Hamilton says he’s ‘grateful for Vettel’s mistakes’

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Lewis Hamilton says hes grateful for Sebastian Vettel’s latest “mistake” in the Singapore Grand Prix.

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Hulkenberg resisted Alonso in the 2013 Korean Grand Prix
Nico Hulkenberg may not have a podium yet but @Casanova has faith he’ll get there.

Korea in 2013 is my favourite of Hulkenberg’s drives – how he kept that ropey old Sauber ahead of Hamilton’s Mercedes and Alonso’s Ferrari I have no idea.

I am sure that sooner or later he will get that spot of luck he needs to get onto the podium. I wish Ferrari would take a chance on a year of Hulk rather than another year of Raikkonen making up the numbers.
@Casanova

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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125 comments on “Hamilton says he’s ‘grateful for Vettel’s mistakes’”

  1. It’s also worth noting that Hulkenberg was approached by Mercedes to replace Rosberg, but Renault wouldn’t release him.

    Fan videos seem to capture F1 sound pretty well. I think that sometimes F1 gets so caught up in high technology that it can forget the more simple solutions to problems.

    1. @strontium, “Snap”, second thought, maybe the exhaust microphones are actually for the trackside PA system.

      1. I doubt it @hohum , those exhaust sounds would only be useful for onboard shots anyway as obviously there’s no panning involved. Unless you’re suggesting they pipe farting turbo noises into all the grandstands out of spite.

    2. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
      23rd September 2017, 7:30

      Funnily enough that was also true back in the V8/V10 days. Mobile phones and home videos made them sound even more raucous.

      My personal fave: https://youtu.be/N2vFBmwqElM

      1. Does anyone know why that is? Homemade videos are so much closer to the real sounds and give a better impression of the raw physicality of the cars, while the TV broadcasts seem to be muted, monotone and every car sounds the same – surely it can’t be difficult for FOM to get their audio mixing a little better?

        1. I’m not sure myself but I’m sure someone will know. It’s not just FOM though it’s anything on TV, e.g. F1 cars at Goodwood, rallying, WEC, BTCC all sound watered down on TV broadcasts to trackside amateur recordings.

          1. its the gain control, modern recording equipment adjusts the volume by means of gain control to avoid being overloaded, so to speak by something that is simply too loud to process. It reduces the sensitivity of the capturing device so that it can capture the sound in a way that you can hear it instead of an extremely loud noise that cant be sampled, processed and replayed for you at home.

            The human ear does the same thing, it is why, in a library, you can hear a mouse fart or a pin drop but after you get off an aeroplane and go into a quiet place you cant hear that mouse fart of pin drop, your ears (and brain) have adjusted to be able to hear the general range of sounds that are customary in an aircraft powered by loud jet engines.

            You may notice the extreme difference between standing by a runway and listening to a jet fighter taking off vs watching it on TV. The difference is huge as to fully capture and replay the sound on home playback equipment would most likely damage it, you or your property.

            Digital compression also plays it´s part but not as much as gain control.

          2. Thank you Matt. Brilliant cheers.

        2. @graham228221 Because amateurs record everything including echoes and ambience from one spot. That would sound like a rock concert in a church if you tried to mic it like that around the track and then mix it into a broadcast. Personally i think the broadcastmix captures the cars better but that depends on if you want how the cars actually sound or if you want the raw “bootleg” feel.

        3. @graham228221 The stuff shot by fans, Especially on phones & tablets will always sound louder & more raw because the microphones on those devices are much lower quality than the one’s used for broadcast so will start to distort & lose certain sounds at a certain decibel level.
          For example when at a concert you get a good sound mix while there but often when listening to recordings made by fans the drums will often sound louder & other instruments & the singer will be drowned out more than what you heard when you were actually there.

          I also think a part of the issue with the F1 broadcast isn’t FOM but rather the individual broadcasters who alter the audio mix they get from FOM to insert there own commentary & stuff. The RAW audio mix from FOM often sounds significantly better than what fans end up hearing through the broadcasters.
          https://vimeo.com/141078671
          https://vimeo.com/127821371

    3. I miss the scream
      23rd September 2017, 10:04

      Ive been lucky enough to work behind the scenes at motogp superbikes and formula 1 over the last fours years plus a ‘minardi’ pre gp event involving an old V10 powered Sauber. My first F1 event as a spectator was 94 in Adelaide then 96 in Melbourne.

      Unless youre right on top of the action and can hear the turbocharging the sound you get from behind the concrete next to the circuit more closely resembles that of the current round of Superbikes which are actually louder.

      This is compared to my first experience walking along lakeside drive, getting a bit of a buzz when you could hear them start over the other side then straight up adrenaline rush as the first one screams past you for the weekend.

      The engine sound is part of the show. Artificial sound effects or mics dont change that. Bring back the atmo v10s and 12s.

      1. The old turbo’s weren’t bad. The limitations on the engine currently are not F1. Limited fuel flow and several races reliability nonsense (that’s WEC).

        Unleash fuel flow and drop the reliability stuff. Engines will have to survive a race anyways. Fuel onboard is limited, but why not have violent 15k+ rev turbo madness with engine maps for qualifying and overtaking that push out crazy hp?

        That’s formula one…

        1. Reason for the fuel flow limited is to keep cost under control as without it needs and Ferrari will into a spending war. If the costs can be contained without the fuel flow then I’m all for it.

        2. @maxv, so apparently the races that were undertaken in the era between 1950 and the late 1980’s wasn’t “Formula 1” then given that the idea of an engine lasting for multiple races was quite commonplace?

          1. Its about making a choice, don’t try to be wec, road relevant etc. F1 supposed to be the fastest, meanest thing out there. Don’t limit it too much.

          2. @maxv, and why do the two things have to be in contradiction to each other?

  2. An exhaust mounted microphone ? Or save some money and replace the trackside mikes with mobile phones, they always sound better (on youtube) than the TV coverage.

    1. Seems pointless to ‘amplify a turd’. It is not just about volume, it is more about the quality of the sound as well.

      1. @paulguitar

        quality of the sound

        Isn’t that @hohum‘s point though (especially the using a mobile phone mic from the trackside part)?

  3. Uh standupmag? Did that blog just open yesterday? It seems they have a grand total of five articles all written by two angry feminists who want to rant against supposed rich cis men, whatever the heck that is.

    1. Todd (@braketurnaccelerate)
      23rd September 2017, 3:04

      It’s basically just one women ranting about everything. Read through her previous posts and the majority were negatively oriented, complaining about something mainstream being anti-feminism or anti-queer. I understand @keithcollantine‘s reasoning to put the article in the Round-Up, but I still wish it were excluded for the only reason to prevent an uptick in traffic to her site, and her ad revenue.

      1. I miss the scream
        23rd September 2017, 10:11

        Women are always welcome in on their own merits. Unfortunately for them the Briattore loophole is long gone and it seems that Sir Frank brought up his family to want talent instead of totty otherwise we would have had females forced in somehow long ago. We have no talent pay drivers so why no girl powered feminism paid at the very least mediocre talent female drivers?

        If theres a woman out there that can run a decent challenge in f1 for a year and kept stupid rookie mistakes to a minimum any fan out there would have her right up at number 2 on their preferred driver list.

        1. de Silvestro tested for Sauber in 2014, and reportedly she was setting competitive and consistent lap times during her test sessions for the team when she worked for them as a test driver, with the team considering giving her a race seat for 2015.

          However, as she did not have any significant sponsorship behind her, Sauber later cancelled her contract and signed Ericsson in her place.

    2. I’m just glad they trotted out the phrase “old white cis men” so early in the article, to let me know the rest of it wasn’t worth reading.

    3. No mention of Susie Wolf’s Dare 2 Be Different campaign, no reference to some of the young women who are currently racing in junior formulae and zero suggestions about how things could be done better.

