Women lack mental aptitude for Formula 1 - Moss

I think it's a generational thing that'll improve naturally with the time...

As various sports and pursuits have become de-masculinised (is that a word??!!) I think it'll naturally improve without the need for artifical quotas etc. I look at my peer group (late 20's early 30's) and we're too late to go 'properly' racing etc but the amount of traditionally blokey things that are now seen as the norm is a marked difference to my parents generation. Also the men of this age group are much more used to women on a level playing field and there's much less deliberate isolation and ridicule. No doubt room for improvement but things are on the up in certain areas etc...

Boredwench Exactly! I barely remember it as it was a long time ago, but frankly the DNQs speak for themselves. Not a reflection on all women drivers for all time ...!

Freddykins...I agree re the Brabham...it was a dog of a car!!

Very informative boxersorts....let me guess 'football' your thing

formula one seems a dumb game for speed nuts

Man's an idiot. I'm a life-long F1 fan, I really believe it'll happen soon.

It's worth bearing in mind, every time they harp on about Giovanna Amati not being able to qualify the 1992 Brabham, that a certain Mr Damon Hill only managed to qualify it twice ...

If not Susie Wolff, then another woman will be there damn soon. The fact that we now have 2 prominent female team leaders bodes well.

Sorry, didn't clarify. I think a lot of people just expect women to like sport because they fancy the athletes, not because they like the actual sport. I've had people try and explain things like downforce and tyre wear to me because clearly that kind of thing needs a penis for you to fully understand it

I know what you mean. I'm a huge Kubica fan and people's reaction when I tell them is usually and followed by them pointing out that he's no oil painting. Who cares? They all look the same with their helmets on anyway. I don't fancy him, I just think he's massively talented and I was gutted when he had that rally crash.

I'd say about 50% of the F1 fans I know are women. It was my mum that got me into it back in the 80s, my dad has a passing interest but my mum is a huge fan. We've had blazing rows about F1 in the past

OMG...should learn to proof read...

Le Mans racing......and note Le Mans in reference to the place in France, nothing to do with 'men'!!.

Eaurouge....thanks (nice reference to Spa BTW)

Yeah I love their response to him, most of the blokes these days ignore him too, he's from a bygone era when it was the done thing to drive fast then go chasing 'crumpet'.

It's so frustrating that women on the whole are on the cusp of making fully established into the top echelons of motorsport driving, in all the top temas (can't speak for the lower series stuff) it really is irrelevant what you're gender is. I think about Le Mas racing and how one of Audi's top race engineers is a woman, how the head technician at Shell fuel is a woman, and so on.

I have no doubt an F1 driver has a very rich and varied life, but yeah they all seemed obsessed with living in the gym...well putting aside Hekki who seems stuck on the golf course 24/7.

Sticking my neck out slightly I don't think it helps the feminist cause when we have female fans who choose their favourite driver based on looks and charm etc...cough cough Jenson Button. There's lots of informed women out there and thank gawd social media is helping to break down the walls of inequality in that respect. I think people make the mistake of basing their viewpoint on F1 from the tiny sexist snippets of tv coverage and thigns read in the press. Whenever I go up Silverstone or Monza etc I see nearly equal amounts of men and women in the normal public grandstands, the rich seats though I will say are a different story though, it's typically some rich man with his dolly bird.

Contrast that to other less popular motorsports events and I often feel like the only thing in a skirt up there (Silverstone).

Interesting post, Boredwench, thanks for sharing all that. I don't know much about what goes on behind the scenes but from what a lot of F1 drivers post on Twitter it sure doesn't look like parties with groupies, some of them never get out of the gym.

This has just been posted on Sniff Petrol- Female racing drivers react to Moss remarks

Stirling Moss is an ass....he also complains these days that F1 isn't dangerous enough and borderline suggests death is a 'missed' spectacle from the sport. He's a complete and utter tool with his opinions. No doubt he was fantastic racing driver back in the day but he's not part of the current new generation of F1 drivers and personnel. Ignore him?.

I'm quite involved via friends with the F1 world (although I don't work in it) and it's not as sexist amongst the teams as the TV coverage suggests. A mixture of male and female friends who are aero designers for various F1 teams. Women are most definitely on the increase in F1 and are starting to take over some top positions and high profile engineering jobs. Unfortunately that sort of exposure isn't featured in the TV coverage and is only really picked up on by the hardcore F1 fans. Female fans are one the largest growing sectors of viewership and Bernie's starting to take this onboard and move with the times. He did quite openly court Danica Patrick into F1 and would love her to compete, primarily for the markets it would open up to him.

