F1 Fanatic

Personally I hate the way that they line up groups of girls for the drivers to walk through on the way to the podium; it’s not the 1960s any more and we don’t need scantily clad women to attract us to a motor race. I think they’re the grid girls who stand in front of the cars when they’re getting ready for the race.

I don’t mind so much when they have men and women but when it’s just a load of female models it really gives off an air of chauvinism I think we could all do without in the 21st century.

Helmut Marko is the motor racing consultant to Dietrich Mateschitz, there’s a good article about him in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/nov/14/red-bull-sebastian-vettel-helmut-marko

I’m with you regarding those idiots who hang around behind the TV crews at the GP’s, although I find people doing the same thing behind news crews or any other outside broadcasting crew to be very annoying too. It’s only TV !

I always feel sorry for those grid girls on the way to the podium, I bet they’re not used to being totally ignored :P

Not going to lie, I don’t mind the grid girls on the actual grid, but is does seem a bit archaic regardless. And the lines of them on the way to the podium is weird, demeaning and most of all incredibly creepy.

I don’t mind them being there. If they want to have men in too, be my guest, if they get rid of them all, I won’t stop watching.

It seems to be only a very recent introduction to the ceremonies, as I’m not sure whether or not that footage was included in the FOM world feed before 2009 at least.

Thus, it’s a good opportunity for the sponsor to get their branding some prime exposure. So they all started doing it.

I completely agree that it is totally unnecessary and chauvanist. What can be done about it? Not much, because I think it’s an agreement between the organiser of the race and the sponsor. Maybe FOM could set guidelines on acceptable commercial conduct of sponsors at F1 events, but that wouldn’t be likely.

One final thing, who else thinks that the clapping sounds like the applause at a dictator’s speech? They are told when to clap, and to not be the first person to stop.

As has been said above, I see no problem with them. They are not being demeaned or insulted in any way and they are there of their own volition (probably paid quite nicely, too). Moreover, anymore you can see more exposed skin on most music videos, reality shows or even just going outside to the park. This isn’t like the women are being paid to bow, rub themselves all over the men or act as footstools. Would you still find it demeaning if it were all men who were asked to hold a sign, then clap for the winner following the race? To a degree, I’d say each person sees in it what they want to see.

I cant think of any female-dominated sport where they’re awarded trophies, but lets say at a women’s golf tournament they hired a bunch of buff models in speedos to form a corridor to the podium, I would find that quite offputting.

At least F1 is more civilised than motogp though, I really dont want to see a couple of plastic beachballs popping out of someone’s latex top at sunday lunch time.