      I’m not sure how claiming ’88 was predictable and boring feeds into her argument either. It’s just a poorly written, meandering rant.

      I fully support the motivation behind the piece and look forward to the day we have both/all genders represented on the grid, but progress occurs when you bring forward positive ideas rather than just shout angrily.

    4. Stand Up Mag has been running for several months (and recently published its second print magazine), and has three different writers on its blog. It doesn’t usually cover sport but is particularly interested in subjects like equality, hence it decided to post this particular blog.

      1. It doesnt usually cover sports apparently because, as illustrated by the article, they’re not very interested.
        I dont know if I was more amused reading it or scared that there might be millions people who would agree with that gibberish – and do so much louder than anybody who disagrees

  4. With the risk of being fairly provocative: every single sport segregates competitions by gender – and sometimes for obvious reasons, you’d never want a male boxer to compete with a female one – so why does F1 have to act differently?

    On the other hand, of course everyone can be a racing driver regardless of gender and there is no parallel, equally prestigious category dedicated to female competitors only, so I can understand the issue/frustration. Furthermore, given the costs involved, there’s never going to be a “women’s F1 championship” with the same Ferrari, Mclaren, Mercedes, Williams teams in place but female drivers instead.

    But still, this push for men and women to compete in the same sport seems to get more headlines in the world of F1 than in other sporting categories. Even though in many sports, exclusivity by gender is fine and being taken for granted.

    1. That whole piece is not worth anybodies time and will not help the women in f1 discussion, cause the writer doesn’t care about facts. He/she is just complaining and conveniently bending the thruth and leaving relevant facts out.

    2. Snooker and darts are open to both male and female competitors. The reason we don’t see women competing directly against men in those sports is that women are not as good. It is not my opinion but just hard cold facts. There was a TV program about it many years ago and that is he reason there are separate world championships. I’d like to see a woman world champ in racing but I don’t see it happening anytime soon. Women want equal treatment when it suits them. Why do they play less sets in tennis to get the same prize money? Where is the out cry there?

      1. The reason we don’t see women competing directly against men in those sports is that women are not as good

        Or perhaps do not spend the same amount of time in pubs.

        But in all seriousness now, the idea that women are intrinsically less able to throw darts or drive a car is just ridiculous. The main reason why we don’t see women competing in the same level as men in motorsports/snooker/darts is the lack of sponsoring of young upcoming female talents, or even worse the lack of opportunities for girls to enter the sport at a young age. Ronnie O’Sullivan picked up a cue at age 7, made his first century when he was 10 and was competing in his “teenies”, now please tell me what parents would invest the same energy on their young daughters. If you look at the biography of a lot of the women in those sports, they often started quite late (showing again lack of parental and institutional support). Finally, when a girl comes along in some of these sports they are inevitably compared to the Schumacher’s and Senna’s, as if those represented the average male competitor. But I would pick Danna Patrick over Max Chilton or Ed Carpenter any day.

    3. Some sports don’t segregate by gender. Aside from motorsport, the main three are sailing (outside the Olympic classes) most classes of powerboating and equestrianism. Note that all four are typified by having a significant, expensive non-human element (the car, the boat, the other boat and the horse respectively) involved in the competition. Canoeing is the only sport that fits the criteria above I can think of that separates men and women.

      Motorsport arguably has more to do with sailing, powerboating and equestrianism than sports like athletics or football. As such, it makes sense to combine genders.

      Snooker and billiards have a separate professional ladies’ tour with completely separate tables, tournaments and media arrangements; it simply doesn’t ban women from competing on the men’s tour if they so choose, the way most sports do nowadays. The best ladies would not be expected to bother with the men’s tour as it would hamper their ability to score points towards the ladies’ championships (the world events for each gender typically clash, unsurprisingly as snooker is a year-round sport regardless of which professional league one is in). It is a bit like criticising F1 drivers because they rarely do well in Indycars (or vice versa); most of them don’t because they’re too busy to even try, and if they do they usually have to forego at least one race in their usual series to do a race in the other league, meaning that the most skilled drivers are extremely unlikely to do both while in their prime.

      Darts has been split between genders in BDO since 2001, and as far as I can see from its website, the World level has strictly enforced gender separation (I’m not sure that applies further down that particular organisation’s system). In PDC (the other darts governing body), the situation is completely different: it has total gender integration… …but given the only statement on the website that women are even allowed to try to enter it is Article 2.2 of the regulations document (that says that anything implying one gender means all of them), it’s not surprising women tend to aim for the separate BDO women’s tournament rather than try their hand at the integrated PDC one.

      Women play the same number of sets in tennis (three) in all tournaments except the Grand Slams and the Davis Cup. A number of women have asked to be allowed to play five sets in the past at the Grand Slams, but were refused by the venues because they have trouble fitting the extra sets for men into their schedules (they don’t reduce men’s Grand Slam matches to three sets because it’s seen as an important distinction between men’s Grand Slam tournaments and regular men’s professional tennis matches). Unless women start getting control of the general organisation of the Grand Slams themselves (unlikely), that won’t change.

  5. That “Stand Up” feature was appalling. Why even link to a blog that’s only been active for a fortnight? It’s just picking targets it thinks will generate views. I made the mistake of reading and commenting on it:

    This reads like it was written by somebody with no actual knowledge of or even interest in F1. But they at least had the sense to check wikipedia to make sure nothing could be categorically disputed. The names are correct, I’ll give it that…

    “F1 is simply mundane… F1 is outdated, archaic and doesn’t reflect the real world… It’s pathetic and childish.”

    Then why have you devoted so much time to writing about women not competing if it’s so undeserving of your attention? Those criticisms you level at F1 wouldn’t be affected by there being female competitors! There could be a legitimate point in here, but the entire article is presented as simply bitter. It is disparaging of F1’s sporting merit, in which case why even care about the issues regarding female competitors? You attempt to undermine the entire sport yet simultaneously care about female representation in it? Please choose a stance.

    I love F1 and would genuinely love to see women represented in it properly, because I want to see the sport the best it can be, and I think the way to do that is make it accessible for as many people as possible. But the tone of this article absolutely does the opposite of encouraging that. It is unpleasant and it attempts to trivialise the talent of some very good drivers simply because they are men: Perez may have said some idiotic things, but the article wrongly attacks his ability rather than what he actually said, pretending he is a very poor driver most would like to see replaced.

    “There has never been an Asian champion, despite the sport supposedly being a world championship.”

    Generally motorsport isn’t as established in Asia as in the Americas and Europe. I didn’t realise that a world championship had to have a champion from every region of the world to deserve the name, I thought being open to competitors from anywhere was enough.

    “We don’t even have a race in Africa anymore. The championship skips an entire continent and yet still claims it is a global force.”

    Would you prefer that it was called a “World-minus-Africa Championship?” Or that it raced on unfit circuits? A race in Africa would of course be great- in theory. In reality this isn’t practical.

    “There’s never been an out queer F1 racer.”

    True of many sports, no? And F1 has a far smaller pool of competitors than a lot of other sports, so of all the sports to criticise for this, attacking this one makes the least sense.

    “The grid, every year, is filled with men who are pay-drivers with huge backing and who last a couple of seasons at most and then go back to sheep farming or DJing. They were never cut out for the sport but they still got a chance – because they were cis men.”

    Most of the drivers have won races if not championships in lower categories of racing. While sponsorship can indeed elevate some drivers to F1 over more deserving candidates, in most cases all of them are incredibly talented.

    Interestingly, this was not the case with Susie Wolff (and Carmen Jorda). Of all the people to get near an F1 car in recent years, she is one of the least deserving based on results in lower categories. That isn’t to say that I think women are less capable though. Other women were actually more deserving of her role as test driver and being considered for a drive, but they did not have the sponsorship or connections to land the opportunity. This of course suggests that actually F1 follows the money rather than being purely misogynistic, seeing as a woman was backed to an extent, but the wrong woman. This is certainly a flaw, but a very different one to that presented here.

