, Formula One Management (you don't even need to give me the prize money), how about dropping the profiteering for a second, and allowing people to follow the sport away from subscription-based TV?
It seems that F1 in particular is more concerned about what the sponsors think, and if ideas don't make money, they don't happen, even if they could do wonders for viewing figures and engagement in general. There are a huge amount of things that could be done to help F1 through this strange patch of its life - we could get away from mad rules (standing safety car restarts next year, anyone?), and back to proper racing. This, however, is another issue. What could be done now though is remembering that motorsport is built on the support from fans. If we don't engage people - dare I say, 'the youth of today' - through something so simple as a Facebook or Twitter page, they're not likely to pay for a Sky Sports subscription later. Sure, Bernie won't make his millions through chucking a tweet out now and again, but in a multimillion industry, does this matter? What we need to remember is that motorsport - of all forms - started not because people wanted to make buckets of cash, but because people had an inherent love for what they were doing. People were passionate about the sport: fans, drivers and officials alike. There was admiration for what people could achieve in a car or on a bike. Instead of focusing on bank balances, perhaps FOM would do well to remember this fact, and start to give something back to the fans, without whom the sport wouldn't exist in the first place.
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