Hitting the barriers – Women in Formula 1 and W series racing

Introduction

At present, there have been fewer than 10 female drivers in Formula 1 since its inception. Matthews and Pike (2016) write that ‘despite claiming to be a gender-equal sport, motorsport appears to share characteristics of many sports in that it is inherently gendered in favour of male involvement and control’ (p. 1534). They also point an article in The Times, which states that ‘One thing is certain: women are for decorating Formula One and not for taking part in it’ (Eason, 2003). Since this article, models who promote sponsors known colloquially as ‘grid girls’ have been removed from Formula 1 (hereafter F1), but only seven women have successfully sat in the driving seat of an F1 racing car despite the sport being classified as unisex (BBC Sport, 2018). It has been hypothesised by multiple sports ethics scholars (English, 1978; Fink et al., 2016; Kane, 1995; Martínková, 2020b; Theberge, 1998) that unisex sports provide positive opportunities in combatting gender inequality in sport on the basis of their being no ‘muscle gap’ that women must overcome (Kane, 1995: 198). Rather, athletes work together regardless of sex and gender, demonstrating that it is not only discourse which creates inequalities, but also the activities which athletes engage in. Susie Wolff drove for team Williams as a test driver between 2012 and 2015. However, she never made it as part of the racing team. Wolff highlights in a blog post a cyclical problem which dominates conversation surrounding women’s sports: because there are not enough young girls karting and taking it all the way to professional driving in F1, there are no role models, and because there are no role models, there is little inspiration for young girls to continue the karting, and so ad infinitum (Wolff, 2015). Kochanek et al. (2020: 5) found that women drivers typically gained entry into the sport through their fathers. Although some women drivers had access to the sport through female family members, women drivers often placed greater emphasis on their fathers as enabling their entry, evidencing the influence of gatekeeping in automotive racing.

Cycles can however be broken, and this may be demonstrated by the up and coming, women only, single-seater car racing championship known as W Series. Before I set out to examine W Series and its ethical implications for women in sport, I begin a chronological cultural analysis of women’s participation in F1 and how the demand for representation has grown to what it is today. I build on Pflugfelder’s (2009) theorisation of the gendered body in motorsport, however, unlike Pflugfelder, I argue that the sexed or gendered body is accounted for in both the physical conditions of motorsport and the discourse of the sport. It is argued that there are significant barriers in F1 racing that prevent women drivers from securing a professional driving position and racing on equal terms with men. In the following paragraphs, I discuss five barriers – historical and current attitudes, assumed physical/mental inferiority, sexualisation, money, and representation/(in)visibility – which I believe to be preventing women from participating in F1. I do not aim to provide an immediate solution to increasing women’s involvement in F1, nor do I believe that this list of barriers is exhaustive, but I am hopeful that the initiation of this discussion in a philosophical context will lead to further analyses. After I outline the five barriers, I discuss the introduction of W Series and critically discuss the advantages and disadvantages that it poses. I argue that W Series provides women drivers with both equity ¹ by providing women with a feeder league to advance into F1, and equality ² as everyone is given the same car and is not given their position on a pay-to-race basis. I conclude that, although the series is problematic for those who champion the benefits of unisex sports, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages, and this brings hope to a new era of women’s car racing.

Attitudes – Historical and current

The first barrier of discussion is historical and current attitudes. Previously, a woman driver was considered a ‘political statement’ (Pflugfelder, 2009: 421). Women’s exclusion from physical and typically masculine pursuits is not a novel discussion (Lenskyj, 1992; McDonagh and Pappano, 2008; Theberge, 1989: 164–165; Weaving and Roberts, 2012: 476). However, there is evidence that women are becoming increasingly more involved in sports that demand that they are dirtied and injured to a similar level as men, one example being women’s rugby which has seen significant growth in participation and now boasts over 2.4 million registered female players worldwide (World Rugby, 2018).