    I don’t doubt for a second that if a marketable and talented woman progressed through the feeder series, she would have incredible support from sponsors who want to stand out by supporting something different to the norm. But this won’t happen any time soon, because gender stereotypes simply mean far fewer girls compete in karting and so the talent pool is much smaller. That is the real issue at the moment. There should be a greater effort to get girls interested in motorsport, as competitors, engineers, mechanics, marshals, everything. Get rid of grid girls that suggest women’s only purpose is dressing up the cars, encourage scholarships for talented female drivers and engineers.

    Most importantly, stop writing articles like this!

    1. You attempt to undermine the entire sport yet simultaneously care about female representation in it? Please choose a stance.

      I don’t doubt for a second that if a marketable and talented woman progressed through the feeder series, she would have incredible support from sponsors who want to stand out by supporting something different to the norm.

      Nicely put – I’m glad I read this comment, and happier still that I didn’t click through to the referenced article.

    2. Fantastic response matt.

    3. Excellent comment

    4. The author not only knows about F1, but has been a fan of it for years. The central part of the premise is that not having female representation in F1 contributes of its being “outdated, archaic and doesn’t reflect the real world”, since nowadays most spheres of activity have rather larger amounts of involvement from women than F1 does.

      There are parts of Asia where motorsport is well-established (Japan in particular), yet there is no champion from there. That’s sort of generous of the article, as there also hasn’t been an Asian winner in F1 yet. Not everyone defines “world” as “three continents” the way the FIA does. The issue of the lack of Asian and African competitors/venues could have been a separate article; while some of the reasons are shared with the reasons why F1 is dominated by men, a fair number of the reasons are different.

      Some sports haven’t had an out queer competitor in its uppermost ranks… …but some sports have. Of course, it happens more often in the women’s versions of sports than men’s, and I’m not sure if it’s happened in any sport where men and women are both eligible to compete in the same top-level series. (Would this also be a good time to remind people that no black racer has competed in F1 since Lewis Hamilton started, despite it being over 10 years since his debut, and despite Lewis getting his first world championship 9 years ago)?

      The point about sponsorship @matt90 makes, unfortunately, doesn’t work, because it kicks in so early. According to a 1997 study on why female participation in motorsport in general is so low, the sponsorship problems start in the 14-16 transition. If it was because women couldn’t kart, why not earlier? If it is because women can’t race cars even with the same karting credentials as equivalent men, why not later (i.e. once they’ve actually driven a car – something denied women in much greater proportions than men due to, among other non-performance-related factors, denial of sponsorship?).

      Also, for those wondering, quite a few “marketable and talented woman progressed through the feeder series” only to find their support evaporated at a certain level of success. There’s been a women who won the British GT Championship GT4 class and immediately lost all her sponsorship, to the point where she was out of racing for the next 7 months (Jamie Chadwick). There are racers who were supported for their speed right up until F1 testing, until the sponsors baulked because apparently she performed too well (Simona de Silvestro being the most blatant example). That’s not my idea of “incredible support from sponsors who want to stand out”. It’s also not unique to motorsport; Sally Pearson lost sponsors for the wicked crime of winning an Olympic gold medal in the 100 metre hurdles.

      When success is more likely to cause sponsors to drop female drivers than increase their commitment (the opposite of the usual state of affairs for men), it acts as a deterrent to people taking up the sport, or making it more than the occasional hobby. This is especially so when the better-funded female drivers tend to be asked to do things that run contrary to their sport’s requirements. In particular, a “marketable” female body is generally regarded by marketers as looking like that of a model, rather than an athlete of any description (certainly if TV ads, and the carping female athletes in lots of sports receive about their bodies, is anything to go by). On the other hand, a “marketable” male body is assumed to be pretty much identical to that of an athlete. Hence the Carmen Jorda effect, where the women with the most motorsports sponsorship generally had to sacrifice performance ability to get that sponsorship. This is a conundrum male athletes never face.

      In short, following the money generally does lead to excluding equally capable women, since money more often follows men and past a very low point, increased skill only aggravates the situation. Maybe the issue with the Stand Up article – apart from being blunter than the typical link F1 Fanatic creates – is that the sponsorship problem is deeper than the article suggested.

      1. @alianora-la-canta, I would point out that Pascal Wehrlein is mixed race, being a German-Mauritian dual national.

      2. @alianora-la-canta It seems you the only one who sided with the article, which is good, but I do have major disagreement with your statements.

        The central part of the premise is that not having female representation in F1 contributes of its being “outdated, archaic and doesn’t reflect the real world”, since nowadays most spheres of activity have rather larger amounts of involvement from women than F1 does.

        Why the lack of female driver makes F1 outdated, archaic and doesn’t reflect the real world? Or let’s change the statement a bit. What’s makes F1 an outdated, archaic and doesn’t reflect real world sport most:
        A) Putting token female (black/LBGT/Asian/) so there’s a representative even though they’re hopelessly uncompetitive.
        B) Open to anyone regardless of race or sex as long as they meet same qualification as everyone (which currently is points for super license).

        And please do tell me what other sports (I’m put some limit to the scope here) that only has males now has lot of involvement of women than F1 does. Let’s skip women exclusive division because the point of this discussion (for F1) is for male and female compete in same category.

        Also F1 still the pioneer of motorsport technology, not to mention the current V6 hybrid engine is because the manufacturers wants something that they put in their road car. Pretty hard to say that outdated and doesn’t reflect real world ;)

        There are parts of Asia where motorsport is well-established (Japan in particular), yet there is no champion from there. That’s sort of generous of the article, as there also hasn’t been an Asian winner in F1 yet.

        Same question as above. Do you want token drivers or real drivers?

        Not everyone defines “world” as “three continents” the way the FIA does.

        Pretty sure it’s four out of five (America, Europe, Asia, and Australia). But more importantly, AFAIK every country can host a race provided they have suitable circuit and willing to make a deal. While the deal cost might be too expensive (thanks to certain BE) there’s nothing that prevent a country to be able to host a F1 race. Why no race in Africa? Why no African countries willing to sign the deal?

        Some sports haven’t had an out queer competitor in its uppermost ranks

        Why queer competitor is a requirement for a sport? Especially when the sport only have slot for 18-24 people from the whole world. Current world population is around 7 billion people. Let’s say only about 3 billion that lives in modern area enough to know F1, that still only 0.000000008%. Statistically, having 0 queer from randomly picking 24 people out of 3 billion is very normal. And that’s before having them need to have that super licence points…

        Now about sponsors. It’s not true sponsors gone because a female achieved some successes. What likely happens is with results, people (male and females) will want to negotiate higher price and no agreement achieved to renew the deal. Your Sally Pearson example is really misleading. She’s not losing sponsor because she won Olympic gold medal, but rather her sponsors only signed for Olympic season. Those sponsors will not renew the deal regardless she won or not, but maybe they signed her up again for next Olympic, and having gold will work in her favor. link.

        Back to the female driver in F1 topic. Why it’s must be FIA / Liberty media responsibility to attract female driver? Does FIA / liberty / CVC trained Lewis Hamilton to have black driver? How about drivers from countries who just recently joining F1 like Malaysia, India, China, or Indonesia? None of them asking special treatment to enter F1, so why female need one? Hamilton proves F1 doesn’t care of your skin color. Raikkonen and Hakkinen proves F1 doesn’t care if you not a media darling. Verstappen proves F1 doesn’t care about your age (sadly forced to care now). James Hunt proves F1 doesn’t care if you… do breakfast like a champion. I’m willing to bet F1 doesn’t care about a driver sex if they put purples on timing screen.

