it is not april Ecclestone calls for separate F1 series for women

[CNR]

http://www.autoblog.com/2015/03/30/ecclestone-separate-f1-women-report/
"Bernie Ecclestone is full of a lot of things that we won't list here, but suffice it to say that one of them is crazy ideas. And his latest would create a separate Formula One series for female drivers.

"I thought it would be a good idea to give them a showcase," the 84-year-old F1 chief told the Telegraph. "For some reason, women are not coming through - and not because we don't want them. Of course we do, because they would attract a lot of attention and publicity and probably a lot of sponsors."

The idea would be to have a separate race for women on Sunday ahead of the main event, and though sure to arouse some controversy, it may not be quite as outlandish as it seems at first. For one thing, grands prix already typically include support races from series like the Porsche Supercup or GP2. For another, Ecclestone has long been trying to cast F1 as something of a motorized Olympics, with races taking place around the world and a proposal to replace podium trophies with bronze, silver and gold medals – and at the Olympics, men and women compete in separate events.

The difficulty would be in trying to find enough qualified female drivers to actually make up a full grid. The most promising prospect would surely be Susie Wolff, test driver for the Williams team who became the first woman to take part in an F1 race weekend in 22 years when she participated in the practice session at the British Grand Prix last year. But Wolff told the Mirror that she wouldn't be even slightly interested in taking part in such a series. "First of all, I don't know where you'd find a full grid of female drivers who are good enough. Secondly, I have raced my whole career in motorsport as a normal competitor. Why would I ever look for a race where I was only competing against women?"
"

[Warriwa]

Another money maker for the dwarf to control.

[journeyman racer]

It will last a season. The same time an all female series lasted in Australia. 1996, in Mazda 121s.

[Mark]

It's not a bad idea actually. As long as it's in real F1 cars, not some cheap single seater knock offs. Each main F1 team could be asked to run one car.

[Doc Austin]

After starting 13 cars in Australia, Bernie might want to take care of the existing series.

We had a woman's sportscar series in the US. They all drove Panoz cars and it lasted a single year.

[anfield5]

April fools!!!!

[janneppi]

Only if they have scantily clad men holding the umberellas in the grid.

[CNR]

to me it sounds like he doesn't want any ladies racing in f1

http://www.givemesport.com/560836-manor-marussia-must-offer-more-to-keep-f1-place
"When you are a team that is not in a position to fight for points or wins or championships then you can still offer something to F1 by giving a potential future star a place to start


his career or a veteran driver a place to end it."

Ecclestone an april fool 365 days a year

[Jag_Warrior]

Only if they have scantily clad men holding the umberellas in the grid.

In the interest of political correctness, I see that the WEC has done away with the grid girls from this season on.

One never knows if Bernie is being serious or just letting his mouth say whatever odd idea might be running through his head. I see nothing wrong with having female drivers in F1, or any other racing series. But just as I don't care for rich ride buyers populating too much of the field, I also have no desire to see (unqualified) token females populating the field... strictly in the interest of gender diversity or political correctness. If girls get involved and excel in the lower formulas, and then go on to make their way into F1, then fine. But to run around creating a separate series or mandating that each team support a female racer (as was suggested by a writer in some piece I read last week), strikes me as the worst kind of mandated tokenism that one can imagine.

And while we're on the subject of diversity, here's a third rail topic that the F1 world never addresses, but a blog writer did bring up some time back. To paraphrase his comments, the only place one could find a greater percentage of White people than the Formula One paddock would be a KKK meeting... or the club house at Augusta National (especially now that Tiger is side-lined). I think I roughly got that right. But one can't help but notice that over the past few seasons, almost every F1 team has hired mostly youngish, mostly blonde and almost exclusively White females to walk around behind the drivers as they do their interviews and hold the team voice recorders. Why? Since there is such an immense focus on any and all gender related topics these days, I suspect it's to present females as something other than eye candy in the F1 paddock. So... er... is it going to be called diversity or equality by the feminists and the forces of political correctness if instead of having a field that is 95% White and 100% male, we end up with a field that is 50% female, but still 95% White (let's assume Lewis Hamilton will stick around long enough to contribute that 5%)???