The glamorous 'sexy' side of F1 is so fake and only exists in TV coverage, most of my mates work long unappreciated hours, there's certainly no orgies of willing girls going on as has been suggested further up the thread. The F1 teams (certainly in the UK) pride themselves on being equal opportunity employers and I actually will stick my neck out here and says it's a little disingenuous to state 'F1 is against women'. That's a drastic over simplification and is only taking into account the drivers. The teams in F1 want to win at all costs, it doesn't matter what gender you are as they'll take the best person for the job. There is a very valid argument in reference to drivers, but not the industry as a whole. It's changed immeasurably in the last few years.

Danica Patrick is an interesting subject. She's by far the most high profile female driver and has some 'success'. She did well to put her car on pole in the Daytona 500 but was poor come the race end and has done nothing of note since then in NASCAR. She did race in Indycar for a few seasons and won a race (albeit due to luck unfortunately) but she caused big controversy with her special aids such as power steering where as everyone else (i.e. the men) are not permitted to run it. She turned her back on the offer of F1, as the level of competition is so intense she wouldn't be able to hide behind mediocre performances. What F1 needs is a 'winning' female driver and not someone who's just fallen short at the top step.

Female F1 drivers in F1 have also inadvertently been set back recently (2012) by the horrible testing accident of Maria De Villota. At her very first time driving an F1 car she made an error and drove into the back of a parked lorry whilst returning to the pits. Suffering terrible injuries (lost an eye and massive cranial fractures) in the process, she was very lucky to live. Suzie Wolfe at Williams does the female cause no good either as she's got the reserve role strictly off the back of her being married to one of the former board members, he racing career to date is awful and she doesn't have enough experience to be licensed to drive in F1, it's a huge PR stunt by Williams. If she was a man with the same racing record she?d literally be laughed out of the sport.

There's no physical reason why a woman can't drive an F1 car, but it is an inescapable fact there is huge physical exertion needed to drive one for hours on end. The biggest strain is placed upon the neck and it's a limiting factor for drivers. Simply due to the natural physique of men there's more likelihood of a man withstanding the constant abuse, but that's only possible due to a strict gym regime and brutal strength. There's simply not enough women going through motorsport that have that 'strength' at the top levels. No doubt if there were more women going into motorsport there'd be a bigger pool of talent to choose from and we might finally get a good enough female onto the grid. Someone who's a proven winner and physically strong enough to continuously drive the cars. At the moment there's a mixture of both out there (plenty of other good female racers throughout the world) but nobody who's the complete package so to speak. F1 is desperate for a female driving star and it's wrong to simple say modern day F1 is against women full stop as there's many throughout the teams doing fantastic jobs day in day out, at the moment it's just lacking the most publicly visible embodiment of that..ie the winning female driver.

Hope that adds a little insight into it.

F1 teams are also missing out on a huge marketing opportunity for being the first to field a female driver in the 21st century.

Just look how Mclaren benefited enormously from having the first black driver in Hamilton.

F1 is all about money and publicity - just ask Ecclestone.

Michèle Mouton

Here's the book to prove him wrong unbound.co.uk/books/girl-racers.

What about the fab Sabine who has the fastest lap time on the Nurburgring? It can be done, it isn't being allowed to be done though. F1, like most sports, is sexist. They only want orange women for brolly dolly purposes, or hanging off the arms of the drivers.

I have a vague memories of a woman in the 80s trying to do this, might not be F1 but basically every male driver on the track would attempt to get her off the track and then start racing.

Want2b it's a shame James Franco made an arse of the start of the Daytona

"Drivers .. and Danica, start your engines"

Oops!

*Want2b" it's a shame James Franco made an arse of the start of the Daytona

"Drivers .. and Danica, start your engines"

Oops!

Don't forget Michele Mouton in rallying. You still need great skills and lightening reactions for that. She finished second in the World Rally Championship in 1982.

I saw this and am so happy that Daria's name has come up. Even here on the East Coast, where NASCAR is seen as redneck, the news coverage was impressive.

Slightly different view from Ecclestone here

www.planetf1.com/driver/18227/8641479/-Women-lack-the-mental-skill-for-F1-

Danica Patric. That is all.

It was commonly argued in the 19th century that women didn't have the mental skills to vote. He's an old man raised in a completely different age and culture, he's hardly likely to get with the programme now!

HullMum you do need a lot of mental strength to drive F1. They're making tons of strategical decisions, looking out for stuff that's fallen onto the track/checking any damage to their tyres/car, talking to their engineer, they're boiling hot AND they're going at hundreds of miles an hour. The speed of their reactions is unbelievable at times. You need to be really mentally capable to deal with all of that information.

LRD all the seats are fitted specially to each driver's body. There's as much of a difference between, say, Mark Webber (over 6ft) and Felipe Massa (5ft5) than between the average man and woman. There's absolutely no reason, in terms of kit, why women wouldn't be able to race.