How football has posed difficult questions for F1

The list of creditors owed money following the collapse of W Series makes for depressing reading. I know several of them and suspect some can ill afford to write off such losses.

While founder Catherine Bond Muir and her team fought the good fight to establish W Series as the principal route for women racers to pursue their careers, there is no avoiding the fact that the series failed commercially. This happened despite W Series being invited to support selected F1 events. The championship also achieved good traction with media and plenty of support among the new audiences of young, female fans which are a notable feature of F1’s recent growth.

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Although some sponsors did lend it support, notably F1’s major partner Heineken, the
cash never flowed in the quantities needed.
As we’ve seen on numerous occasions, from
A1GP to Grand Prix Masters and Superleague Formula, the commercial realities of launching
a new series are daunting.

The late Jack Cunningham of A1 Team Malaysia, one of A1GP’s more commercially astute franchise holders, once likened starting a championship to making a bucket with an integrated hole in the bottom. Filling it will take some doing, and the financial drain will be relentless.

With W Series’ passing, attention has shifted to the F1 Academy, its objective being much broader as it seeks to increase “the female talent pool in motorsport both on and off-track”. Its inaugural racing series in many ways picks up where W Series left off, providing a female-only championship with all-important F1 support under the direction of Susie Wolff.

Meanwhile, the FIA has launched the fourth edition of its Girls
on Track – Rising Stars programme in collaboration with the
Ferrari Driver Academy and supported by the Iron Dames project, the brainchild of the President of the FIA Women in Motorsport Commission Deborah Mayer.

Given the above, there is much to suggest that top-flight motorsport is heading in the right direction as regards female participation. In F1 the number of women in senior engineering and technical roles is mirrored in the world of broadcasting. To Natalie Pinkham, Rachel Brookes, Lee McKenzie and Danica Patrick have been added the now-familiar voices of Naomi Schiff, Bernie Collins, Laura Winter and Rosanna Tennant.

The championship achieved plenty of support among young, female fans who are a notable feature of F1’s recent growth

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Yet, after watching the impact of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the fervour in Australia for the Matildas and the huge support for the Lionesses, it’s hard not to ponder if Formula 1 is simply not moving fast enough. Liberty Media must surely look at the 1.6 million World Cup ticket sales and record-breaking viewing figures and wonder how Formula 1 can accelerate women racing in the world championship.

It raises the question of segregation
versus integration.

Liberty Media must surely look at the 1.6 million World Cup ticket sales and record-breaking viewing figures and wonder how Formula 1 can accelerate women racing in the world championship

Is Karel Komárek’s More Than Equal initiative to discover Formula 1’s first
female F1 world champion the right approach, given that only 34 of the 773 male competitors since 1950 have won a title? Should the first woman to race in contemporary F1 also be expected, indeed demanded, to win a world championship?

The success of the Women’s World Cup begs the question as to whether the initiatives across the sport are accelerating us towards a day when a woman will race in F1, or preventing the creation of a successful women’s world championship in its own right. A heresy, perhaps, but the success of this year’s World Cup should prompt a wider discussion about motorsport’s strategies to offer women genuine opportunities to compete at world level.

Founder Catherine Bond Muir and her team fought to establish W Series as the principal route for female racers

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images