Waiting to race in Formula 1: a few good women

While the long-established gender gaps in professional sports have been addressed lately—-think soccer, basketball, even football—the challenges to put girls and women in the drivers’ seats of Formula 1 racers are still formidable.

And it still looks like a long road ahead for females to break through that macho F1 wall.

The issue is taken up in a recent essay published in The Los Angeles Times entitled, “Will a woman ever race in F1 again? Female drivers are challenging racing’s status quo.”

There’s a big chunk of history here, with author Kevin Baxter tracing back to women who raced in the 1900s, those who participated in 1930 in an all-woman team that placed seventh in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and how women have fared in current racing series such as IndyCar and, more to the point, in the pinnacle of motor sports, Formula 1.

Baxter points out that there’s steps—baby steps, perhaps—toward that goal. To build his case, he focuses much of his story on two contenders who’ve already made names for themselves in motor sports, Bianca Bustamante and Jamie Chadwick.

Those ladies—British-born Chadwick is 25, Bustamante from the Philippines is 18—“remain unicorns since fewer than one percent of the drivers at the top level of Formula 1 have been women and only 10 females have raced in the Indianapolis 500,” the story says.
“Five times as many women have orbited Earth than have driven in an Indy or F1 race, and that’s something both series would like to change,” says the story. “No female driver has started an F1 race in 48 years, which is a problem for a series whose fans are 40 percent female.”