Having a diverse line-up is fine. But much as the European Commission has proposed gender based quotas for the boards of publicly traded companies in Europe and the Indian government has (as of April 1, I believe) mandated gender based quotas for board directors in India, mandated quotas leads to tokenism, which simply leads to mediocrity - and this is why I do not support affirmative action schemes that are based on quotas. If females put the work in and can put up the results, welcome them in. But if it's just going to be a bunch of whiners or cuties who have never, or have barely (lookin' at you, Danica) won any sort of professional level race in their lives, I'd rather see Formula One shut down and go away, if it's no longer going to be the pinnacle of motorsports.

[Jag_Warrior]

to me it sounds like he doesn't want any ladies racing in f1

http://www.givemesport.com/560836-manor-marussia-must-offer-more-to-keep-f1-place
"When you are a team that is not in a position to fight for points or wins or championships then you can still offer something to F1 by giving a potential future star a place to start


his career or a veteran driver a place to end it."

Ecclestone an april fool 365 days a year

No disrespect meant toward you. But how is it that if someone uses the traditional "his" when speaking in general terms, instead of the (now) politically correct "his or her", he's suddenly some sort of sexist??? There is a female financial writer who almost exclusively uses "her" when speaking about consumers. Is she not being sexist? Is she not ignoring the 50% of the consuming public who are not a "her"? And (big one), has she ever been called out for that? The answer to that last one is a definite "no" - the others might be up for debate. But the way in which people are expected to speak these days often produces sort of Pavlovian dog like reactions, if politically correct/socially acceptable language is not used. No offense intended. But that is true. So I'm just sayin'...

Auto racing is one of the few sports where women could compete on equal terms with men... but only if they become involved and are at least as dedicated to honing their racing skills as the men. But until we see females getting into GP3, GP2, Formula Renault or some of the other alphabet lower series formalas, and being successful, why is anyone even asking why there are no women in F1? If women didn't go to high school, would it not be just as foolish to ask why there are no women at Harvard... or Cambridge (since this is a European based board :D)?

[Mark]

http://youtu.be/46ehrFk-gLk

You're right that 'he' is the default gender. However there has been a move to singular 'they' in recent years. Some say it's not grammatical but it's here to stay and IMO a necessary feature of English in the modern world where all the information you may have on someone is a gender ambiguous user name.

[Tazio]

If you only want to put it on the card as a preliminary race similar to the vintage F1 car race I guess it is OK, and they can call it whatever they want. But it would not be financially viable on its own like women's golf, basketball, or any other stick and ball sport that doesn't involve enormous sums of money just to participate. Also it could end up being a setback to women that are competing seriously against men in lower formulae in hopes of earning a legit ride in F1, as it would certainly have scheduling conflicts with the feeder series'.

[anfield5]

To be honest, having a seperate race series for women is stupid. Why should women drivers be unable to compete against men. It is no like the old days where cars needed to be driven by a brute with the strength os 12 normal people, to haul the thing around corners. F1 should be about the 20 (more or less) best single seat racers in the world competing, race, religion gender, hair colour, fav football team etc shouldn't be an issue

[Jag_Warrior]

So I take it that most here would not be in favor of the idea floated by the racing blog writer, who suggested that each (male) driver should have to sit out one race each season. And in his place, each team would be mandated to insert a female driver in his place. So in a 20 race season, Hamilton would get 19 races and a (token) female would get one of his races. Same for all the others. The curious thing about this blog writer was that he/she(?) was very much against Ecclestone's separate series idea... calling it "sexist". But he/she came up with this affirmative action racing fluff. Unfortunately, I pulled this blog post up on my iPad and I can't locate it on my computer right now. Some ideas are so incredibly stupid that you hope it's being suggested in jest. I'm not familiar with this writer, so I don't know if that was the case or not.

I'm in favor of F1 getting the distribution of income right and/or increase the value/ROI of team sponsorships, so that smaller teams don't even have to hire (male) ride-buyers, much less be forced to employ people based on gender, or any other superficial factor. Once F1 stops being about watching the (for the most part) best racers in the world compete, I'll be happy to stop watching.

Here lies an F1 Fan: From 1973-?

[Tazio]

I'm in favor of F1 getting the distribution of income right and/or increase the value/ROI of team sponsorships, so that smaller teams don't even have to hire (male) ride-buyers, much less be forced to employ people based on gender, or any other superficial factor. Once F1 stops being about watching the (for the most part) best racers in the world compete, I'll be happy to stop watching.