A sport which may present a greater parallel to motorsports is equestrianism, which is also considered unisex particularly due to the neutralising effect of the horse – in essence, the sex or gender of the jockey does not matter, rather it is their riding skills, horse handling abilities and the horse’s capabilities. Currently, equestrianism is the only unisex sport in the summer Olympic programme. Horse racing, like F1 to automotive racing, is viewed as the fastest and most furious side of equestrianism. Historically, horse racing has been considered a highly masculine arena by scholars (Bossak-Herbst, Głowacka-Grajper, 2021; Butler, 2013, 2014; Butler and Charles, 2012; Hedenborg, 2007), and the recent verdict that female jockey Bryony Frost was bullied by fellow male jockey Robbie Dunne adds to the evidence that some attitudes towards women in horse racing remain unchanged (Armytage, 2021). Although it is evident that gender equality in horse racing requires further efforts in de-masculinising the sport, it has achieved certain milestones ahead of F1 (if these milestones can be at all compared) such as Khadijah Mellah becoming the first British Muslim woman to win a competitive horse race ³ in 2019 (Keogh, 2021) and Rachael Blackmore becoming the first female to win the Grand National in 2021 (Hannigan and Clerkin, 2021). F1 is yet to see women racing in the championship, let alone winning any of its races, and this is partially down to historical attitudes towards women in sport and automotive racing.

Historical attitudes which excluded and prohibited female athletes from sport are not only based on ‘medical misinformation’ of the female body (Lenskyj, 1992: 145) but are strongly tied to the act of ‘gatekeeping’, and F1 − like most other sports which were made ‘by and for’ men (Dworkin and Messner, 2002: 17) – is historically rooted in such practices. Motorsports in Britain were originally organised by ‘elitist’ and ‘exclusive’ gentlemen’s clubs ‘who worked to limit women’s participation’ (Matthews and Pike, 2016: 1535), and is likely related to the dominance of men in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) studies. Nonetheless, F1 has never officially prohibited female drivers from competing, with the first female F1 driver Maria Teresa de Filippis competing at the Belgian Grand Prix in 1958. F1 is therefore classified as a unisex sport (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile [online], 2013). There is a distinct lack of research into the intersection of sex and gender and F1 racing, although there has been some important work by Kochanek et al. (2020) focusing on gender in The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). Although the foundations of F1 and NASCAR differ greatly,4 they are both hugely popular, male-dominated motorsports where male gatekeeping remains prevalent.

The suggestion that F1 was created for men and by men (Dworkin and Messner, 2002: 17) is still relevant today, as there are no women drivers in the 2021 series. This shows that although some attitudes towards women drivers have relaxed, nonsensical beliefs remain and cause problematic attitudes today (a recent example being former F1 driver David Coulthard claiming that women are not capable of winning F1 due to the ‘mothering gene’; Houston, 2017; NESN, 2017). It has been argued that women in F1 and other motorsports are ‘often highly hetero-sexualised’ and continue to negotiate their dual identities as women and athletes – I will expand upon this later in the section ‘Sexualisation’ (Matthews and Pike, 2016: 1545). Pflugfelder (2009: 412) writes that women’s inferiority in motorsport is not manifested in the physical conditions of the sport, rather it is the ‘discourse’ of the sport. Attitudes towards female athletes in general (Burrow, 2020; Davis and Edwards, 2021; Howe, 2020), and including female race car drivers, continue to reinforce the notion that males are the natural athletes who are more deserving of respect and recognition. There have been multiple comments made by high-profile figures in F1 about female drivers. Former F1 Group chief executive Bernie Ecclestone commented on driver Wolff that ‘If [Susie’s] as quick in a car as she looks good out of a car, she’ll be a huge asset’ (Barretto, 2012), later stating in 2016 ‘If there was somebody [female] that was capable, they wouldn’t be taken seriously anyway, so they would never have a car that is capable of competing’ (de Menezes, 2016).

There is also evidence that attitudes are beginning to change. Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, recently stated that it is ‘only a matter of time’ until there are female F1 drivers, but currently ‘there isn’t one that could cut it at the front’ (Galloway, 2014). It is apparent that attitudes of those directly involved in the industry are beginning to shift. Yet, they are hampered by persisting historical attitudes and reliance on women to ‘do better’ (Kochanek et al., 2020: 8) so that they can ‘cut it at the front’ and play with the boys in spite of the discrimination they face. What ties together the attitudes expressed earlier is assumed physical/mental inferiority and sexualisation.

