Women lack mental aptitude for Formula 1 - Moss

[nenevomito]

Former British racing driver Sir Stirling Moss believes women do not have the mental skills to race competitively in Formula 1.

BBC news story HERE

So, is it down to lack of metal ability, or is it because like most sports, F1 and other car racing is still male dominated, so women may not have the same opportunities?

Right... who's up for starting Team MN Racing? We only need to find several hundred million pounds!

DeepRedBetty if you want to start Team MN Racing in F1, then bear in mind Bernie's thoughts:

"You know I've got one of those wonderful ideas, (women drivers) should be dressed in white like all the other domestic appliances"

or

"She would have to be a woman who was blowing away the boys. What I would really like to see happen is to find the right girl, perhaps a black girl with super looks, preferably Jewish or Muslim, who speaks Spanish."

HullMum 'Fraid so. Maybe he had an actual phobia of breasts and didn't know how to express it nicely and I have uncharitably mistaken for blatant misogyny

He really is a poisonous shit isn't he?

oh can I join the MN F1 team we will show Bernie and Stirling Moss the dinosaurs

Both male chauvinist pigs, its interesting that recent and current F1 drivers are saying its possible for women to compete

Media, PR and sponsorship management in F1 are headed up by some very clever, smart women. Today's recent and current F1 drivers are saying its possible for women to compete because they won't want to piss them off. IME, what they say and what they think are very different and more along Bernie and Sir Stirling's ideas.

Poisonous shit! Love it!

Oh JENSON, I already loved you and now I love you MORE.

I LOVE F1. Love it. I glue myself to the telly for practice, qually and race, whether it be at a normal time or 3 in the morning, like this weekend.

frosch I really don't think we have a genetically different attitude to risk. In that documentary about Susie Wolff, her mum was saying "it's harder watching a girl race, you're more scared for them." I'd say THAT'S why we have a different attitude to risk, because we're wrapped up in cotton wool. I'm only recently starting to realise how much I was coddled as a child, and even as an adult.

Also, it is socially acceptable for women to be scared...so we are scared. Take last holiday. My partner (now ex) and I were at a beach with a cliff. People were jumping off it. People were egging us on, I chickened out. My partner didn't. He said after that he was TERRIFIED, like he felt sick, but he felt he couldn't back out cos he knew people would laugh/question his "manliness". I knew that I could back out and that no-one would care. So women don't end up exposing themselves to the same risks and therefore don't learn that actually doing that stuff is fine, that it is possible.

I would love for all this stuff to be challenged.

Who cares why Susie Wolff is in F1? Cos of her husband? So WHAT? Why do you think Bruno Senna was? Nico Rosberg? Nelson Piquet jr? I'm not denying those guys' talent, but I think their names/backgrounds helped A LOT.

And the number of pay drivers is huge. Maldonado for one, he's not even SAFE to drive half the time.

People like Vettel, Raikkonen, Hakkinen...I've read so many interviews where they talk about how much their parents helped them. Raikkonen's family had an outside toilet and they didn't convert to an indoor one when they had the money, because they spent the money on karts for their sons instead, because they knew their careers were going somewhere.

Would they have done that for daughters? I dunno, I don't know the Raikkonens personally (although, Kimi, if you're a Mumsnetter, HEY BABY, I AM UP FOR IT ANY TIME ANY PLACE) but it seems less likely, doesn't it? When you know she'll probably never make it?

And like others have said, boys play with cars. Then they graduate to the real thing.

And like fuck are we not strong enough. Have you seen most racing drivers? Sorry but they aint huge muscly guys. They're skinny, they have to be. Interestingly Vettel weighs exactly the same as Zoe Smith, the Olympic weightlifter so tell me how that works if women can't be strong enough.

Eh, long post. My two fav topics, feminism and F1. I hope we get the first woman champion in my lifetime.

What a stupid thing to say! I used to rally drive..I was the only woman generally at each event (around 100 entrants). I came second in my class in the National Championship!! There is a very good female driver in Nascar (and I would imagine the G force must be around the same). I just think most women are not interested and dont get involved at an early age which you would need to do to be good at any sport. Sad really, I would love to see a top female driver in F1!!

We follow touring cars. There is a young lady drives junior Ginettas as there has been in the past but apart from that noone else. They just dont seem to progress beyond the junior comps. Money may be a factor but at the end of the day money doesnt buy talent-ask Nick Hamilton !

I love F1, Stirling is an old man with old fashioned views as is Bernie Ecclestone. - It'll take time for women to break into F1 but it will happen. I tihnk the main reason women didn't race for a long time is because they were too intelligent to drive around risking their lives in mobile bombs in the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's.

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.

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!

Danica Patric. That is all.

Slightly different view from Ecclestone here

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

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.

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.

*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!

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.

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.

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

Michèle Mouton

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.

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.

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