Category: women in motorsport

Representation Is Everything

Motorsport is a very giving sport. It not only provides us with weekend entertainment, it also gives us insight into technology, weekly strategic brainteasers, excitement, stuff to talk and write about, events to look forward to, new friends to share the fun with and, above all, heroes to support.

Often people find their first racing hero in formula 1. I’m guessing it’s because of the massive worldwide coverage of the series. When I was young, I was no exception to the rule. My first motorsport hero was Finnish F1 driver Mika Häkkinen. (Yes. I know. My childhood dates back to the stone age…) I was very fond of Mika. He always came across as fast, focused, and fair, all qualities I believed were important for a driver to have. There was just one downside to Mika. He was male. As were all the other F1 drivers of his time. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

As a little girl, there were many days I wished for a female F1 driver. The reasons for that were varied. Sometimes I wished so, because I thought that maybe then the boys in my class would stop pestering me that racing wasn’t for girls. Sometimes I wished so, because I wanted someone to prove the adult men wrong when they told me that women weren’t capable of doing such a job. And sometimes I wished so, simply because I wanted to see someone in the sport who was a bit like me.

Photo borrowed from @marylinracing (twitter)

It didn’t feel like it at the time, but looking back I think that last reason was the most important one of all. Research in the field of psychology has proven time and time again that, in many ways, representation is everything to a human being. We have a basic need to feel recognised. We have an innate desire to see people who we consider to be ‘like us’. When we don’t, we feel disconnected and alone. When we do, it makes us feel like we belong. There are few things that can make a person happier. This is illustrated perfectly by a famous YouTube video of a girl that is gifted a doll that has been customised to look like her. Recognising herself makes her cry in gratitude.

Although motorsport gave me many gifts during my childhood, representation was sadly never one of them. When I was a girl, the only women I ever saw on F1 coverage served as decoration. They wore high heels and make-up and risqué tops that showed off their cleavage. None of these things were ever me. I was always the no-boobs, no make-up girl with the flat shoes.  (I probably always will be, by the way.) As a result, I always felt more drawn to the athletes of the sport; but with all the reminders of how they were doing “a man’s job”, I didn’t really feel represented by them either. I ended up hovering around the sport a bit, always enjoying it, but never feeling a real connection.

Having lived that as a girl, I can’t say how happy I am that times in motorsport are now finally a-changin’. Women are finally beginning to creep into motor racing from multiple directions and new female faces are popping up regularly. For this weekend’s Dubai 24 Hours, Reiter Engineering has even entered an all-female car for four of those new faces: Caitlin Wood from Australia, Anna Rathe from Norway, Naomi Schiff from South Africa, and Marylin Niederhauser from Switzerland.

Photo borrowed from @annarathe (twitter)

I am incredibly excited about this line up. These four women have come from all over the world, proving beyond doubt that racing talent in girls is now truly being fostered on all continents, and they’ve found a racing team in Reiter Engineering that will give them a chance to do mileage in a real, properly big event to improve their crafts. I have no words to describe how rarely that happens. There used to be another all-women car in the Dubai 24H, run by Las Moras for the Dutch Racing Divas, but they haven’t shown up to the event since 2015 and I honestly thought it would take ten years or more for another such car to surface. The fact that we already have another one so soon feels like nothing but a gift to me.

I’m not sure what goals the four Reiter women have set for this weekend, but I hope they’ll manage to meet them. If not for themselves, then for all the little girls around the globe who’ll be watching the race this weekend. They may not be numerous, but they exist. And they deserve to see themselves represented in motorsport as athletes. Just ask the little girl that still lives inside my heart, if you don’t believe me.

So crew of car #246, feel free to go and rock this thing!

Nothing to See Here

“There is a danger if one makes any remarks about females in motorsport that one will instantly be abused by fervent feminists and self-righteous male do-gooders.”

These aren’t my words. These words form the opening line of a recent Joe Saward blog. I can’t blame him for starting his article like this. The format of ‘when you say A then group B often responds in manner C’ is an effective way to placate the more critical members of your reading audience and convince them to at least give your article a chance, even though they may not agree with all of its content. Many writers use this technique, at times myself included, and I love the way it gently encourages people to open their minds to new opinions and broaden their worldview.

Even so, the manner in which Mr Saward uses the if-A-then-B-does-C-technique instantly set my hair on end when I first saw it. I would have thought nothing of reading an opening sentence along the lines of “there is a danger if one makes any remarks about females in motorsport that one will instantly be criticised by those who dearly wish to see a woman compete at the highest racing level”. That sentence would’ve had a fairly neutral tone. And moreover, I would’ve agreed with its message. There truly are people in the world who are so invested in their wish to see a woman race in F1 that they sometimes get carried away.