        1. @sonicslv, I think that it is evident that @alianora-la-canta is not talking about having “token drivers” from the various groups you mention, but rather is talking about whether individuals from those groups who may be just as talented as any other driver are being given the same opportunities to race.

          In the case of a female racing driver, only a few years ago we had Bernie openly stating that, in his opinion, a female racing driver wouldn’t be taken seriously in F1 – now, it might have been just his personal opinion, but when that individual also happened to be the commercial rights holder until very recently, and still has influence at FOM, I can see why that might act as a deterrent to aspiring female racing drivers.

          In the case of a driver who might be homosexual, there have been almost no racers who ever admitted to being homosexual in any motorsport discipline, let alone F1 – when you consider how many world class racing series have been going for an extended period of time, and the number of participants there have been in those series, it does start to become rather improbable to say the least.

          Earlier this year we also had the case of Danny Watts, a man who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the LMP2 class and yet felt that he could only reveal he was homosexual after he retired from racing because he feared that he would be discriminated against by teams and by sponsors in the WEC.

          I feel that, in some ways, his attitude there reflects across the wider motorsport world – whilst there may be those who talk about the idea that a driver should be able to progress to the top solely on their ability, it is clear that there are those who feel that admitting to being homosexual would have a detrimental impact on their career.

          To that end, I would say that @alianora-la-canta is right to ask that question – whilst most, like yourself, seem to believe that an individual should be able to progress solely on their ability, irrespective of whom they are, is that necessarily what is actually happening in practise?

          1. Bernie is Bernie, and while he has lot of power in his days, it’s open secret that most people in paddock don’t necessarily agree with him. Also, coming out of the closet is hard for everyone, in motorsport or not, especially if you’re a public figure (which a driver is, compared to the engineers). After he coming out, does his peers actually turn 180 degrees and hate him?

            Anyway what I (and probably most people who share same view as me) bothered most is: why things that doesn’t affect a driver performance like sex or being queer is brought to the table? That’s basically asking a token driver to represent those things that unrelated to performance.

            And to answer the question, let me ask this first: how many of those female or LGBT drivers (not necessarily in F1, but at least pro level motorsport) that has proven his/her ability? I think regularly having wins and podiums in junior category is reasonable expectation for someone to get promoted to next tier championship. Remember how we mock driver like Max Chilton and many others because their ability is below F1 standard. Heck, Chilton and Palmer is textbook definition of “rich white cis”. When someone like Carmen Jorda or Susie Wolff whose performance doesn’t even close to F1 pay driver standards is pushed to spotlight, you bet the fans will hating them. Meanwhile, we also dreaming for people like Lotterer to compete in F1, or Kubica comeback that exciting lot of fans.

            F1 has proved time and time again, performance is what matters most. Show me someone that have the performance first, then I’ll believe these issues. Until then, all this white male dominating the sports is just straw man argument because those people never has a chance to enter F1 even if they turn overnight into a white male.

        2. @sonicslv Warning! Long response alert!

          Regarding the matter of whether F1 should be a tokenistic beureaucracy (A) a meritocracy (B) would probably work better if F1 had ever been either. I would argue that has been, at least for the past 15 years, a corpocracy (C) (i.e. majority of decisions are based on who has, or can access, the most money) and the Stand Up article implies it is an ethnochronoandrocracy (D) (majority of decisions by white men of specific nationality or group of nationalities). From perspectives (C) and (D) (but for different reasons), the failure of women and minorities-from-Western-perspective to get into F1 is evidence that neither F1 nor its formative networks are (B). Note that none of the four decision methods described are necessarily exclusive of the others in this context, apart from (A) and (B).

          The thing about queer competitors, women and minorities-from-Western-perspective) is that that their composition of the world population is substantial. Estimates have it at around 20% for queer, 50% for women and around 71% for minorities-from-Western-perspective (also, some people are more than one of these groups). While being an “out” queer has only realistically been an option for one generation, that’s also the length of time it’s been since a woman had the chance to be in F1, no “out” queer has had the chance to be in F1 and no member of a Western-perspective-minority has won a race (though Lewis Hamilton, who is mixed-race black/white, has won three championships).

          To have few people reaching F1 or winning it from any of the groups might suggest such patterns as suggested might be attributable to other factors. For it to be zero, as is the case in F1 (and notably not the case in other series, especially in the case of women), indicates there really is a block not explicable by performance or merit. In many of these cases, the issue may be money at a really basic level (in particular, most of the Western-perspective-minority people wouldn’t be able to afford their first karting season), but even then, it would be a block to meritocracy and one that would be worth doing something about.

          For anyone who would like F1 to be (B) – which emphatically includes me – to summarily ignore these people’s exclusion, as so many responders seem to desire, is to simply throw hands up in the air and say F1 can never be meritocratic. At which point, F1 needs to stop claiming it is even trying to have the best drivers in the world, because it’s ignoring most of them. If it tries to help and fails, it can at least say it’s doing what it can to be a meritocracy and live up to its claim of having the best drivers, which is all anyone can reasonably ask of it.

          I cannot tell what you are trying to say in the paragraph below the part where you discuss options (A) and (B) – please could you rephrase it?

          I find it extremely easy to say that hybrid V6 in the F1 interpretation is not only outdated and irrelevant to road use, but about 5 years behind WEC, let alone Formula E (and has been since 2014 – hybrids stopped being the most relevent tech as soon as Formula E came on the scene, and hybrids had been a key part of sportscar racing for some years prior to that). For relevance in cars, it needs to be either all-electric or maximising an old fully petrol/diesel engine (turbo or naturally-aspirated) for those who can’t afford all-electric, because by 2030 they’re likely to be the main features of the road-going landscape. Hybrids are a waypoint whose time is receding; the time to start doing that was the first half of the decade, not the second (as WEC is also learning to its cost).

          The FIA considers there to be seven continents (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and Antarctica). Part of the definition of a World Championship/Cup/Trophy, according to the International Sporting Code is that a championship has to use three of them. (In practise, that’s three of six, since nobody has or is likely to build a FIA-approved racing venue, or create a FIA-affiliated NSA, in Antarctica any time soon). For anyone who cares, a two-continent series (or 3+ continent that misses some other criterion for World status) can call itself Intercontinental, and a single-continent series is only meant to call itself International. By claiming it could be 4 out of a (differently-composed) 5 continents just proven that different standards to the FIA one exist.

          As for the attempt to deny sponsors have dropped women for being successful, that contradicts the experience of multiple women on the route to F1 (check the stories of Simone de Silvestro and Jamie Chadwick, to take some of the more high-profile examples). Also, claiming Sally Pearson had sponsors drop out due to the Olympic cycle is false. Olympic cycles are 4 years, from the end of the previous Olympics right up to the end of the next one, because they know Olympians must train 52 weeks a year (and be funded likewise) to succeed in the Olympics at the level where sponsors get interested. For them (and Sally’s manager) to behave otherwise is like arguing that driver and team sponsors drop their F1 sponsorships at the end of November until the middle of March (which, for the most part, does not occur – especially with the most successful ones…)

          Incidentally, F1 did care about skin colour when Lewis started, for about two years. I remember those days well. Only when he became world champion did he gain the immunity to racism generally granted white competitors the moment they step in the door – nearly gaining the title in his rookie season was not sufficient to avoid such issues. This may be part of the reason why no black driver has made it to F1 since (although I will grant that one is also just about plausible in terms of global demographics). Other minority groups, as well as sponsors in general, will most likely have also taken note that it takes a title to get treated equally in F1, making breakthroughs that much harder.