Assumed physical/mental inferiority

The second barrier which women in F1 racing may experience is assumed physical or mental inferiority. Open-wheel car racing (which includes F1) is both physically and mentally demanding. First, the drivers must have sufficient strength to handle the G-forces experienced when accelerating, braking and cornering. Second, drivers need a high level of fitness to cope with temperatures in the car and to retain postural stability for hours. Finally, drivers need to be mentally resilient, quick to react and well-coordinated, aware of spatial location and focused. The demand on the drivers ‘is comparable to that placed on other elite athletes’, yet their claim does not specify whether the ‘other’ elite athletes are male or female, nor were the sexes of their sampled athletes confirmed as male or male and female ⁵ (Raschner et al., 2013: 58–59). Irrespective of whether Raschner et al. sampled female open-wheel race car drivers or not, it is reasonable to argue that these physical and mental demands are neither male- nor female-specific qualities.

It is plausible that male drivers may have the upper hand in race cars as they have the potential to be physically stronger. Nonetheless, it is unsatisfactory to claim that it is physical differences alone that prevent female drivers from successful entry into F1, especially when two major components of automotive racing – mental agility and the car – are often not reliant upon one’s physical differences. In addition, motorsport requires a particular type of strength to handle G-forces, requiring specific training to build the muscles required, thus it is possible that strength differences in race car handling between males and females are minimal if both are exposed to karting when young. Like their male counterparts, female race car drivers begin karting at a young age (the main pathway into F1 racing), advancing their driving skills much earlier than most. Automotive racing, if it is taken up at a young age, may have the ability to narrow the ‘muscle gap’, especially if we consider sport as a continuum which does not necessitate a polarised binary but an overlap, as Kane (1995) theorises. Alternatively, this may suggest that if drivers are to enter F1 they have to be stronger and more resistant to G-forces on average. If we assume that sex and gender ⁶ are two distinct categories (i.e. male and female, man and woman), we focus too much on the differences between the two, rather than the possible similarities and the ‘range of performance differences among individual females and males’ (Kane, 1995: 198).

Addressing the claim that women do not have the mental aptitude to drive F1 cars, it is plausible that women drive differently in comparison to men in F1. Statistically, men have more exposure to driving. Women are less likely to hold a driver’s licence, and generally have a lower annual mileage (Massie et al., 1995: 78; Li et al., 1998: 383; Santamarina-Rubio et al., 2014: 6; Regev et al., 2018: 132). This may lead to the conclusion that women are less exposed to driving in comparison to men, and therefore, may be stereotyped as more conservative drivers. Although this research may give us some important insights into why women are seen as inferior drivers, I do not think it is relevant data for our discussion of female F1 drivers. Nonetheless, this research provides insights to the barriers which women face as drivers in a wider social setting.

In terms of sex-based differences, research shows that the different visual reaction times are not only biological, but due to life experiences (Silverman, 2006: 64). Considering that women have faced ‘neglect, stigmatisation and hostility’ when they engage in masculine sports, it is not an unreasonable assumption that some women drive differently or have less experience because they have been denied opportunities which men may have been granted (Kane, 1995: 201). It is certainly plausible that when boys and girls become involved in karting, they are equally exposed to experiences requiring quick reaction times and this would indicate that differences are both biological and experiential. Recently, research conducted at Michigan State University discovered that there were no differences in physiological responses to automobile racing between male and female drivers (Ferguson et al., 2019). Although the sample was on licenced IndyCar drivers and licenced Sports Car Club of America Pro drivers, this research indicates that women drivers in F1 may not have different responses to men, thus debunking the myth that women are biologically disadvantaged in comparison.

What is peculiar about these assumptions is that F1 racing is arguably not a male-apposite sport. It is suggested that some sports can be divided into ‘male sports’ and ‘female sports’, where male sports are advantaged by strength, explosive power, aggression, face-to-face opposition and speed, while female sports favour coordination, grace, expressivity, aesthetics, flexibility and balance (Gentile et al., 2018: 96; Martínková, 2020b). Inevitably, F1 requires some physical involvement and a great deal of mental aptitude, but the use of a car potentially reduces any sexed differences by introducing a neutralised piece of sports equipment (Pflugfelder, 2009: 412). It could be further argued that the physical differences which are caused by one’s sex could be catered for in F1 cars, eliminating claims of physical inferiority – after all, teams already modify the seat position, steering wheel height and controls, pedals and more, depending on regulations, and it would not be too far a stretch to tailor a car to cater for the female body if it had any discovered effect on her driving (Scarborough, 2021). Contrary to the assumptions, it would appear that sex has little impact on F1 drivers’ skills, and women’s exclusion is due to constructed gender norms which have prevented them from reaping the benefits of the sports ‘continuum’ and gaining equal competitive opportunities in F1 (Kane, 1995).

