I would love to see a woman in F1 but...

[mwillems]

I would love to see a woman in F1

Care to elaborate why, by the way?

Sounds more like they want to see woman compete against men on a global platform for the entertainment as they feel a woman competing against the best women is not exciting.

Well if you ignore the title and statements surrounding the actual points, the argument set up to be answered was that women can't compete in F1.

I have no issue with that discussion though others might. But the better question is what are the abilities that separate out the good drivers from the best. It's not just have a few ms better reaction time, there is a lot more to it than that. The skills would be different between race and Q also, where in a race experience and racing intelligence are invaluable and the ability to have a technical proficiency that allows you to understand how to manage the tyres through your steering input and settings and the ability to be able to feel and understand how the tyres are evolving are skills second to none. I can't imagine this has anything to do with gender.

In Q, you need short burst concentration and no, not strength, but you will need fast twitch muscles that can allow your body to react quickly with steering input when you are on the edge. Women tend to have more slow twitch muscles and and men more fast. This is more likely to be an actual impairment than any minute cognitive differences. There will be some women who break the mold, but the pool of potential drivers would be much smaller as a result and this may well be a reason as to why it is harder for women to get into racing, and for those that are capable to succeed in it.

But you simply can't answer the question of who is capable of competing in F1 until you agree what are the ways in which this can be measured and what are the different skills and attributes they need, otherwise it is just devolve into a largely meandering post.

[UlleGulle]

I would argue, from an engineering perspective, women are superior race drivers compared to men. The average woman is 7% shorter than the average man, so less space must be allocated to this component. A woman with the corresponding fitness and height is also 4,5 kg lighter. Although bone mass is critical to the structural integrety of the driver, it does not make the car go faster.

Jokes aside, I agree, it's a numbers problem neither a conspiracy or a physical limitations thing. It's just too few young girls competing in go karts.

[peanutaxis]

Because it doesn’t quite come across as if you really would like to see it.
So why?

Yes I would love to see a woman in F1. I almost always root for the underdog. I was so happy when Hamilton entered the sport - the first [half] black person I believe, not to mention having come from relatively lowly means. And later on I kept on hoping that Rosberg would beat Hamilton since he had no titles. And I really hope that Stroll never beats his team-mate. I consider Stroll the overdog having had the tables in his favour all the way through, it seems.

Temperamental: I don't consider this a barrier since it is internal, not externally imposed. It is a fact that even with all the same accesses in the world women and men choose different occupations. Why are only 10% of engineers women and only 10% of nurses male? There has been plenty of access for both sexes in both of these fields for decades.
Some people will be in denial of the temperamental effect.

The peer group effect: This one I think is solvable. When a young girl decides to do karting I imagine that she is faced with entering basically a boy's world. One wonders what would happen if there were separate girl's karting series'. This would encourage more girls to enter but I personally believe that this will still be hampered by the Temperamental effect. It's just a fact that fewer girls are interested in competitive racing. A smaller pool of competitors will, simply by statistics, yield fewer megastars.'
People who are in denial of the temperamental effect will blame everything on the Peer group effect.

On physicality: Over the years I have considered the idea that it may be too physically demanding and unfortunately I think it is. For only two reasons as far as I can tell: braking and cornering. Then I went through the process of thinking that, well, F2 is harder for women in the steering aspect - I think Jamie Chadwick, particularly, complained of this - so that made me think that maybe it would be possible to alter the sport to make it easier for women. Making power steering mandatory in the lower formulae, for instance. Allowing power brakes - these are against the rules in F1 though I can't discern why this is from searching online. But then there's the corner speeds, and I don't think there is any way around this one. There must be a reason why they don't put in headrests like they do sometimes on Indycars on ovals so they can rest their head - probably something to do with using your 'internal gyro' to tell what the car is doing underneath you. To fix cornering speed would require slowing the cars down but to do so would be to remove them being 'gladiators'. Years ago there was a comment, from Montoya I think, when asked about some new regulations to slow the cars down. He commented ~"well why don't we just drive around in F3000 cars and CALL it F1". Slowing the cars down wouldn't be very....F1.

