Because I’m sadly not able to watch the US Grand Prix this year, I decided that I would give my 2 cents on the controversy surrounding the new W Series motor-racing league and also the concept itself.
What’s the hub-bub? Well, the W Series is being launched specifically in the interest of opening a path-way to Formula One for female racing drivers. The series is being launched very directly to give female drivers more exposure and to make it easier for them to crack into F1s. Formula 2 (former GP2) which is essentially a feeder series for Formula One exists also for this purpose but perhaps owing to the fact that female drivers don’t compete as prominently there, a new series is being proposed.
The idea behind the W Series has received a lot of criticism from established racing figures and female drivers themselves. The more commonly raised reason that such a series would only attract drivers with a lot of sponsorship rather than talent in my view is a bit laughable since this problem already exists in the male dominated series (to pull an example from F1s: Marcus Ericsson).
The more profoundly ethical protest and which I also agree with to an extent is that the W Series would be introducing gender-segregation into motorsports, the lack of which thus far has effectively allowed women and men to race together in various leagues. Considering the stigma that female sports suffers from, I can understand people’s reservation towards it and agree, that the W Series should not just be the place where “all the woman-racers go”.
However, I’m not 100% dead set against the idea on the condition that it actually achieves the lofty goal it sets for itself. Theoretically, racers from any league (Nascar, WEC etc.) do have a chance of acquiring a super-licence and a drive at an F1 team. Realistically though, F1 driver picks do favour circuit racing leagues similar to F1 which is why Formula 3 and F2 are generally favoured for the driver picks and, no surprise, most of the racers in these leagues are young men.
Which also reveals the general problem that women often have to stick around the race circuit a long time to be taken seriously and since racing leagues like Formula One generally favor younger drivers, by the time female drivers have acquired their racing cred, they’re often considered “too old” to be competitive.
Just to remind everyone, there are and have been female drivers in F1 in the past but most have either been stuck with piss-poor constructors (only one female driver has ever managed to score championship points) or have been stuck in the unenviable position of test-drivers. Because of this, female drivers are by definition a rarity and a series like the W Series could alleviate that situation.
However, this is all conditional on the fact that F1 constructors actually see the series as a serious racing league, a situation that may be difficult to establish. The W Series is going to require the same kind of sticking to its gun attitude as the more recently launched Formula E series, where it establishes an audience and avoids the inevitably flawed idea of challenging F1.
In the end, if the W Series fails to live up to its goals, I believe the damage will be limited. Female drivers who oppose the concept are going to stay away and if the series becomes a farce, it will probably die out very quickly (akin to the A1 Grand Prix series). The important thing is that whatever FIA decides to do with the W Series is towards the advancement of the careers of the drivers vying for the peak of their sport and not just creating an oddity.
As with most things, time will tell which of these two will come true.
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