However, Mr Saward’s decision to use the words “fervent feminists” and “self-righteous male do-gooders” gives his opening sentence a decidedly different undertone – one of anger and threat. As a reader, I instantly felt attacked. There I was, on the verge of reading an article, not even having the faintest idea yet what it was going to be about, and I was already being told that if I dared to have the audacity to not agree with the author, that then my entire personality – everything I think and say and do and am – would automatically be downgraded to that of a stereotypically negative, irrational feminist.

I was severely tempted to quit reading right there and then, but after some deliberation I didn’t. I’ve been taught not to judge a book by its cover nor a blog by its opening sentence. So I read on and discovered that the article was about Susie Wolff’s OBE, given to her by Queen Elisabeth II for raising awareness for women in (motor)sport. The news of Wolff’s royal decoration was announced a few days ago and has since sparked quite a bit of controversy. Some applaud the Queen’s decision, while others, like Mr Saward, are infuriated by it. All this made reading Mr Saward’s article an interesting activity. His words gave me a lot of food for thought. I instantly came up with several things I would’ve loved to say about them on my own blog.

I would’ve loved to say how I was intrigued by Mr Saward’s quote of the Women in Motorsport Commission’s chairperson. How I agreed with him that Wolff’s awareness-raising foundation Dare To Be Different is perhaps still too young to already have its effectiveness judged correctly. How I was surprised by his argument that women in motorsport shouldn’t “be rewarded for anything other than their actual achievements”. How I can’t understand why he defines ‘achievement’, without any supporting argumentation whatsoever, as something that can exclusively be realised in a race car, on a race track. How it puzzles me that he compares the world titles of Button and Hamilton to Wolff’s off-track women-in-motorsport promotional work; surely those are apples and pears? How I fail to understand his constant implications that Wolff’s on-track results played a role in her getting an OBE, even though the official announcement states she got the OBE solely for raising awareness. How I think Wolff has actually done a great job raising awareness for women in motorsport. How I can’t help but remember a past conversation with someone working for BBC F1 who told me that Wolff was the most wanted female racer for TV items because no woman driver had ever managed to attract as much attention for the sport in the UK as she had. How I can’t help but wonder if the real point of Mr Saward’s article should perhaps have been that race car drivers aren’t awarded equally by the Royal House, especially compared to other types of athletes, with some getting an OBE, others an MBE, and again others nothing. How I can’t help but feel that maybe it would have been better if Mr Saward hadn’t used Wolff as the main topic of his article, but simply as an illustrating example. How I believe that, had he done that, his article would have been a lot stronger.

The problem is, however, that I can’t say any of these things. The moment I do so, thanks to the opening line, I will degrade myself to the stereotype of “fervent feminist”; a woman who is half-crazed and unstable, who probably hates men and everything they do and write, and who – for goodness’ sake! – should never be listened to. So instead of arguing with Mr Saward, I won’t say anything. Nothing at all. Everyone can consider me mute. In fact, let’s just pretend this entire blog page is a blank, shall we?

Some Cars Live in Your Heart

Last weekend I went shopping with my friends. At some point, we drifted into a pop-up mall where the ground floor was taken up by an outlet store from Audi, consisting of some fancy show cars and a tiny merchandise shop. It sold most of the stuff that Audi also sells on race tracks. T-shirts, vests, sweaters, caps, key chains, the works. But unlike race track outlets, this shop also sold toys. Amongst them, a Lego model of the #4 Audi R8 that won the Nürburgring 24 Hours in 2014. I recognised it immediately, pounced on the display table, grabbed a Lego box and, to the confusion and disbelief of the shop attendant, started re-analysing half the 2014 24 Hours race.

If you were on twitter last weekend, you probably already know that I bought the Lego car and then spent a good two hours trying to piece it together. (If you weren’t, I’ll insert a picture of the car below so you’ll know what I’m talking about.) I know some of you may find it childish that I bought a kids’ toy and was utterly chuffed with it, but I simply couldn’t resist. You see, for various reasons that #4 Audi R8 is very dear to me.

Part of its specialness has to do with the fact I attended the Nürburgring 24 Hours that it won. It may not sound very special that I was there, since I’m known to attend a lot of races, but believe me, back in 2014, it really was. I have a chronic illness that made my life very difficult for many years, but luckily by the end of 2013 I had pulled through it really well; when the visit to the 2014 24 Hours was planned, I was stable and relatively healthy. Unfortunately, though, in March 2014 I relapsed out of the blue. For months, I struggled to get through the days and the trip to the 24 Hours was almost cancelled. Looking back I’ve no idea how I convinced the people around me that I was capable of going or where I pulled the strength from to attend. I only remember that I was determined not to let the disease beat me. So I got permission from my doctor to double my meds for the weekend, bought crutches to help me walk – and, come Green Hell or high water, I went.