I guess you don’t quite get to box people into your arbitrary (1) and (2) points unless you answer the equally arbitrary question asked to you...

Obviously my propositions are far from arbitrary. I crafted them in considering that it is a pretty sensible idea that Elite Athletes are segregated by sex. And that F1 requires Elite Athletes (as it presently is).

F1 drivers don't have massive necks and legs and spend many hours a week lifting weights just for fun. In other words, strength matters.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautifu ... all_women/

Edit: to be clear I don't believe it impossible for a woman to compete in F1, I just think it vanishingly improbable.

[CMSMJ1]

A thought experiment for you

If the gender equation was turned on it's head. That 95% of karters were female and only 5% male. How many men would make it to F1?

[FW17]

Care to elaborate why, by the way?

Sounds more like they want to see woman compete against men on a global platform for the entertainment as they feel a woman competing against the best women is not exciting.

Well if you ignore the title and statements surrounding the actual points, the argument set up to be answered was that women can't compete in F1.

I have no issue with that discussion though others might. But the better question is what are the abilities that separate out the good drivers from the best. It's not just have a few ms better reaction time, there is a lot more to it than that. The skills would be different between race and Q also, where in a race experience and racing intelligence are invaluable and the ability to have a technical proficiency that allows you to understand how to manage the tyres through your steering input and settings and the ability to be able to feel and understand how the tyres are evolving are skills second to none. I can't imagine this has anything to do with gender.

In Q, you need short burst concentration and no, not strength, but you will need fast twitch muscles that can allow your body to react quickly with steering input when you are on the edge. Women tend to have more slow twitch muscles and and men more fast. This is more likely to be an actual impairment than any minute cognitive differences. There will be some women who break the mold, but the pool of potential drivers would be much smaller as a result and this may well be a reason as to why it is harder for women to get into racing, and for those that are capable to succeed in it.

But you simply can't answer the question of who is capable of competing in F1 until you agree what are the ways in which this can be measured and what are the different skills and attributes they need, otherwise it is just devolve into a largely meandering post.

Just take any sport where strength is part of the equation like cricket, tennis, football, basketball etc. and apply it to F1 as to why men and women don't compete against each other. The arguments are not going to be any different.

People would love to take the physicality of racing out of a debate when it is convenient for them.

[hollus]

Thanks for engaging, peanutaxis. I have no intention of pushing my views over some one else’s.

Regarding physicallity, no one is arguing (I think) that it is not a disadvantage. But some of us argue that it is a small one.
I guess the argument of “as strong as Yuki is right now” is a good one there. One that would cutoff many men too, but a harder bar to pass for women.

About temperament, I have no problem buying that. It is also a balance with career option perceptions and perceptions of the chances.
Very nuanced, for me coming from science, it is a different world now than 50 years ago, and yet sooo complex!

About head rest for the sustained high lateral G forces:
viewtopic.php?p=1204275#p1204275
viewtopic.php?p=1204274#p1204274


And just to throw a last spanner on the works: Zanardi. I’ll just leave that there.

[Farnborough]

Robert Kubitsa too, in regard of physical limitations post his rally accident.

[mwillems]

Sounds more like they want to see woman compete against men on a global platform for the entertainment as they feel a woman competing against the best women is not exciting.

Well if you ignore the title and statements surrounding the actual points, the argument set up to be answered was that women can't compete in F1.

I have no issue with that discussion though others might. But the better question is what are the abilities that separate out the good drivers from the best. It's not just have a few ms better reaction time, there is a lot more to it than that. The skills would be different between race and Q also, where in a race experience and racing intelligence are invaluable and the ability to have a technical proficiency that allows you to understand how to manage the tyres through your steering input and settings and the ability to be able to feel and understand how the tyres are evolving are skills second to none. I can't imagine this has anything to do with gender.

In Q, you need short burst concentration and no, not strength, but you will need fast twitch muscles that can allow your body to react quickly with steering input when you are on the edge. Women tend to have more slow twitch muscles and and men more fast. This is more likely to be an actual impairment than any minute cognitive differences. There will be some women who break the mold, but the pool of potential drivers would be much smaller as a result and this may well be a reason as to why it is harder for women to get into racing, and for those that are capable to succeed in it.

