Why in the "Formula 1" there are no female pilots
Text: Danya Golubtsev
On the morning of July 3, 2012 test driver Formula 1 team Marussia Maria de Villota tested the car at an English airfield in Duxford. At the end of the straight, her car lost control and crashed into a parked wagon, the blow fell right on the helmet of the Spanish auto racer. In this accident, Maria suffered multiple facial injuries and lost an eye.
The history of women's performances in Formula 1 is extremely short and fits into one line: for 64 years - 5 participants, for all five - half points. Three Italians, one Englishwoman and one South African. At the same time, the first one sat behind the wheel of the car in 1958, just eight years after the appearance of the Formula itself, and the last one in the already distant 1992. So why were there so few women in the royal auto racing and they performed so poorly?
The first factor that is often mentioned by almost all amateurs and experts is physiology. Say, women do not genetically possess the skills necessary to fight wheel-to-wheel at a speed of 200 km / h. Of course, it’s impossible to acquire these same skills, even if you train on a track from three years to the end of your life. The argument is completely untenable. Normal studies that prove it simply do not exist and, it seems, will not appear. If only because it is impossible to find a sufficient number of female pilots with experience in F1 for a representative sample - they simply do not exist.
Another sexist factor is the danger of motor racing. Over the past twenty years in the “Formula” not a single pilot perished, and although the audience has already begun to forget how dangerous this exercise is, the argument still sounds. Is the society ready for the fact that female pilots after accidents on the track will look like this?
The next reason, which is closer to reality, is the social factor. In order for a person to become a Formula One champion, he must start his racing career as early as possible, ideally, at the age of five. Even in our blessed times, not so many parents decide to lead their little daughters to the karting track, and not to ballroom dancing. However, this seemingly understandable situation does not answer the question. In 2014, women run rovers, fighters, submarines and even Formula 1 teams. But not fireballs.
Maybe Formula 1 is a closed conservative community, where not only are women not allowed, and it is impossible even to talk about it there? In addition to the fact that a formal ban on women's participation in these races never existed, today Formula 1 is just an example of political correctness. Under the contract, pilots are forbidden to say bad words, in no case should they offend anyone, everyone is equal and beautiful. Black racer Lewis Hamilton, who decided to comment in the press on his regular racing penalty with the words “This is because I'm black,” then for a whole month was forced to justify himself in the same press for a racist statement. In addition, in the "F1" is full of women. Women lead teams, and not one, women work as engineers, managers, judges, anyone, but not racers. There were women test pilots, alternate pilots, third pilots, fourth pilots, even the so-called associated pilots, but there are no combat riders among them.
Today, women are in all kinds of extreme sports.
Is it likely that women are just not interested for two hours with wild overloads and vibrations to sweat at the wheel of a car? From the age of five, live on the track, not get a normal education, risk dying or remain disabled every weekend? Sit on a diet all your life, go to the gym twice a day, finally, have a neck as thick as a thigh? Are racing interesting for women or is it entertainment for a male audience? Hardly. Today, women are in all kinds of extreme sports. In addition, almost half of the Formula audience are women. There are purely female amateur communities, even in Russia.
List the potential causes of the absence of female pilots in the "F1" can be very long. So why we still can not watch women on the podiums of the main racing championship of the planet? The answer to this question is tragic: no one knows. The correct answer, it seems, simply does not exist.
On the morning of October 11, 2013, three days before the release of the autobiography "Life is a Gift," Maria de Villota was found dead in a hotel room. The death was caused by injuries resulting from the very accident on the tests. Mary died in her sleep.