Here lies an F1 Fan: From 1973-? This!!!

It never ceases to amaze me the way that Bernie tries to deflect the real issues of F1, which foremost to me is the solvency of the lesser funded teams, by constantly insulting us with all of these stupid gimmicky ideas. How can the most popular sports series in the world have teams in financial peril? It boggles the mind that the leader of this series hasn't been able to hammer out an equitable means of profit sharing. The teams are also huge enablers. Their is just enough greed up and down the paddock, to sweep this problem that is destroying F1 under the carpet. F1 needs a strong commission that represents all the teams equally. If I didn't enjoy Grad Prix racing as much as I do, and wasn't totally consumed by it, I'd be out of here. But I'm not giving Bernie the satisfaction of chasing me off, at least not yet. F1 is my favorite form of entertainment. I have faith that their are enough "sensible people" associated with the teams to iron out the real problems this series faces, because I honestly don't think it needs to be sold to the public, in any other fashion, than providing the best open wheel racers and cars in the world. Their already is something in it for everyone that enjoys the competitive and technical aspect of auto racing. Some of the reg's are controversial, like engine freezing, DRS, and the current tire arrangement. However I can roll with that, because I have faith that the formula can maintain a good equilibrium over the long haul with common sense, not bullsh*t gimmicks. It should be pure, and stable, not convoluted by the guy at the top,

[anfield5]

So I take it that most here would not be in favor of the idea floated by the racing blog writer, who suggested that each (male) driver should have to sit out one race each season. And in his place, each team would be mandated to insert a female driver in his place. So in a 20 race season, Hamilton would get 19 races and a (token) female would get one of his races. Same for all the others. The curious thing about this blog writer was that he/she(?) was very much against Ecclestone's separate series idea... calling it "sexist". But he/she came up with this affirmative action racing fluff. Unfortunately, I pulled this blog post up on my iPad and I can't locate it on my computer right now. Some ideas are so incredibly stupid that you hope it's being suggested in jest. I'm not familiar with this writer, so I don't know if that was the case or not.


Here lies an F1 Fan: From 1973-?

Why stop at this, why not mandate that in a second race an Asian driver has to be given the seat (not being racist, but Bernie the House Elf is moving F1 away from its traditional base in Europe towards Asia, so to slime around his new play mates, he could offer them this as a way to make them give him more money)

[Tazio]

:stareup: ::rotflmao:
Well played Annie', and if you take it to the next logical step, the pilots that are not racing in an event should be strategically located around the track, watering it down to add that final element of excitement that a wet race provides.

[Tazio]

This probably deserves its own thread but it involves Bernie, and his forward thinking:


The fact that some teams cannot see an urgent need for change, however, is a major frustration for Ecclestone.
“Usually, you can make up for your mistakes. But we are not even trying,” he said.
“We are sitting and waiting for formula one to disappear.”
Pointing his ire directly at Wolff, Ecclestone charged: “Toto can have a lovely inscription on his gravestone that says ‘I helped to kill formula one’.
http://www.inautonews.com/ecclestone-wont-let-wolff-kill-f1


Not that I disagree with what Bernie, and Max are saying, but
it's been happening on your watch Bernie! :idea:

In the FWIW dept, the US marketIncluding the Australian Grand Prix, which was the first race of the season, NBCSN’s 2015 F1 coverage is up 31% vs. 2014 through two races, and up 163% vs. 2013 through two races.

[Caroline]

Why is anyone at all surprised at what Ecclestone says? Surely something would be wrong if he didn't spout nonsense on a regular basis. As mentioned above he should think about how to stop teams leaving F1 and ensure he has a full grid each race weekend. Strange to think he has such antiquated ideas about women in society - just Google some of his past comments - when he has 2 daughters of his own!

[Whyzars]

Just Bernie generating a headline.

I'm holding out for the FatnFiftyF1 series.


Lets face it, there is nothing else to write about - we are listening to the overrun braking soundtrack of a sport that has been taken out the back and shot.

I woke up to the usual "Hamilton vs. Rosberg - fighting again" headline and went back to bed. They could've written that copy middle of last year and just keep running it over and over.


No testing news, no mid season innovation, no overnight car repair news, nothing. There is no news in F1 - period.


And that boys and girls, is why F1 is a twitching corpse of its former self.

The environmental's must be soooo happy.