Women in F1 — Mode Push: F1 Podcast

First, a quiz on the history of women in F1:

Q: How many female drivers in the history of formula one have entered a race?

A: 5 female drivers have entered at least one Grand Prix.

Q: How many have ever qualified and started a race of the five?

A: Two women.

First, there was an Italian woman named Maria Teresa de Filippis who entered 5 races in the 1958-59 seasons and started in 3 of them. Her best result was a 10th position in the 1958 Spa Belgian Grand Prix, which would've given her points in today’s era. Unfortunately, in the following race in France, the race director denied her involvement saying, “the only helmet a woman should use is at the hairdresser.”

Maria Teresa, the first but certainly not the last.

That story draws parallels to the first woman to ever run a marathon, Kathrine Switzer, who used a nickname to avoid causing a stir. Ultimately, she ran the race with her boyfriend who helped fight off men trying to pull her off the race course. That was only in 1967.

Coming back to F1, it took 15 years for the next woman to enter the scene. Another Italian woman, Lella Lombardi, competed in 3 seasons from 1974-76. She entered 17 races and started 12. Her best result came at the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix where she finished sixth. She is and remains the only woman to ever score points in F1.

That seems promising! What happened next?

Sadly, there were more failures to launch which further discouraged female drivers, sponsors and teams alike. These included Divina Galica who tried to qualify for the British Grand Prix in 1976, the only race where there were multiple females even attempting to enter, because it was still the Lombardi era. In the eighties Desiré Wilson tried to qualify for the British GP. She is considered the only woman to ever win a race after winning an F1 equivalent, the 1980 British Aurora F1 championship. As a result, she has a grandstand named after her at the British GP.

The last woman to attempt was another Italian, Giovanna Amati in 1992. She tried in 3 races and failed to qualify until she was replaced by Damon Hill.

It seems like this era was a crossroads where, if things broke differently, women might have progressed into becoming a more permanent fixture of F1. Instead, they were highly discouraged amidst real backlash from the institution and its stakeholders.

If you fast forward to the modern era, by the 1990s and 2000s women were instead allowed to be development and test drivers. Folks like Sarah Fisher, who was a prominent Indycar driver, was first a development driver for McLaren. She became a darling because she was able to run practice rounds for McLaren at Circuit of the Americas.

Then, Susie Wolff became a development and test driver for Williams in 2012. In 2014, she became the first woman in over 20 years to take part in a F1 race weekend when she took part in the practice session for Silverstone.

What is the W Series?

The W Series was founded five years ago by Catherine Bond Muir, a high powered solicitor (attorney in the UK) who handled major sports M&A transactions like the sale of the Chelsea soccer team. She’s experienced and deeply knows the sporting world and the business of sport. On maternity leave, she decided to venture out and do something to raise awareness for women in motorsport. So she wrote a business plan at her dining room table, raised $30M pounds, and got six F3 races on the calendar for 2019 and 18 drivers signed up to her newly launched W Series.

Bond Muir actually faced a lot of pushback from former female drivers, especially as she was starting this league. They worried about her creating a special league for women and making it a women’s issue instead of a motorsport issue. She agreed, but felt like there were so few of drivers that they needed their own platform to start making their own headlines and highlighting people.

In its inaugural season, the W Series drew in crowds and supporters like gangbusters – it had 320 million viewers worldwide. In the UK, it was the second-most watched female sport and the second-most watched motorsport. In the US, it aired on major networks like NBC. That growth has sustained: the W Series has seen double digit growth year over year for live audiences since its inception. It remains much more popular than F2 and F3.

There were other significant results in that short period of time as well. In the first 3 seasons, six women were signed into the F series as test drivers. The W series represented progression across the board with the most multi-racial driver panel and the first openly LGBTQ+ drivers on motorsport podiums.

A young F1 starlet: Jamie Chadwick

If every sport needs a star, Jamie Chadwick is basically the Lewis Hamilton of the W Series. She is a super baddie from the Williams W Series who started her ascent in an exceptional 2019. The Series actually suspended the Series in 2020, but in 2021 Chadwick again asserted her dominance.

As the 2022 season wraps, Chadwick has 11 wins, 18 podiums, 412 points and 3 titles. Her dominance has helped her rise to fame alongside her male counterparts. She was named one of four finalists in the highly prestigious 2022 Autosport BRDC young driver award program which pulls from promising drivers across various series. The four finalists take part in a series of fitness and simulator events before a two day test drive at Silverstone. Previous winners include George Russell, David Coulthard, Jenson Button.

Chadwick is graduating to IndyNXT with Andretti for the 2023 season as the W Series’s future is rocky.

It’s all about the money, money, money

During this past season, the W Series hit some massive funding bumps in the road. At the end of summer break the CEO of F1, Stefano Domenicali made an off-hand comment that ricocheted through the W Series while commenting on the super license issue affecting Colton Herta.

Domenicali said, “Realistically speaking, I don't see - unless there will be something that will be like some sort of meteorite coming into the earth - a girl coming into Formula 1 in the next five years,” he said. “That is very unlikely, I need to be realistic.”