Sexualisation

Sexualisation is also a major barrier which women must overcome and endure in order to become race car drivers. Up until 2018, ‘grid girls’ were used in F1 (BBC Sport, 2018). Other sports such as darts and cycling have also abandoned the use of women for promotional activities, while ‘ring girls’ are still used in boxing and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). In a statement to the media, F1’s managing director of commercial operations stated that the use of grid girls ‘does not resonate with our brand values and clearly is at odds with modern day societal norms’ (BBC Sport, 2018). The use of grid girls solidifies women’s place in F1 as objects rather than agents, creating a divide between those who ‘do’ sport (the men) and those who ‘observe’ sport (women).7 I suggest that this divide is a strong example of Beauvoirian ‘Otherness’, whereby the man posits himself as the ‘essential’ and the woman as the ‘inessential’ – after all, without the drivers there would be no F1 racing, but without the grid girls the racing continues as normal (De Beauvoir, 2011: 6).

It has been strongly argued that self-sexualisation is essential for women drivers who want to enter the world of motorsports as ‘mainstream discourse designates athleticism and femininity as incompatible’ (Kochanek et al., 2020: 6). It is also suggested that self-sexualisation is required to attract prospective sponsors (Wanneberg, 2011: 276). Consequently, women athletes are caught in a ‘balancing act’ between presenting themselves as authentically feminine, heterosexually appealing women yet also serious race car drivers (Krane, 2001: 122). Kochanek et al. (2020: 5) noted how one of their research participants was advised not to have the colour pink on her car so that she would be taken more seriously. Problematically, when women present themselves as feminine athletes, they also open themselves up to ‘disenfranchisement’ as they may be seen first and foremost as sexual objects, leading to their athletic careers being ‘trivialised’ (Krane, 2001: 122).

Danica Patrick is often cited as one of the most successful female race car drivers in recent history (Matthews and Pike, 2016: 1545; Goulding, 2021; Norris, 2021; Taranto, 2021). She has also been referred to as a ‘perhaps the most hypersexualized female athlete of the current era’ (Fink, 2012: 51). Patrick stated in a documentary that ‘I feel awesome about being a sex symbol . . . The exposure that was generated because of being female and using my attributes – it works’ (Janes, 2017). Although her achievements are not to be dismissed, it should be acknowledged that Patrick is considered one of the best female drivers yet has only won one race throughout her 20-year professional career. Despite the sporting-firsts she made on behalf of women in motorsport, it may be speculated that her success is partially due to her marketability. Motorsport (and in this particular situation, NASCAR and IndyCar) arguably tokenises women race car drivers, thus undermining their credibility as drivers (Kochanek et al., 2020: 6–9). Women in F1 are therefore likely to face a harsh dilemma: either they sexualise themselves to gain the monetary support required and have their careers trivialised, or they risk marginalisation by avoiding heteronormative conformity.

Money

F1 racing is a costly sport, with team Toro Rosso recently disclosing that they received US$29.5 million in sponsorship (Sylt, 2020). The financial cost of the sport has always been a factor that determines whether someone can drive, regardless of their gender, especially as F1 allows for ‘pay drivers’ who are not paid by the car owner/team but by personal sponsorship or family funding. Furthermore, F1 teams must also pay a basic entry fee of US$569,308 which needs to be submitted when they lodge their application, and will pay a larger fee if they are a higher ranked team (Noble, 2020). It is strongly arguable that women face extra hurdles when trying to meet the financial demands of the sport. ESPN (formerly known as The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) reported in 2019 that ‘a seat on [this year’s] Formula 3 grid costs between 650,000 and 750,000 euros’ and Formula 2 ‘costs between 1.6 million and 1.8 million euros’ (Saunders, 2019).