          Let’s note the significance of that for a minute. There have been 835 drivers racing in F1 (ignoring those who only did the Indy 500). 33 of these became world champions. Sponsors are generally looking for their investments to not backfire. Which means getting beyond the point where difference-ism, for want of a better catch-all phrase, is an issue. Assuming they think their driver’s dream of F1 is going to happen (and granted some have other motives for sponsoring drivers attempting to reach F1), then a white cis male with no other detrimental factors merely needs to get into F1 (something that can generally be bought via extensive training, costly introductions and the like, if the wallet is large enough, rendering calculations of base-level talent nearly irrelevant).

          For someone whose only difference is that they are female or queer or Western-perspective-minority, the equivalent requirement is a level of skill just under 4% of the people who enter F1 get to demonstrate. This makes the sponsors only 4% as likely to sponsor someone not white-cis-male as someone who is… …and that 4% has to be shared between everyone who isn’t white and cis and male. So for the non-white-cis-male brigade, it’s 25 times more difficult to get sponsorship. Think about all those drivers who have reported finding sponsors difficult, and think about whether you’d even have heard about them if it had been 25 times more difficult for them to find sponsors. Well, that’s the base-rate disadvantage non-white-cis-male drivers get, due to the differential treatment Lewis Hamilton received at the start of his F1 career. No sterling, no Stirling Moss.

          For that matter, when sponsors are inclined to be 25 times pickier about non-white-cis-male competitors than their white cis male colleagues (recall that, as the previous paragraphs demonstrated, that can be explained simply on marketing risk due to difference-ism already demonstrated in F1 to Lewis Hamilton compared to similarly talented white competitors, without recourse to sponsor aspersions), they also get to be a lot more demanding of the non-white-cis-male athletes they do choose to sponsor. It’s not even as simple as demanding non-cis-white-men are better than those who are before sponsoring them, though that certainly comes into it.

          For example, the requirements to get a body that works optimally on the runway are completely different to the requirements to get a body that works optimally in a race car, but how many times have you seen the former preferred by sponsors to the latter? And how many times has it been shown that sponsors really can’t have it both ways and the only way to succeed in motorsport in terms of performance is to train for motorsport rather than the catwalk? (I tend to call this the “Carmen Jorda” effect – while training for the correct build wouldn’t suddenly make her the next Nico Rosberg, it might at least have enabled her to show her actual best performance instead of sacrificing the best of it to sponsor interests). Note that men don’t get this problem, as the optimal build for a race car is considered quite compatible with looking pretty for the sorts of ads male racing drivers are asked to do (and yes, I’m including their occasional shirtless ones in that reckoning).

          Incidentally, Susie Wolff would probably have found her natural place as a reasonable, if unexceptional, DTM driver if her boyfriend hadn’t pointed her out to Williams at some point – they saw the next Paul di Resta, trained her accordingly, but then there was no vacancy for her in a Williams race seat (Bottas and Massa being faster than a rookie driver could reasonably be expected to be) and that was the end of her potential career.

          It’s a community responsibility to sort out the failures in F1’s attempts at meritocracy. The FIA, at least, is starting to try – which you’d expect given that part of its mandate in its Statutes is to widen motorsport participation as far as possible, and create something that allows them to compete on an equal basis. However, Liberty is also partly responsible because it creates the marketing for F1. The social element of motorsport has been cited as one factor preventing women from participating, and changing that is largely a marketing issue, therefore it falls to Liberty (and its equivalents in development series – note that Liberty is also commercially responsible for GP3 and F2). Teams have responsibilities also, insofar as avoiding discriminatory practices, not only in their F1 teams but also their development teams and promotion. Even drivers have a role to play, because day-to-day interactions count too.

          1. @alianora-la-canta Thanks for the reply. I don’t mind reading wall of text as long as it advancing the discussion ;) Since we actually cover a few sub topics here, I’m gonna try to format this to easier (for me) to follow up, but it’s all still linked together somewhat. Also my reply also going to be a wall of text.

            Regarding F1 form of leadership (?)
            I’d argue that at it’s core F1 is always a (B) meritocracy. While at a glance it more looks like a (C) corpocracy, from what I’ve seen it mainly because Schumacher-Ferrari unlimited testing day effect and expenses reported Ferrari vs McLaren era which the de facto mortal enemies in F1. But even then, all those large spending are aimed to become champions which still true to the concept of meritocracy. If it is more based on corpocracy, then ToyotaF1 and BAR-Honda should have much more bargaining chip. Also don’t forget current hybrid formula is based on insistence of Renault (the big corporation) who ironically still get beaten thoroughly until this year.

            Claiming F1 as the (D) like the Stand Up article suggest (which spark all this convo) is what I and what looks like the majority of commenter here thoroughly disagree. It’s because it painting the current “white cis male” leader blocks any attempt by anyone not under their group but neglecting the fact and possibility that there are very little interest and qualified people from those non white cis male to directly involved in F1. I can point out Vijay Mallya, Tony Fernandes, Aguri Suzuki, Claire Williams, and Monisha Kaltenborn who doesn’t fit (D) description as recent team bosses example. Also the article (and our discussion) haven’t even touch one of the most important aspect of F1 yet: the engineers. There are far more women and queer people there which makes the point much more moot.

            In conclusion, I think F1 is and still about meritocracy and it may looked like corpocracy at a glance (because they are non-exclusive like you said), but definitely not ethnochronoandrocracy.

            Regarding F1 world championship status
            I was saying 5 continent because that what I mainly taught in school. But let’s do it with the FIA ISC definition. I think we can agree demanding to have race in Antartica is silly although who knows what the future might bring. That leaves us to 6 which 5 of them have a staple race for at least last 2 decade: North America (Canada), South America (Brazil), Europe (Britsh, Italy, etc), Asia (Japan), Oceania (Australia). That’s 5 out of 6. Africa had ran South Africa GP before. So I think it’s very justifiable to call F1 as world championships. Regardless of FIA definition of “World” is defined by at least 3 countries, in reality it cover almost all continents. I don’t see any issue here.

            Regarding F1 competitors
            My next paragraph is actually asking you to provide concrete example of your statement of:

            Some sports haven’t had an out queer competitor in its uppermost ranks… …but some sports have.

            . I do add one more restriction of sports that male and females are expected to compete together not in separate division because the original article is mainly about female involvement.

            As for the F1 drivers composition, first and foremost I’d still stand on my premise that the performance is still the most important factor. You said about the composition of world population (20% queer, 50% females, 70% non white) rough estimate and I’m not going to debate whether those true or not (the queers on people I at least have ever spoken to is definitely not even close to 20%) , but let’s say its close enough to the big picture. But we also need to see that historically motor racing is originated and until now still based on western part of Europe which probably only the 50% females that close to the reality in those demographics. This fact alone can somewhat contributes to 2 things:

            1. That’s like asking why soccer team in Brazil has almost none of European players, which of course explainable because geographical reasons. Which also explain why Super Formula has a lot more of Japanese drivers, Formula Asia has many Asians drivers, and Stick Car Brasil has a lot more of south American drivers.
            2. Queerness as you already mentioned, is only open issue recently. If an arguably one of the most important person winning WW2 (Alan Turing) is “shunned” for being gay then it’s very possible there already queer drivers in F1, the ones that we would never knew of his queerness.

            Another thing to remember is motor racing is an expensive endeavor, especially single seaters. This fact alone will exclude most of population of China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil, which are the top 5 most populous country in the world. And 3 of them is very dominantly a non-white country.

            Those 2 things above is not a form of discrimination or elaborate effort from some group to exclude some countries or groups of people. It’s just the state of the world we’re in.

            Add those state of the world with the scarcity of F1 driver seat and the qualification needed (whether you like it or not, super licence point is at least objective and transparent requirement), it’s easy to see why F1 drivers are mainly white people. Don’t worry we’ll talk more about female topic later.