But you simply can't answer the question of who is capable of competing in F1 until you agree what are the ways in which this can be measured and what are the different skills and attributes they need, otherwise it is just devolve into a largely meandering post.

Just take any sport where strength is part of the equation like cricket, tennis, football, basketball etc. and apply it to F1 as to why men and women don't compete against each other. The arguments are not going to be any different.

People would love to take the physicality of racing out of a debate when it is convenient for them.

It's not convenient for me, I just don't think strength is as much a factor, I think the ability to translate good racing decisions into steering input quickly is more important. Physical endurance can come into it as tiredness could affect your ability to be able wrestle the car for a full race distance at the same level of muscle response of those around you.

Why do you think peak physical strength is such a big deal in F1? Even the neck gets a lot more support these days with the headrests. What level of strength is required to drive an F1 car that you are so readily able to say it is beyond a woman?

I really don't think strength is much to do with this and if you look at the physical attributes of women, you need to look at their weight too. Drivers actually don't build muscle as weight is so important. If women are on average lighter , are they able to simply build the muscle they need because they would need additional ballast anyway due to the rules? Wouldn't that equation possibly just balance out, I certainly think so, and I do think there are a lot of quick and easy and ill thought out assertions being made.

[mwillems]

A quick google to see if I can back up my assertions lead me to this.

https://www.redbull.com/us-en/formula-o ... s%20Scanes.

The article posted by Red Bull talks about being strong enough within weight parameters with Max specifically talking about his efforts with endurance so he can be responsive for the duration of a race as well as talking about not adding too much muscle.

“My father always said: you can never be tired in the car because then you are not strong enough.


For driver and machine to become as lightweight and aerodynamic as possible together, F1 drivers try not to put on a lot of muscle mass. Verstappen trains mostly working with his own body weight, meaning that his training is also made up of going on easy runs, doing free weight exercises as well as body weight training.

Strength training seems to be focussed around the core, the back and the neck.

I see no-one has mentioned that women might even have some advantage due to their weight.

[Rodak]

Well, it's interesting to hear from a bunch of (young I suspect) males why females can't be good race drivers.... Part of the answer to why there are no female F1 drivers might be the same reason no females have posted on this topic.

[hollus]

I see no-one has mentioned that women might even have some advantage due to their weight.

That ship mostly sailed when a minimum weight was set for driver and seat together. I believe even the COG of that combo is mostly prescribed?
Size could remain an advantage, ask Adrian, but then we are back to “as good as Yuki” aren’t we?

[mwillems]

I see no-one has mentioned that women might even have some advantage due to their weight.

That ship mostly sailed when a minimum weight was set for driver and seat together. I believe even the COG of that combo is mostly prescribed?
Size could remain an advantage, ask Adrian, but then we are back to “as good as Yuki” aren’t we?

Yes but lighter women can bulk up more, no? Most drivers are not Yuki sized, the bigger drivers have to be especially careful with their weight. Why make the bar align with the exception and not the rule? Looking at the grid as an average, it feels like strength and endurance can be offset against weight and any gender based strength advantage is minimal when all is said and done. Average weight difference between men and women is 15kg, it's pretty substantial.

[mwillems]

I would argue, from an engineering perspective, women are superior race drivers compared to men. The average woman is 7% shorter than the average man, so less space must be allocated to this component. A woman with the corresponding fitness and height is also 4,5 kg lighter. Although bone mass is critical to the structural integrety of the driver, it does not make the car go faster.

Jokes aside, I agree, it's a numbers problem neither a conspiracy or a physical limitations thing. It's just too few young girls competing in go karts.

Sorry, didn't see this, didn't mean to ignore that you'd posted the point about weight.

[bluechris]

I don't get why guys you use Yuki as an example. He is perfectly fit for the analogy of his size especially on the neck. The point is that you need to carry in corner's and breaking your own body and Yuki is fine imo
If a woman can be like him then its doable to be able to race.

[FW17]

This person does and trained a lot of high intensity challenges