“Realistically speaking, unless there is something like a meteorite, I don’t see a girl coming into F1 in the next five years,” he mentioned, according to Sky News. “That is very unlikely.”
Domenicali shouldn’t be the first F1 government in current years to counsel progress will come slowly for a sport in which solely two women have ever competed at the Grand Prix stage. It has seen its recognition climb with the 2019 launch of the Netflix docuseries “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” however has struggled to shed its popularity as a boy’s membership.
In Formula 1, 20 drivers compete in Grand Prix races round the world to build up factors, which decide the winners of the World Championships for drivers and for constructors. Only drivers who end in the high 10 earn factors. Each crew races two automobiles and two drivers.
For so long as F1 World Championship Grands Prix have existed — over 70 years — solely two ladies, each Italians, have made race beginning grids. In the Nineteen Fifties, Maria Teresa de Filippis competed in the Monaco and Belgian Grands Prix, and in the ’70s, Lella Lombardi turned the solely girl to attain a Grand Prix level, although it was actually a half-point.
Some trade executives say ladies aren’t as bodily ready as males to race the harmful, high-speed automobiles at aggressive ranges; others say female drivers wouldn’t be taken significantly by the fan base — or sponsors, whose funding powers the capital-intensive sport. Bernie Ecclestone, the 91-year-old British billionaire who led Formula 1 racing till 2017, said something of the sort in 2016.
Some efforts are taking form to treatment the gender imbalance. In 2018, a gaggle of private investors launched the W Series, a women-only auto racing competitors with the purpose of “bringing more females into the grassroots of the sport.” The concept was to create a free-to-enter pipeline for female talent in motorsports so it wouldn’t be “another 40 years before a woman has the experience and qualifications to start a Championship Formula 1 Grand Prix again.” Caitlyn Jenner, an Olympian and transgender rights advocate, purchased a W Series crew in 2022.
W Series drivers race in Formula 3 Tatuus T-318 automobiles throughout Grand Prix weekends in partnership with Formula 1. An important distinction is that F3 cars are less powerful than F1 cars. Formula 3 is the sport’s third-class racing tier — the pipeline by way of which younger expertise makes an attempt to achieve Formula 2 and Formula 1.
Domenicali mentioned Wednesday that “we are very happy with the collaboration with Formula W. But we believe that to be able to give the chance to girls to be at the same level of competition with the guys, they need to be at the same age when they start to fight on the track at the level of Formula 3 and Formula 2.”
“We are working on that to see what we can do to improve the system. And you will see soon some action,” he added.
Lewis Hamilton, an F1 star who drives for Mercedes, lately expressed frustration that there isn’t a clear “progression” from the W Series into Formula 3 or Formula 2, in keeping with the racing news web site PlanetF1.
“I feel it’s great we have W Series, but we as a sport need to do way more for young girls getting into the sport,” the web site quoted Hamilton as saying throughout a July meeting with the W Series team in Hungary.
Female racecar drivers have spoken out on the challenge for years — although some with reservations about the prospects of extra gender-balanced grids.
The first and up to now solely W Series champion, British driver Jamie Chadwick, mentioned in June that whereas she set “a goal of competing in Formula One,” she didn’t know whether or not it was attainable for female drivers to race at that stage in present situations — as a result of it principally hadn’t been completed.
“To get into Formula One you have to go through the feeder series — Formula Three and Formula Two — and it is extremely physical,” Chadwick advised the PA news company. “We don’t know exactly what women are capable of in the sport. If you are aged 15 or 16, and go into car racing, without power steering and driving big heavy cars, a lot of women do struggle, even though they have been successful in go-karting,” she added.
Chadwick mentioned the sport ought to research whether or not altering the buildings of the automobiles — for instance, wider cockpits and thinner steering wheels — would assist female drivers’ efficiency.
Abbi Pulling, a W Series driver and member of the Alpine F1 crew’s associates program, disagreed with Chadwick in an interview with the Guardian in July. “That’s Jamie’s opinion, but … we definitely believe a female can be fit enough to race at those levels,” she mentioned. “I think it’s possible a female can be in F1 in the next five years.”
Susie Wolff, who in 2014 turned the first girl to take part in a Grand Prix weekend in greater than 20 years, solid doubt on the oft-repeated concept that ladies have much less muscle mass than males and so can’t compete in F1 championships.
When she drove for Williams Racing in apply periods at the Silverstone Circuit in Northampton, England, in 2014, Wolff mentioned, she realized that wasn’t as large an impediment as she thought. “Already on my first lap out of the pits I knew it was going to be manageable,” she mentioned, in keeping with CNN.
“I think we are at a slight disadvantage in terms of physical strength but it’s something that can be overcome and it’s something that won’t stop us being successful in F1,” Wolff mentioned at the time.
Beyond technical questions, a notion challenge can also be at play, in keeping with Toto Wolff, CEO of Mercedes-AMG Petronas, considered one of the high three F1 groups, and husband of Susie Wolff. Her “final chance was denied,” Wolff mentioned this month in an interview with the Financial Times. “She was within a few tenths of [Williams driver] Felipe Massa,” he mentioned, however the F1 crew “never dared to make that call.”
Cindy Boren contributed to this report.