            But F1 is world championship, which I’d say proven by actually quite a lot of non-whites before Lewis Hamilton. Japan of course has the most drivers, but there’s also a lot of drivers from Latin America, which are they considered white or not, depends on how your 70% statistic count as non-white. Need I remind you, the great Aryton Senna himself could be considered non white driver depending on how you define white. You mentioned before there’s no Asian F1 winner yet, and I have to ask you why being a minority should grant you advantage compared to the majority? If anything, statistically being a minority is more likely to have 0 wins just because the number of races they’ve got compared to the majority. Lewis Hamilton being great isn’t because he’s black, but because he can do what Lewis Hamilton does, which bring me back to my basic premise: performance is the most important factor in F1.

            As a little note: while Lewis got racist treatment in 2007 and 2008 Spanish GP, it’s more because his feud with Fernando Alonso, not because he’s black. Also majority of F1 condemned those racists fans, so I’d still say F1 doesn’t care about skin color.

            Finally, we only discussed drivers so far who <1% of people who working in F1. Include the engineers and team personnel, I bet your queer, female, and non-white numbers suddenly rise up a lot.

            Regarding F1 female driver
            First, Sally Pearson situation. Yes, it’s makes sense for a sponsor who only cares about Olympics drop her out of Olympic season. They only want to pay to be shown at the TV and Olympic materials so why pay for the 3 years of non Olympic season? Yes, the athletes must spent those 3 years training, but it’s not the sponsor problem. Besides a good manager will negotiate a price good enough to cover those 3 years after Olympic and maybe with some extra changes. Also note for Sally Pearson, some of the bigger name like Qantas, Adidas, and Omega is not dropping her. It mentioned in my linked article. For F1 though, some sponsor agreement is actually based on how many races each year. I even read an article before (I think from F1 Racing magazine) that there’s someone whose job is to watch every race with stopwatch in hand to determine how many seconds does a car appear on television on each race. I think Ted Kravitz bring out this point few years ago when BE “punishing” Mercedes by giving a lot more of screen time to mid field even though they’re leading the race and nothing actually happens in mid field. So in way you could say F1 “dropped” by sponsors between November and March and its kinda worse because every second matters.

            You mention Simona de Silvestro and Jamie Chadwick a lot as your example of successful female driver that dropped by sponsors. However, checking their professional racing career highlights:
            – Simona de Silvestro: Best result 4th in 2006 Formula BMW USA championship, 3rd in 2009 Atlantic championship, 4 year in Indycar with best result finished 2nd in race and 13th in championship. 4 point in 2015-2016 FE. Currently running 22nd in 2017 Aussie Supercar V8 lowest compared to all her teammates and 4th lowest of all drivers who race in all round.

            – Jamie Chadwick: 8th in 2014 Ginetta Junior Championship, 2015 British GT4 champion but have to note she’s the only competitor who ran all race that season in Silver Cup. There are 6 other driver in Pro-Am pairings that also ran at all race that season. Currently racing in 2017 British F3 at 9th with 1 3rd place finish but 4th lowest for driver who ran all race and outscored by 2 drivers that ran 2 race less than her. Personally I think she still can improve in the future, so we’ll see.

            – While at it, Susie Wolff: Euh 4 podiums total from 3 years in Formula Renault and 4 points total from 7 years in DTM? You say she can be the next Paul Di Resta, the man who actually won a DTM championship? Are you actually serious?

            Anyway, my point is, forget for a moment that those 3 are females. Put their statistics as a white male. Do you really want anyone with that record compete in F1?

            I don’t understand what your paragraph about 4% and how did you get that number. Although you did mention Lewis Hamilton, which I should mention who famously got his sponsorship with McLaren by asking Ron Dennis after winning championships and continue winning after. You know, sometimes you just need to show results and ask. Maybe also like a certain young man called Verstappen recently.

            Regarding body type, F1 drivers doesn’t require you to have health magazine type body physique. In fact their training is mostly endurance training to last the race, with special training for neck muscles. So maybe you get bigger neck and maybe a bit broader shoulder but I bet most people won’t even notice it. Look at all those female drivers, including Danica Patrick, does they have a body that not “marketable”? Danica Patrick stars many Go Daddy ads btw, including some more “revealing” one. Heck Lella Lombardi even stars in an ad few years ago. Besides every ads, including one starred by male drivers or even models are photoshopped these days. Body type is not really a concern.

            Finally you said it yourself (emphasis mine) :

            There have been 835 drivers racing in F1 (ignoring those who only did the Indy 500). 33 of these became world champions….

            For someone whose only difference is that they are female or queer or Western-perspective-minority,

            Yep, that’s enforcing that F1 is meritocracy that basically only cares if you have performance or not.

          2. @alianora-la-canta Sorry apparently emphasis doesn’t work with quotes so here the quote with the emphasizes

            There have been 835 drivers racing in F1 (ignoring those who only did the Indy 500). 33 of these became world champions….
            For someone whose only difference isthat they are female or queer or Western-perspective-minority,

      3. @alianora-la-canta
        I might revisit your comment in more detail later, but your point that the author is a fan and that the article only calls F1 archaic specifically because of the lack of women is patently wrong. The list of insults I quoted (“F1 is simply mundane… F1 is outdated, archaic and doesn’t reflect the real world… It’s pathetic and childish”) cover quite a range and suggest it was written by somebody who isn’t a fan in the least and has an axe to grind. You presumably know something about the author to be able to claim knowledge of their fandom, so is that actually true or was the article just very poorly articulated?

        There are parts of Asia where motorsport is well-established (Japan in particular), yet there is no champion from there.

        And a lot of countries in Europe with a rich motorsport history. The nature of F1 means a series of drivers can dominate for a period of time and not many nationalities will get near a championship-capable car. In the past decade I think only 6 nationalities have been in such cars: British (x2), Spanish, Finnish (x3), Brazilian (x2), German, and Australian. USA of all places hasn’t had a race winner for nearly 40 years. So a Japanese driver not having won a championship is not of note for me.

        Some sports haven’t had an out queer competitor in its uppermost ranks… …but some sports have.

        I would wager that a lot of those sports are considerably bigger than F1- more than 20 competitors per year. Can you provide some examples so that I know what sports you are thinking of?

        There are racers who were supported for their speed right up until F1 testing, until the sponsors baulked because apparently she performed too well (Simona de Silvestro being the most blatant example).

        Do you have a source for this statement? I just read an interview where she said nothing like that, only commenting on the catch 22 difficulty of not being able to get sponsors to commit until a drive is secured and the team not commit until sponsorship is secured. I’m very interested to read whatever you have.

        When success is more likely to cause sponsors to drop female drivers than increase their commitment

        Do you have evidence this is true?

        1. @matt90 – Alianora is correct — Steph Farnsworth is indeed a fan and very knowledgable and articulate about F1 – she was an active contributor on this site (and other F! sites) a few years ago and I for one greatly respected her passion and knowledge of F1

          1. I remember her contributions, and I respected them a great deal, which makes the article all the more more disappointing now.

            There’s been discussions about sprinkler systems, medal tables and reverse grids – and yet the biggest reason for declining interest is lost on the old white cis men of the FIA. F1 is simply mundane.

            Those are things mostly pushed for by a man who is no longer involved in F1. I won’t deny that F1 is still mostly run by “old white cis men”, but the one old white cis man who was most antiquated and responsible for the current state of F1 is now gone. Those who have replaced him seem to have an understanding of how to reverse the declining interest, which makes that comment largely redundant. And I don’t think “F1 is mundane” can be misconstrued. Those are the words of somebody who fundamentally no longer likes F1. Mundanity won’t be fixed by F1 becoming more diverse or representative of the general population. It might create a snowball effect and get more people interested, but it won’t change the actual racing other than by an increase in talent pool hopefully increasing the talent.