As evidenced earlier, sponsorship is essential in motorsport, especially if a driver is not signed by a corporate-funded team. Sponsorship not only allows drivers to race, but arguably shapes the public perception of the driver (Pflugfelder, 2009: 419). To demonstrate marketability, it may be suggested that an affirmative action or equity approach is required, however, this causes concern surrounding athlete credibility. Matthews and Pike (2016) found that their participants believed ‘a woman participating in the “pinnacle” of motor-racing, F1, would help challenge societal assumptions regarding women motor-racing drivers’ (p. 1546). If a team were required to have a woman on their team, she could provide inspiration for the next generation of women race car drivers and increasing viewership, breaking the never-ending cycle of women’s representation and (in)visibility. Nonetheless, this could lead to unfavourable circumstances, such as a woman race car drivers’ ability being undermined on the basis that she has won a contract based on merit and is instead a ‘token’ driver. Ferrari were the most recent team to face these accusations, after their announcement of their intentions to support a woman driver in their academy was criticised as a marketing stunt (Cooper, 2020; Mitchell, 2019). Being a ‘token’ driver also comes with additional pressures according to Kochanek et al. (2020) who noted that women drivers struggle with sponsors and ‘limited conceptions . . . of what she could accomplish’ (p. 6) as they were marketed as the next Danica Patrick. Although action is certainly required to break down the barriers which women race car drivers in F1 face, the problem should be addressed in a more gender-blind way to avoid tokenism and for attitudes to combat negative stereotypes.

The rejection of affirmative action may be met with the rebuttal that negative stereotypes may be reinforced if women are not given opportunities within high-performing teams, thus if they perform poorly in a slower car, it is not attributed to the car itself but the woman driving it. This opens women race car drivers to the possibility of stereotype threat, which occurs when ‘an individual is at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about him- or herself’ (Gentile et al., 2018: 95) or a group that they are representing. If a sport is considered a typically masculine domain, the effect of stereotype threat was more likely to impact women participating in that sport, particularly surrounding their physical abilities (Gentile et al., 2018: 99–100). If women are not given the same opportunities as men in F1, and consequently fail to gain enough sponsorship and/or are not signed by a higher profile, more lucrative racing team, the beliefs that women are inferior drivers remain, and will only be broken once a woman race car driver performs well.

Representation and (in)visibility

The visibility of women in sport, though improving, is yet to be on par with men (Women in Sport et al., 2018). Participation levels of women are fewer in number compared to men at elite level sports (International Olympic Committee, 2018). There are also very few women (and men8) of colour involved in automotive racing, with exceptions including Shauntia ‘Tia’ Norfleet, the first African-American woman to hold a NASCAR licence and the first black woman licenced by the Automobile Racing Club of America (Automobile Driving Museum, 2021), Rwandan-Belgian W Series driver Naomi Schiff and Arab-American professional stock car racing driver, Toni Breidinger. This could also be linked to cultural norms surrounding women driving. In an effort to boost participation numbers, it is suggested that there needs to be more visible ‘physically active and successful female role models’ (Staurowsky et al., 2020: 66). However, this is hard to achieve when participation levels of girls and women are low. The common phrase which is used today by those lobbying higher women representation in sport is that the younger generation need to ‘see it’ to ‘be it’ (Meier, 2015; Wolff, 2015; World Para Ice Hockey, 2021).

A 50:50 ratio of men to women is often considered the perfect ratio of gender representation in a heteronormative society, thus we witness multiple protocols to try and balance representation in institutions such as higher education and business. There is evidence that sporting institutions are also chasing the 50:50 ratio, with the 2021 Olympics priding itself on being the ‘first ever gender-balanced Olympic Games in history’, due to women making up 49% of participants (International Olympic Committee, 2021). Nonetheless, aiming for such a balance is often a result of the desired ‘role model effect’, where it is intended that ‘the presence of successful women at the top of a profession will inspire others’ in a trickle-down effect and aid the combat of harmful stereotypes (Finlayson, 2018: 780). Despite positive intentions, equal numerical representation ‘neither constitutes nor indicates equality or justice for women’, as it does not give us a metric to understand attitudes towards women – a crucial factor in fighting gender inequality (Finlayson, 2018: 781). Striving for equal representation opens women up to the problem of tokenism, which could possibly be more detrimental for women’s efforts in motorsport as it can fuel the attitude that women continue to be inferior drivers for their entry into the sport is not merit-based.

