female drivers in motorsport

[xpensive]

As marcush points out upstream, I belive it has a lot to do with traditions and interests, not enough women has been involved in racing
to make a statistical impact in the results, simple as that. On top of that, those who made it into F1 perhaps didn't make it on merits anyway, female equals of Andrea de Cesaris perhaps, just having a well connected dad.

Not denying the physical and psychological differences between the sexes, I think a larger percentage of professional females involved in F1,
would be a healthy counterweight to the Briatores and pitbabes alike.

And no, this was not written with my mistresses gun to my head.

[marcush.]

As marcush points out upstream, I belive it has a lot to do with traditions and interests, not enough women has been involved in racing
to make a statistical impact in the results, simple as that. On top of that, those who made it into F1 perhaps didn't make it on merits anyway, female equals of Andrea de Cesaris perhaps, just having a well connected dad.

Not denying the physical and psychological differences between the sexes, I think a larger percentage of professional females involved in F1,
would be a healthy counterweight to the Briatores and pitbabes alike.

And no, this was not written with my mistresses gun to my head.

there were always women in Motorsports ,long before we had pitbabes..
Motorsport was never a poor mans pasttime so I´d say even de Cesaris had his justification and he had pole positions was leading races ,crashed a lot ,so no reason to talk him down...

bring on the girls! I want to see pitboys..

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

.,.,.,.,.,.,

[xpensive]

@ marcush;

Many great racers started from scratch and worked their way up, Ronnie Peteson, Keke Rosberg and Nigel Mansell springs to mind, don't know if Schumacher had a wealthy dad though?

Andrea de Cesaris however, had a father who sold a lot of cigarettes in Italy, a fact that kept his son in F1 long after his best before date. Quite likely, somebody paid for Lella Lombardi's drive in a similar way.

[Just_a_fan]

We seem to be forgetting that motorsports are one of the only sports where women compete directly with men. Athlethics, Football, Aquatics, Tennis, they all have a seperate competition. Like it or lump it (no pun intended), Women just arent up to it.

Equine sports too. And women compete very well with men in that area. They win lots of stuff including the big 3-day events. Horses are just as physical as racing cars.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Lol

No more mention of pit boys then! A quick Google of said evil shows that it does in fact not exist( =D> )!

[marcush.]

@ marcush;

Many great racers started from scratch and worked their way up, Ronnie Peteson, Keke Rosberg and Nigel Mansell springs to mind, don't know if Schumacher had a wealthy dad though?

Andrea de Cesaris however, had a father who sold a lot of cigarettes in Italy, a fact that kept his son in F1 long after his best before date. Quite likely, somebody paid for Lella Lombardi's drive in a similar way.

tbh,if you were racing in your life you´d know it in fact is expensive and will ruin you in no time.Even in lower formulas a long time ago (before hospitality mayhem) you could say every two years one house was gone...
there always were nice people around who paid for young aspiring drivers..for example Conte Zanon (?)was one of those in the 70s ....

todays a female driver is an asset in terms of publicity and this can only help with sponsors as you can almost guarantee some coverage...more so if she´s quick of course and has the looks of a beauty ...so a female driver has to score in areas a male does not even feature...when it comes to getting sponsorship.

[xpensive]

I don't think Kimi ruined himself or his dad by doing karting and Formula Ford?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimi_R%C3%A4ikk%C3%B6nen

[hollus]

A different take on female drivers looking at the technical implications for the car.
Everyone can see the benefits of an (in average) lighter female driver. More weight allowance for ballast resulting in a lower COG.
But there is another related aspect to this. It is full of relatively tiny women out there, so:

What could one do with a driver (might even be male!) weighing in at 45Kg... and 150cm tall?

Said driver would still have its (her?) eyes roughly at the same height as everyone else for visibility reasons, so it would adopt a rather vertical sitting position. While this might reduce the advantages of a lower COG, it has another side effect: the driver's feet would be significantly backwards compared to everyone elses'. I am guessing that said driver would effectively be 20 cm shorter than most in the horizontal plane, partly due to to the height difference, partly due to the more vertical sitting position.

So what benefits could one reap from those 20 cm while designing a car?
A question to all the car designers here who know the dimensional rules inside and out. Could one reduce the fuel tank to front axle distance by 20 cm? Is there any benefit to it? Would one want to move axle backwards, or maybe move the fuel tank, engine, etc. forwards and keep the car's length, maybe to the benefit of the coke bottle shape? Would it be feasible/legal/beneficial to reduce the height of the top of the cockpit?

This way maybe some women could bring their own 6 tenths to the cars.

[flynfrog]

A different take on female drivers looking at the technical implications for the car.
Everyone can see the benefits of an (in average) lighter female driver. More weight allowance for ballast resulting in a lower COG.
But there is another related aspect to this. It is full of relatively tiny women out there, so:

What could one do with a driver (might even be male!) weighing in at 45Kg... and 150cm tall?

Said driver would still have its (her?) eyes roughly at the same height as everyone else for visibility reasons, so it would adopt a rather vertical sitting position. While this might reduce the advantages of a lower COG, it has another side effect: the driver's feet would be significantly backwards compared to everyone elses'. I am guessing that said driver would effectively be 20 cm shorter than most in the horizontal plane, partly due to to the height difference, partly due to the more vertical sitting position.

So what benefits could one reap from those 20 cm while designing a car?
A question to all the car designers here who know the dimensional rules inside and out. Could one reduce the fuel tank to front axle distance by 20 cm? Is there any benefit to it? Would one want to move axle backwards, or maybe move the fuel tank, engine, etc. forwards and keep the car's length, maybe to the benefit of the coke bottle shape? Would it be feasible/legal/beneficial to reduce the height of the top of the cockpit?

This way maybe some women could bring their own 6 tenths to the cars.

If you look at Danica Patrick's Indy car her car has a clear windscreen so she can see out of it unlike the painted one found on most other cars.