Susie Wolff announced her retirement from competitive motor-sport from the end of this year on British breakfast television today. Her racing career saw her compete for seven years in DTM, but she is best known for her work in F1 for Williams. From 2012, she was assigned as the team’s development driver, and competed in four practise sessions in the last two seasons. This made her the first female driver to participate in an F1 weekend since 1992, when Italian Giovanna Amati entered three races, but was unable to qualify in any of them. After competing in practise sessions in 2014, the possibility of a women competing in F1 looked more likely. However, this was dashed at the beginning of the season. When Valtteri Bottas hurt his back, and had to retire from the season-opener in Melbourne, there was talk of Wolff replacing the Finn for the next race, if he wasn’t fit enough to compete. The team decided to hire Adrian Sutil as reserve driver, meaning that the German would be the back-up driver if anything happened to either Bottas or Felipe Massa. In the end, Bottas was able to race at the next event, but the damage had been done. It was clear that Williams didn’t intend to put Wolff in a race situation, if the opportunity had arisen. Her retirement comes as no shock then, if not tinged with a degree of disappointment in the sport. With Wolff’s retirement, what does this leave for the future of women in F1?
The only woman now with any ties in F1 at the moment is Spaniard Carmen Jorda, who is a development driver for Lotus. She is still to get into the car, and there is no current word on when, or if, that will happen. Many critics point at her lack of competitiveness in her last current series, GP3, and question her abilities to get into an F1 car. With Joloyn Palmer promoted to race driver from 2016, it will be interesting to see if Jorda will be moved up the team, or if her participation in the sport will get stifled, as it looked he case for Wolff.
Motor-sport is one of the few sporting disciplines that can allow men and women to compete together. In other forms of motor-sport, you see women and men competing successfully side by side. The highest profile case is in Danica Patrick, who has competed at the top level of American open-wheel racing in Indy Car. She became the first female Indy Car winner in 2008. She is currently in NASCAR, another top level of motor-sport, and became the first female to get a pole a couple of years ago. There are two women, Simona de Silvestro and Pippa Mann, who recently competed in Indy Car, albeit part time.
So why doesn’t F1 seem then to have any active female drivers, when other top forms of motor-sport do? It can’t be said that the current range of cars are as physically tough to drive these days than they used to be 10 or 20 years ago. The likes of Patrick, de Silvestro, Mann and Wolff have shown that, so the argument about the fitness required to participate, and if a women can reach that level is misguided and condescending. The biggest problem is the lack of females joining the sport. Women make up around 8% of competitive drivers registered in motor-sport, which means they are hugely under-represented. In F1, at the moment, there are a maximum of 22 driver slots on the grid, with financial and engine issues threatening to cut those numbers further down. The opportunities are extremely limited in getting into the sport, and has come down a lot in recent years on sponsorship and funding, as was evident with de Silvestro. The Swiss had a shout of competing for the Sauber team this season, but due to lack of money, the team let her go before the end of last year.
With the combination of the lack of competing female drivers and the limited opportunities, the thought of a woman competing in an F1 race seems further than ever. With women creeping into the sport with more as team personnel, and even teams managed by females, then F1 is becoming less of an “old boys’ club”, and surely they will come the time we finally see both genders competing against each other in the pinnacle of motor sport, it just looks like it will be later rather than sooner.
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