            A sport like F1 should and hopefully one day will be more open to everybody, but it has a lot of battles to face including altering the general perception of motorsport as a male sport. Gender stereotypes aren’t an easy thing to overcome, and articles that attack the very core of F1, the quality of very good drivers, and the quality of the racing itself are not particularly helpful. I would love to read an article that articulated the real problem areas for female competitors, criticisms of exactly where F1 and the FIA fail to attract more female viewers and inspire more girls into karting, attacking the elements that directly put women off. This article wasn’t it.

          2. I will apologise for my first sentence in particular saying that “this reads like it was written by somebody with no actual knowledge of or even interest in F1.” No amount of searching on wikipedia could provide the background to write that article. The tone of it felt combative and some of the sections I highlighted made me feel the truth was either being ignored or manipulated, and I found that very frustrating. And so I wrote that line, which was unduly harsh and clearly false, one that I should have left out to keep the focus on my other criticisms that I think are fair.

    5. “F1 is simply mundane… F1 is outdated, archaic and doesn’t reflect the real world… It’s pathetic and childish.”

      Yet they’re the ones whining because men won’t give it up to them on a silver platter. Says it all really. They’d be the first to say how great it was if women had thought of it first.

      If F1 was still an amateurish and dangerous (not that it isn’t dangerous, but the chances of fatalities are small these days) sport with no money being made and relatively little publicity, there’d be no mention of it by feminists at all.

    6. “There’s never been an out queer F1 racer.”

      Mike Beuttler was.

  6. Face it. Women just aren’t as interested in becoming racing drivers as men are. Yes there are exceptions to the rule, but the majority don’t even watch it much less want to participate.

    1. And why is that?

      The issue is not that they’re not interested or trying, it’s WHY they’re not interested or trying.

      1. I can tell you WHY..
        The majority of women aren’t interested in racing in because there are much more rewarding (and safer) things to do in life.
        Turning the tables – the vast majority of women wonder why men ARE interested in such a “sport”. Add boxing, American football and any other high risk spectacle to that list.
        Good luck trying to find a plethora of women drivers in the future.
        I hope I’m not being sexist.

    2. Oh no you dii’nt…

    3. Wow… sexist comment of the year.

    4. I saw a response to the Google memo where a woman descibed Ieaving her IT job. She had an interest gap with her male coworkers. She wrote they were willing to spend their weekends setting up fiber networks in their basements. She didn’t want to and realized that gave them an edge.

      But we know from other series women can care about racing and compete. F1 should try to encourage them.

      They are also 1/2 of potential fans.

      1. If women were so interested and had the drive, then they’d be in F1 already. There just hasn’t been one good enough to make the cut in 70 years.

        1. Then how did Lella Lombardi score half a point in the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix?

        2. I’d argue Danica Patrick competed successfully in IndyCar and NASCAR. Those series are competitive and she did well enough.

          Her and women like Lombardi are good eough to prove women deserve a chance. I’d suggest they should be encouraged more. Both to widen the fan base and to see how good they can be.

        3. There just hasn’t been one good enough to make the cut in 70 years.

          Are you really saying that in 70 years no woman driver has been better than Palmer or Chilton? What a joke.

    5. Hate to break the news, but the majority of men don’t watch any other form of motorsports either…

      1. * – “the majority of men don’t watch any motorsports either”

  7. If some women want to set up their own f1 series, ok, i’m fine with that, its up to them to sort it out.

    If some women are good enough to race with the men in the current series then i´m fine with that too, i would like to see it and contrary to most sports, there are no rules to prohibit this as far as i am aware.

    What I am not OK with is women being elevated into position simply because they are women which is where this current rise if feminism is heading.

    Positive discrimination is as poisonous and wretched as negative discrimination and erodes the quality of society as a whole. Let everyone get where they want to be on their own merit.

    1. At the rate the world is going, soon you will be ostracized for eating a burger…Bette still, for having an option counter to the average “progressive”.

    2. Discrimination really isn’t as (pardon the pun) black and white as ‘negative’ and ‘positive’. If you do select someone for their sex or heritage over their qualifications, you are always doing both in a sense. I personally find it hard to deny, with things like Old Boys Networks being a thing (politicians getting high-end jobs at corporations) that white heterosexual men haven’t been positively discriminating themselves. There probably is some truth in the middle that there needs to be some pro-active installment of different cultural angles before the old boys networks dissolve. Letting people get somewhere on their own merit is nice, but if nobody takes a chance on them because of a different heritage or gender, that person isn’t going to go very far regardless of merits.

      Some governments have offered companies compensation to phase out older employees to help with employment of young people. These kind of actions could well be needed to get more women in motorsports, but of course they will have to be judged on merit and results. Looking at Monisha Kaltenborn, the latter is very much in place already in F1.

    3. Women can’t set up their own F1 series – that copyright is owned by Liberty via FOM, which is controlled by men.

      The primary point of the article is that women are not able to get into F1 on their own merit because F1 is not a meritocracy. For further evidence of this, I’d advise reading the quotations from female racers in Helen Southwell’s article about women in F1 (which itself gains additional meaning if you’ve also read Joe Saward’s article on the same topic).

      Discrimination is very hard to completely remove, since doing so depends on objectivity, which human beings have found remarkably difficult to obtain even with brilliant data, best efforts and a lack of confounding matters such as high-profile individuals masking broader patterns or needing to balance the books.* The whole issue is going to take a lot of unpicking to get a more meritocratic F1. However, it needs to be done – and if done right, it won’t just benefit women; the insights are likely to increase the meritocratic element for men too.

      * – Less contentious examples regarding driver selection than those which are today’s subject are ten-a-penny, but my favourite is the one where Ron Dennis declared that after number-crunching every driver’s information up to the end of 2006 through a computer, every 2007 driver on the grid except Hamilton, Alonso, Raikkonen (who were “great”) and possibly rookies (who had no numbers to crunch) was much of a muchness, failing to notice that in that “muchness” was Jenson Button, who took a world championship in 2009, and Nico Rosberg, who’d do so in 2016. While his decision to then take Lewis Hamilton was undeniably inspired, the declaration he made to justify it can safely be assumed to be subjective at best.

      1. F1 is not just difficult to get into for women, it is incredibly difficult for anyone at all to get into as it is such a small organisation.

        If the majority of people involved in the so called feeder series are male then the majority of people who filter through into f1 will be male too.

        But let us not forget something, there is nothing that we can take for granted that say that there should be women in F1, why should there?

        If a woman has been told she cannot race because she is a woman then i will defend her right to race to the death however if this is all just about getting a woman in so that we can all stand back and feel warm and fuzzy and we have defeated another glass ceiling barrier for women in a mans world.

        I very much doubt that any man really thinks that this is a mans world. We are almost totally subservient to women anyway and are little more valuable to the gene pool than a source of sperm for reproduction and a tool to lift heavy items and open lids. Women dont need us for anything else.

        Men are far more likely to fail at life than women are, look at all the homless people you see, most of them are male and indeed, most successful suicides are male (women try more often but the actual death rate is lower.

        If a tribe of people loose half the men for some reason, no problem, the remaining men can still breed with the women and the population bounces back within a generation. If however, half the women are lost for some reason, the population will not be able to bounce back as there will be half the amount of women giving birth and furthering the species.

        If we look at this from an evolutionary perspective and accept that reproducing is our main driving force in order to ensure that the species continues to thrive then women are far more, exponentially more valuable than men to us as a species.

        This evolutionary psychology goes some way to explaining the trends in history in which if is a very dangerous or unpleasant job, it is men that tend to do it as we are to some extent, expendable.

        Modern society may be beginning to hold back the tide of evolution through technology, agriculture and modern medicine but our evolutionary psychology, our built for the stone age brains, still persists.