A poor choice of words at best. Bond Muir actually came to his aid, agreeing that they need to be realistic. There are very real hurdles, which is exactly why she started the W series. There's a lack of opportunity and investment in young girls like Jamie Chadwick, “Her peers are George and Lando and no one knows the answer, but I suspect they've had hundreds of times the number of hours in a race car or doing testing than Jamie has,” she said. “And therein lies the difference. I think Jamie is a fantastically gifted driver but the question is, has she started too late with too little? With her talent, if she had the same career path as Lando and George, and none of us know the answer to it, but it is an open question as to whether she would be competing equally with them now?”

She goes on to talk about the money issues, “Historically, because it has been 42 years since women had driven in F1, none of the [sponsorship] money went to the women drivers. I would describe it as having been a sort of path that had just become overgrown, because no one saw that it was open for women. I think the most significant thing that W Series has done is it has made people realise that women can race single seaters well.”

The W Series strives to fund its drivers directly, so any financial weakness was at the league level. With 3 races to go in the season, the W Series was about €7.5m short of the funding it needed to support the remaining events. To put that number in context, it was about the same amount that Red Bull was fined for breaching the 2021 budget cap.

Bond Muir was unable to find the funding in time, ending the season early with little bluster. In a conclusion even worse than Max’s last two world championship celebrations, Jamie Chadwick was crowned champion on Twitter. Drivers in the W Series and elsewhere were disheartened; Lewis Hamilton in particular was quite vocal and slammed F1 and Liberty Media for letting the W Series languish amidst a record year of F1 interest and massive media deals with the likes of ESPN and Netflix’s Drive to Survive.

The F1 Academy

In contrast, F1 and Liberty Media have come out with a new racing series at the F4 level (the W Series was technically at the F3 level). The F1 Academy, as it’s called, begins in 2023, is also dedicated to women in Motorsport and will support 15 drivers. There will be 7 events, each with 3 races or 21 races total. One of those race weekends will coincide with F1, presumably the others will hopefully coincide with F2/F3.

Our thoughts:

1) They decided to split the funding after funding was a big issue for the W Series. 50% of the money will have to come from the drivers or the sponsors, and 50% will come from F1 themselves, about 150,000 euros per entrant. So F1 will cover a little over €2m. To put that in context, the gap for the W Series was about €7.5m, so a similar order of magnitude.

2) The series will be managed by Bruno Michel, former boss of F2/GP2, F3/GP3. That seems promising because he knows how to develop junior categories. He has said, “Our goal is to see female drivers on the F3 grid in the next two to three years, and for them to quickly challenge for points and podiums. The aim is to increase the field in the near future, because we hope that this category will inspire more young girls to compete in motorsport at the highest of levels.”

3) It’s still focused on the middle – this neither goes all the way back to karting nor does it represent a true feeder series like F2 for F1. F2 creates a clear path for its top 3 finalists, each scoring enough points for a super license to enter F1 if they find a seat.

From a business perspective, it seems brilliant by Liberty. If this doesn't work, they’ll check the DEI box. If it works, as the W Series UK numbers would suggest, they could have a hit on their hands. Presumably, the F1 Academy will be more integrated and incentivized to make this work. Maybe this is the necessary creative destruction to keep sparking progress, and Bond Muir’s legacy will at least live on in her proving the path with the W Series.

The announcement shines a light on why Bond Muir couldn’t secure funding – investors who knew anything of the F1-backed female Academy would have hesitated to opt for a competing Series that’s already faltered. It seems like the final nail in the W Series coffin, a full-on replacement. Which is a shame, given all the work that's already been done with W Series – they’ve built up a cadre of drivers that are ready to convert, a schedule and an audience.

Bond Muir put out a standard response, “W Series welcomes any initiative which shares our ambition to provide more opportunities for women in motorsport."

A new FIA CEO in town

There's never been a CEO of the FIA (!), it's always been run by a chairman. This summer the FIA appointed their first ever CEO, Natalie Robyn, an American woman.

So what does that mean? And who is Natalie Robyn?

Natalie Robyn has over 15 years of experience in the automotive and finance industries. She’s the former CEO of Volvo in Switzerland and held management positions at both Nissan and Daimler Chrysler.

According to the FIA, Robyn "will be responsible for the successful operation and financial performance of an integrated and aligned FIA administration, as well as driving the overall strategy to deliver the leadership's vision of reform the federation. Natalie will also develop new commercial growth plans to increase and diversify the FIA's revenue streams, ensuring financial stability to provide more resources for our members."

So the governing body of F1 is leaning into Liberty Media’s vision. It seems symbolic that they hired an American woman for this position, with a mandate to take this Federation into the future and modernize it.

Robyn echoed that enthusiasm, "I am delighted to be appointed the first ever CEO of the FIA at such an important and exciting time for the Federation.”

We’re excited. Over the past two years we’ve seen that the FIA is a very amorphous body with a ton of power. They are the firm (RIP to the Queen).

There's a lot that could be done, even just clarifying their role and making the sport feel more approachable. It's an amazing choice because even if she doesn't really move the needle financially, she's already moved the perception and the brand.

She's ushering in this new era: what it could be and what it stands for. As the FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem said, “this is a transformative moment for our Federation. Her extensive experience in leadership will be crucial to improving our finances, governance, and operation.”

They've bet on Robyn for the top spot. And having women be more visible operators in the sport is a part of a necessary step by step change for the sport. To put that in context (and in contrast), she has literally stepped into the shoes of Bernie Ecclestone.