What is also problematic when we strive for numerical representation is that often we look to the top of the sport, rather than at each and every layer. The ‘role model effect’ requires us to examine who is the most influential, which turns us to those who have global platforms. In the case of single seater driving races, F1 is considered the most prestigious and the most visible. As established earlier, it is the top of the leagues and the institutions where we see women the least, and so it makes sense to tackle the lack of representation here, rather than lower down where women may have higher representation. Nonetheless, this leaves us with an ‘unattractively elitist’ feminist approach (Finlayson, 2018: 779). The lack of women race car drivers is a cause for concern not only in F1, but also in the feeder leagues. ⁹ We cannot discount karting either, as this is often where most race car drivers start. Some women drivers in NASCAR acknowledge the need to view the bigger picture: ‘It’s a funnel . . . the top of the sport is going to depend on how many we can get down the bottom’ (Kochanek et al., 2020: 10). Evidently, numerical representation is not the only thing we should be focusing on.

Instead, we should turn our attention to qualitative representation. Although it has been found that the representation of women role models can boost those in need of inspiration (Saul, 2013: 52), it is clear that there needs to be an emphasis on the quality of the women in positions of influence, rather than the quantity. In this context, I take ‘quality’ to be understood as strong and empowering athletes – those who can drive just as fast as the men. To be taken seriously and overcome the stereotype of the inferior driver, women need to demonstrate on the world stage that they too can take the wheel competitively. However, this is highly dependent on change within the institution of F1. Calling on women race car drivers to take matters into their own hands and challenge the norms can be detrimental, for it implies that women need to ‘do better’ in a sport which is riddled with barriers beyond their control (Kochanek et al., 2020: 10). The eventual goal of qualitative representation will create positive quantitative representation, where women take up some of the seats on the grid and consequently dispel claims of tokenism, blending in with their male co-drivers in a public exhibition of their driving abilities and ending the ‘Danica effect’. In light of this, we turn our attention to W Series in our search for achieving qualitative representation and better visibility.

W series: The answer we have been searching for?

W Series is a new racing format which launched in 2018 and is exclusively for women (thus the ‘W’). Unlike F1, W Series drivers race in mechanically identical cars, levelling the playing field and preventing ‘those with the wealthiest backers’ from dominating pole position (W Series, 2021). The aim of W Series is to involve more women in motorsport and break the ‘see it’ to ‘be it’ cycle through ‘positive intervention’, elevating the profiles of women race car drivers and inspiring girls at grassroot level (W Series, 2021). The championship was broadcast live on television in 2019 in ‘340 million households across more than 100 different countries’ (Tomas, 2021). The W Series chief executive disclosed that broadcasting the 2021 championship on ‘live free-to-air’ television was highly beneficial in boosting the visibility of the athletes and inspiring viewers (Tomas, 2021). The championship also has multiple high-profile supporters and has demonstrated that it is a potential springboard for women to compete in F1.10 Most importantly, the championship presents an opportunity for women to demonstrate driving skills in a non-tokenistic manner, providing empirical evidence of women’s driving abilities, dispelling myths and current attitudes surrounding their inferiority. Furthermore, the championship is not based on a pay-to-race premise, selecting its drivers on their ability, overcoming the serious issues surrounding money which women race drivers face (W Series, 2021).

Despite this, W Series presents us with some ethical problems. The first problem is that the creation of an exclusively women’s championship which is run separately to F1 may lead to W Series drivers being perceived as ‘Others’. Revisiting the Beauvoirian theory of Subject/Absolute, women experience ‘Otherness’ when their being is considered a subordinate of man (in this case, F1 may be seen as the original and ‘Absolute’). By separating women from men to the extent that they have their own championships, cars and formats, they are granted a status of ‘separate but equal’ – as Beauvoir (2011) writes ‘this so-called egalitarian segregation served only to introduce the most extreme forms of discrimination’ (p. 12). Those critical of W Series may further argue that the championship is less prestigious too: compared to F1, it is likely that there will be less money for the winners, less big-brand sponsorship, less media attention and so on. This may be emphasised by the hope that the championship will springboard women into F1, as this assumes that F1 is a step-up, rather than a level competition with W Series.11