Another part of the #4’s specialness has to do with its drivers. One of them has been my favourite driver in all of motorsport for almost ten years now. I watch most A-class GT races anyway, but when he’s in them I pay special attention; and when he’s in a B-class race, I watch that too. My friends always find it funny that, of all available racing drivers, I picked him as my favourite. I understand where they’re coming from. For one thing, in terms of personality we’re almost polar opposites. But, despite everything, he ended up my favourite driver anyway due to good timing. In 2007, he happened to compete in the very last race that I got to watch live from the track before I became too ill to leave the house. He came into the race as an underdog and somehow pulled off a performance that everybody thought was impossible to achieve. He caught my eye that day and I’ve never taken it off him since. In my worst sick days, he became one of the special things that helped to distract me from my worries and, I guess, in a way you can say that he was also one of special things that helped me get through those dark days altogether.

So when the number 4 Audi R8 crossed the finish line and took the 24H-victory, I did something I’d never done before on a race track and have never done since: I absolutely cried my eyes out. Part of it was the exhaustion, part of it was the pain, part of it was the nausea caused by the meds, part of it was that I had won my own 24 Hours race, part of it was that my favourite driver had won the real 24 Hours race, and part of it was that I’d never before seen him win a race live at the track. All those parts put together made it a moment I’ll never forget.

When Audi released a model of the black-and-white #4, I bought one immediately. I just had to have it. And when I saw the Lego version of the #4, I had the same feeling. I just had to have it; even if the shop assistant thought I was weird for almost starting to cry all over again. Some cars just live in your heart. End of story.

The Grid Girl Garments

Last week I wrote a blog about grid girls. I fully expected to be lynched for it, as the few tweets I posted about grid girls in the past triggered rather extreme replies. However, even though the response to that blog was larger than usual, people on the whole were fairly positive about what I had to say. That has given me the courage to write this second blog about grid girls, to address the other thing about them that I dislike: their clothes.

Before the pitchforks come out, I should quickly say that I’m not writing this blog to criticise the design of the clothes the girls are given to wear. Okay, fine. I’ll admit that personally I see no appeal in girls (or, for that matter, men) who are clad in scantily-designed outfits that leave half their bodies uncovered, but I know everyone is different. Just because I personally would sooner buy a product when it’s promoted by a fluffy puppy than a fashion model, it doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who prefer to see a model – and as long as that model is willing to do the job and is paid properly for doing it, there’s no reason these people shouldn’t get the visuals they want. Also, there undoubtedly are models who find wearing such outfits empowering. And if so, all power to them.

But what enrages me time and again, is that in motorsport grid girl/promo girl outfits are hardly ever matched with the weather. When an event organiser has decided that their girls should wear heels, a mini skirt and an upper-body garment that holds the middle ground between a tank top and a bra, that is exactly what they will wear. Even if the series races at a track like the Nürburgring, where it’s sometimes 5 degrees Celsius with a storm wind rolling in from the North East.

Too many times I’ve sat on a grandstand, wrapped in six layers of clothing and still freezing, while watching a grid full of girls who are braving the cold in their bare skin, with red knees, pale hands, frozen fingers, and blue lips. I know grid girls are paid a good salary for the work they do, but somehow I can’t imagine they knowingly sign up for such dreadful working conditions. Surely they expect better than that – and, moreover, deserve better than that?

I’ll never forget the pitwalk I did at Zandvoort a few years ago. It was below ten degrees and the sea wind was howling around the pit building. The promo girls that day were clad in cat suits so thin that I couldn’t just tell the form and model of their underpants, in one case I could even tell the colour. All of them were shivering like mad. As the pitwalk went on, the girls suffered more and more from hypothermia. After fifteen minutes one dropped the sign she was holding and walked away. Her neighbour decided on a different tactic. She turned to the mechanics in the garage behind her and begged them for a coat. Nobody even bothered to look up. So she turned to another garage for aid, but got the same response there. In the end one of the fans pulled a vest out of his bag and handed it to her. I’ve rarely seen such gratitude on a race track.

I know for a fact that I’m not the only one bothered by this mismatch of weather and clothing. Last year, while attending an event I won’t name here, I was walking through the paddock and came across a member of the organisation who was having a huge row with a furious woman. She was shouting abuse at the top of her lungs. “How dare you?! This is not what we signed up for! My girls are getting ill this way, IT’S FREEZING COLD! I will not stand for this! You either come up with decent clothes or we will never, EVER, work with you again! This is sick!!!” I don’t know who she was, but the girls who work for her should be proud to have someone like her fighting for their rights. I honestly hope that the woman made good on her threats too. Unless agencies stop accepting that their employees are made to work in tough weather conditions in unsuitable clothing, I fear the practice will continue for a long time to come.

The Grid Girl Comparison

Grid girls. A long time ago I made a conscious decision to avoid the topic of grid girls as much as possible on @girltalksracing. The reason is not that I’m oblivious to their presence, but because even the smallest comment about them usually evokes rather extreme commentary.

To give you an example, I was spending the weekend at a friend’s house once and she’s a motorbike fan so on Sunday morning we were watching a motorbike race. I can’t quite remember which one. MotoGP, I think. Anyhow, at some point I saw an umbrella girl that was rather minimally dressed. So I took a picture of the tv and in an attempt to be funny, I tweeted something along the lines of “fashion conundrum: can we still classify this outfit as ‘clothes’ or is this already in the ‘bikini’-range?” I didn’t realise until later that if you read that tweet in a particular way, it could be seen as having a critical undertone – although that was never my intention. Nonetheless, I’m not sure I deserved the barrage of ‘GRID GIRLS MUST STAY’, ‘KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF OUR TRADITION’ and ‘YOU ******* FEMINIST’ that I received.

After all, never in all the time that I’ve been running @girltalksracing have I called for the tradition to be abolished.

If you were wondering why that line is standing on its own: that’s in case I’ve re-enraged some people by mentioning that old tweet. Maybe the counter-comment’ll stand out more that way. But where was I? Ah yes, the tradition of grid girls. I’ve never asked for the tradition to be abolished, because I know it’s tied in with the sport’s history and I can respect it if people wish to maintain the girls for that reason. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’ve never had any struggles with the grid girl phenomenon…

The grid girls often represent (Western) society’s underlying ideals of femininity: beautiful, professional hairdo, perfect make up, prominent cleavage, high heels, dressed provocatively, quiet, smiling, and decorative. These are ideals I’m not able to live up to, not even on the best of my days, let alone on a race track. My hair is usually one big wind-caused explosion, I’ve never worn make up in my life, I’ll never be more than an A-Cup, I’ve a problem with my feet so I wear flat shoes only, I’m usually dressed to withstand -45 degrees and snow (aka I look like an eskimo), I’m probably not quiet, I only smile when my favourite drivers do well, and on the whole I’m nowhere near decorative. And you know: that’s okay. If people think that makes me unattractive, they are free to think so.

But somehow there’s something about grid girls that gives a certain type of person the feeling they can suddenly say their thoughts out loud. Too often I’ve heard groups of bystanders comparing grid girls to each other, choosing the one that has the best ‘assets’. I’ve also heard unknown people compare me to grid girls. The low-point example of that is definitely the time at a VLN race that I was sitting on my own on a grandstand and a man some distance off suddenly yelled: “HEY! THE BOOBS OF THE GRID GIRL AT *TEAMNAMEICANTREMEMBER* ARE MUCH BIGGER THAN YOURS!” Yes, well. Thanks for demonstrating your comparison skills?

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I don’t mind if race track visitors look at grid girls. They choose to be grid girls and they receive a good salary to be eye candy. But at the same time I wish that everyone would remember that they represent social beauty ideals – and in the real world no woman, not even a grid girl, can be 100% perfect and ideal all the time. So please don’t pass judgment when you see discrepancies. It’s quite simply unkind.

And if saying that makes me a ‘******* feminist’, then: guilty as charged.

One Word

Last Wednesday I was sitting by myself in a stuffy copy room. I was bored. Beyond bored, really. There are few things on this planet more mind-numbing than waiting for an excruciatingly slow photocopier to finish your massive 300-page print order. In an attempt to defy the boredom, I went on social media to read my latest updates. I was scrolling through Facebook when I suddenly saw it. It was the tiniest of little press releases, barely noticeable amongst all the much more flashy motorsport news on my timeline. Ninety-nine percent of the press release’s text was in perfect order… but then I caught sight of that one word. It was only ten letters long, but my boredom was instantly forgotten. I was breathing fire.