Moreover, the separation of women from men in single-seater car racing presents us with issues surrounding the lived female body. According to Pflugfelder (2009: 411–412), the physical conditions of motorsport do not account for the gendered body – instead, the gendered body is created through the discourse of the sport. It is hypothesised that women’s bodies in motorsport are seen in three different ways:

beyond vehicles (navigating the space filled with other bodies and their respective vehicles), with vehicles (coordinating with the technology of the vehicle), and inside vehicles (operating in the space of the technology, interacting with the technology, but situated by their gender’s discursively constructed characteristics). (Pflugfelder, 2009: 412, emphasis added)

Due to the car in F1 acting as a neutralising piece of equipment, as well as the rule that women can theoretically compete alongside men ‘in the same locations, on the same tracks, and with the same technologies’, the female body is arguably not viewed as gendered when she races as a body inside the car, rather her assumed inferiority is shaped through unchanging attitudes and lenses such as the media when she is outside of the car (Pflugfelder, 2009: 411). The issue of gender ‘falls away when drivers become a driver-car assemblage’ (Pflugfelder, 2009: 421), and she is identified not as a woman, but as a driver. However, this leads women in motorsport to experience a conflicting ‘crux’, where they are understood as genderless when racing, yet instantly feminine when entering or exiting the car (Pflugfelder, 2009: 422). This potentially causes them to ‘experience their bodies as something outside themselves’ (Aalten, 2004: 269). If we remove the unisex element of the sport by creating a ‘women’s only’ championship, thus leaving F1 as a championship where a unisex, merit-based athlete pool is only theoretical and not reality, W Series genders the female body within and beyond the vehicle and reinforces a problematic binary that can lead to ‘discrimination, intimidation and prejudice against athletes’ (Martínková, 2020b: 249). Consequently, the creation of W Series could feed into the sexist discourse of motorsport, allowing the continuation of harmful stereotypes that women are inferior drivers who require a separate competition due to their inability to permanently enter the world of F1.

Concluding thoughts

Although W Series is disadvantaged by its segregating nature, the advantages that it offers to women in motorsport are not to be dismissed. This essay identifies five barriers that prevent women from securing a seat and from racing on equal terms with men in F1, and W Series aims to challenge each barrier in this new racing format by providing both equity and equality. A merit-based, equally financed championship for women, which is broadcast on live, national television, gives women the opportunity to address detrimental stereotypes without concerns surrounding sponsorship and money. It is a platform that boosts representation and will greatly increase the visibility of women in motorsport, breaking the cycle that plagues the sport. Although the championship may fall victim to claims of ‘Otherness’ and being ‘just a women’s race’, the series has the potential to springboard women into F1 by providing an equitable platform. As long as women can compete alongside men, W Series will have fulfilled its purpose and eventually achieve equality. It would no longer matter if W Series were seen as a less prestigious version of F1, for if it becomes a pathway for drivers to gain a seat on the F1 grid, it will become a ‘feeder’ league. If W Series achieves a ‘feeder’ league status, sex, and gender would not be important factors and women would indeed experience genderless ‘driver-car’ identities, so that the benefits of unisex sports could be reaped more effectively. Of course, this is dependent on the institutions of W Series and F1 working harmoniously.

At present, the situation for women in F1 appears to be bleaker than in other sports that are making progress in their quest for gender equality. Despite this, in identifying some major barriers preventing progress, we are able to begin to directly address the question of how to reduce the negative stereotypes faced by women. Further progress will require more research on women in motorsport, which has hitherto received little attention. There are currently several women climbing the ranks in other automotive leagues, and these women could provide further and more up-to-date evidence from sports science research as to how women may or may not differ in comparison to male drivers in a biological context. Further sociological research into the effects of W Series and female-oriented initiatives such as the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile’s (FIA) Girls on Track programme and Susie Wolff’s Dare to Be Different programme could also be fruitful in determining how to progress with combatting harmful stereotypes in motorsport. I am hopeful that F1 can be an exemplary model of unisex sport in the future, using W Series as a positive influence in its social advancement.

Although insights from sociological, historical and philosophical research on areas of motorsport such as NASCAR and IndyCar have been particularly useful in this analysis, at times, they were not wholly applicable to F1 due to contrasting cultural roots and embodied values tied to the specific automotive disciplines. Once research is better focused, issues surrounding gender in F1 can be more accurately addressed. Overall, this essay aims to show that the system of F1 within which women are racing has shown itself to be insufficient it its efforts to be a truly unisex sport. W Series will hopefully ignite major change in this direction.