The press release was written by someone at Aust Motorsport, presumably a PR employee. Aust will compete in the GT Masters championship this year and with the press release it wanted to announce its four new drivers for this season: Xavier Maassen, Lukas Schreier, Marco Bonanomi, and Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky. It’s not necessarily easy to write a PR-text like that. What you want to do in such a text is share some interesting key facts about your drivers to engage the audience. What you don’t want is write four full driver biographies that’ll bore that same audience to death. You need to keep your descriptions short and to-the-point. You must make your mark straight away, in no more than one or two words tops. The best way to do this is by using a noun or an adjective, possibly a combination of the two. It’s a fool-proof method to show the reader in one glance what a driver’s focal characteristic is.

Aust’s PR department knows this technique and has applied it extensively in the press release, for all four drivers. What do they really want us to know about Xavier Maassen? He’s Dutch. (Helloooo, Aust sponsors from the Netherlands! Greetings also from the marketing department!) What do they really want us to know about Lukas Schreier? He’s an ADAC-supported driver. (Woohoo! Massive young talent!) What do they really want us to know about Marco Bonanomi? He’s an Audi factory driver. (Seriously-proper-driver alert!) And what is the adjective they chose to sum up the main asset of Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky, their only girl driver?

Attractive.

Where the male racers receive a description referring to their personal achievements, Mikaela has to make do with a banal reference to her looks. I struggle to understand what Aust’s PR department is trying to achieve with this description. What could be the advantage for them in suggesting that Mikaela brings nothing more to the team than a pretty face? What benefits do they reap from insinuating that Mikaela’s entire worth as an athlete can be measured by her exterior? Moreover, what makes it good for them to ignore her entire sporting resume as a source for a description? There are so many great character tags on there. Up-and-coming racer. FIA Women In Motorsport representative. Volkswagen Scirocco R-Cup race winner. Audi TT Cup graduate. What could possibly have been the reason for ignoring all of that and instead choosing ‘attractive’, the one word that renders everything she’s ever done in motorsport mute?

I’ll give Aust’s PR department the benefit of the doubt here and assume their choice of words is nothing more than unfortunate and not thought through properly. But just in case it’s not: dear Mikaela, fight hard this season and prove them wrong.

A translation of the Aust press release.

The World Is More Complex Than James Hunt

Recently I went to the Nürburgring with a friend. A male friend. Normally I wouldn’t specify gender, but in this story it matters – trust me. Said friend and I had never visited a track together before, but on this occasion we’d come to a suitable arrangement. Due to circumstances I’m not able to drive the entire way to the Nürburgring on my own. I’m dependent on a co-driver to get there, but for that one day I hadn’t been able to find any. Then I learned my friend was going to the Ring as well. Moreover, he was going there in a car that had a seat empty AND he had selected a route that almost passed by my house. It would’ve been silly not to carpool, really.

The journey went without a glitch and once we got to the Ring, we had a good time. We studied the  new cars, compared them to last year, gathered some racing intel: the works. But even so a small detail was amiss. Neither of us failed to notice that throughout the day one question kept popping up. It wasn’t a new question to me. I’d heard it many times before in the past decade, but never this frequently. Most of the time the question was asked in the following context. A person would walk up to us, look at my friend, look at me, look back at him, and ask: “Is that your girlfriend?” It’s a simple question. Many won’t see harm in it. In fact, the people who asked it only did so out of interest, not to give offense. Unfortunately, however, in a way they kind of did.

You see, the question has its roots in an old motorsport stereotype, one that I sometimes refer to as Hunt, are fearless, strong-willed, free-spirited, do whatever they please whenever they please, smoke, drink, and surround themselves with women. Who these women are isn’t really important. As long they have long hair and cleavage, nothing else matters much. They’re mainly ornaments anyway.

It’s because of this idea that every time someone assumes I’m dating a man simply because I’m standing next to him, I feel a bit uncomfortable. Comically-meant follow-ups like “why didn’t you bring her on a day with better weather?!” usually make that worse. It’s just not a nice feeling to know that you’re being simplified to fit an image born in the 1970s. This is 2016. We live in a world that’s much more complex than a stereotype. We have female drivers. We have female engineers. We have female team bosses. So why not assume that a girl on a race track, regardless of who she’s standing next to, is there to see the cars? Why conclude she’s attached to her boyfriend’s hip? And speaking of the supposed boyfriend, why assume that every man standing next to a girl is straight? I’ve no doubt there are gay men the world over who love motorsports.

We’re a long way away from abolishing the James Hunt-Principle. Motorsport is an archaic fortress that won’t be changed in a day, or even a week. But if we stop asking women on race tracks if they’re a man’s girlfriend; and if we stop asking girls if they’re there because their father made them, I think we’ll take a step in the right direction. I admit it’ll only be a tiny step. It’ll be like putting a grain of sand on a table. At first it’ll seem like nothing. But remember, if you keep stacking up grains then eventually the table will vanish.