        It is my contention that this goes some way to explaining why there appear to be less women in F1 or other dangerous activities than men. Deep down, we all know that the men are expendable and the women are not.

        I have a similar view on women fighting as front line troops in the British army, I have no doubt that many women are up to the job and some are even better than their male counterparts but I wonder if we should have women as front line troops, is it right to put them there simply because it is viewed as discriminatory if we dont?

      2. That only means that they can’t call it F1, but they can still create a series just for women. Calling it F1 just means that they get to benefit from the work of others (yes, mostly men). Why can’t a woman’s series build up its own reputation? Or do you want things handed to you on a silver platter?

        Anyway, despite you obviously hating men, they actually provide most viewers for female sports like women’s football and basketball. Women refuse to watch those events as much as men watch men’s AND women’s events, so men are actually supporting female athletes more than women do. As long as women refuse to support their own, you can’t blame men for women’s sports or female athletes doing worse. Sports are funded by viewers, so if women refuse to watch women’s sports or female athletes, they won’t be funded as much.

  8. Seems F1 isn’t immune to austerity.
    The sport is generating ridiculous amounts of money, and more every year, and yet, those who are pocketing the most of it for doing nothing, keep telling those who are getting the crumbs for doing everything that they need to save more.

    Just like a politician doing nothing all day and getting paid, telling working class people that they need to spend less when they are already barely feeding themselves.

    The reason is always the same. Those parasites at the top don’t want to give any of their ill-gotten-money to the poor, so they are convincing the poor that they should manage on the crumbs they are given, instead of getting their fair-earned money to provide for decent living.

    FIA and FOM keep getting all these ideas about improving the show, but it’s all just a charade at this point. All they need to do is give teams more money and a more equal distribution of it. And that’s it, but that’s also the one thing that they don’t want to do.

  9. Lewis Hamilton sometimes can just be very unelegant. This reminds me of earlier years, when he and Alonso would say one thing or the other here and there to indicate Sebastian was not on their level.

    1. This reminds me of earlier years, when he and Alonso would say one thing or the other here and there to indicate Sebastian was not on their level

      He isn’t

    2. @magon4 Did you actually read the article and quote? I expect not, as the quote from Hamilton is very complementary about Vettel.

    3. I’ve come to tolerate his weird quotes. Everytime there’s a new interview with Hamilton, there will be such typical Hamilton sayings in there. He’s not mean spirited or dishonest, just has a weird way of expressing himself.

      1. It seems to have gotten ‘worse’ after leaving McLaren too, but in a sense I prefer his odd way of saying things over the bland PR speak a lot of drivers throw out. There seem to be a handful of drivers on the grid who are honest but indifferent to other drivers (Kimi for instance), a handful that does comment but not always in a very eloquent manner (Sebastian, Magnussen and Hulkenberg) while the rest seems to be good for maybe 1 or 2 quotes if another driver crashes into them, but ‘don’t want to get involved’ otherwise.

    4. tgu (@thegrapeunwashed)
      23rd September 2017, 9:37

      @magon4, being grateful for something means you don’t think you necessarily deserved it, so he’s being super humble. Somehow you managed to twist that into a negative.

    5. @magon4 It wasn’t that bad this time though – the sentence did come out in a way that could be turned into that headline but the full sentences HAM actually said looks fine to me

    6. @magon4 How does saying you’re grateful for something make you ‘unelegant’, pray tell?

      Sounds to me sir, like you need to take a long hard look in a mirror.

      1. sorry, I guess you guys are right. After looking into the mirror, I see I was wrong. Fair enough. @stubbornswiss @davidnotcoulthard @thegrapeunwashed @ju88sy

        1. tgu (@thegrapeunwashed)
          23rd September 2017, 21:58

          @magon4, nice one.

    7. He would rather see the WDC decided by drivers than reliability. Judging from all the what-if discusions here F1 Fanatics would too.

      So far Vettel has made 2 serious mistakes. If Hamilton finishes the season without similar mistakes and wins the WDC it will feel fair.

      Hamilton has made these mistakes too. He might remember a pit lane incident or gravel trap that cost him dearly. I wouldn’t judge him too harshly.

      1. He might remember a pit lane incident or gravel trap that cost him dearly.

        @slotopen A good number of problems have been HAM’s fault in the past but I don’t think he was to blame for that one

    8. I’ve tried commenting off the cuff to a journalist with an agenda. I didn’t come out of it well. Throw in alcohol, jet lag or gym fatigue and a cunning journo can get pretty much any comment they want. It’s one of the reasons I respect the integrity of the people running this site so much. No hidden agenda, honest enthusiasm, clean reporting.

      1. I simply don’t agree that SV exposed a weakness in Singapore. It was a racing incident. SV apologizing to his team was not an admission of weakness or guilt. In terms of weakness as a term LH has chosen to use, it was LH that started 5th and a very strong SV who put his car on pole, and it was LH looking to relinquish the WDC lead back to SV that day.

        1. @robbie Yes it was a racing incident, however for Vettel it was 100% avoidable his target was to finish ahead of Hamilton to re-take the lead of the championship, except he took a characteristic defensive lunge across the track (nothing wrong with that) bottom line: if Vettel had shown some caution he would have been rewarded him there.

          Hamilton knows in the same situation he would more than likely have come out the corner in one piece, albeit having relinquished the lead. Yes a racing incident but it was a rash move from Vettel considering the stakes.

          1. I just think that is using hindsight. His target was to finish ahead of LH yes, but ‘using caution’ could just as easily have seen him open up for a hard charging Max who could have collected him with over exuberance, if you want to play ‘let’s pretend other scenarios.’ Easy to do in our armchairs away from the heat of the moment. Why you think LH would have just relinquished the lead is beyond me, and same thing…I think both SV and LH are both racers who would have felt a need to try to keep Max fully behind them. It is pure conjecture on your part to claim Vettel was rash and LH would have come out unscathed. It happened as it did, you’ve said SV did nothing wrong, it was a racing incident, yet still think he should have used caution. Those kinds of opinions since this incident come from LH starting fifth. But do you think SV was under some illusion that he was going to finish there? Let’s say SV takes your (et al) advice…let’s Max go, LH nails his start, by lap 2 SV is second, LH is third, big ‘advantage’ gone…a small number of points between them. As I say the only reason people are suggesting caution for SV is because of LH starting 5th which SV was never going to assume is where he would finish. Yeah yeah I’ll just let Max go, just give it 90% to everyone else’s 100%, and still win and LH will come 5th. Guaranteed.

        2. Qualifying 5th on a track which everyone accepts favours Ferrari and Red Bull was hardly a weakness. As for the race, Vettel’s rashness in blocking Verstappen proved itself, fairly indisputably I’d have thought, since in the realworld, not the hypothetical, it caused a crash. I’d also question Raikkonen’s exuberance in racing off the line and then failing to give room or even turning in as Vettel came across. But then that also comes down to a team failure to discuss the grid start scenarios properly.

          The rest of the race would be too unpredictable to second guess. Would Mercedes have been as fast as Ferrari or Verstappen’s Red Bull? Would Alonso have been a factor? Would Hamilton and Verstappen outperform everyone in the wet conditions? In other words, Vettel shouldn’t have been risking anything on the basis of where Hamilton might have ended up. With more cars on the track, fighting for the lead, they’d be more incidents and more complex pit timing strategies.

        3. I disagree. Listen to ted kravitz comment on sky about seb’s apology to his team. He though it was an admission he was to blame.

    9. Well Hamilton was actually being rather diplomatic I would say.

      Vettel has been dropping the ball a lot this season. The Singapore thing being the biggest mistake of all, but Baku also rates quite high. Canada, Silverstone and Spa he also performed less than stellar. In Spain he and Ferrari got played by Mercedes so it’s not his fault really, but they did turn a win into a #2 there as well.

      By now it looks like Mercedes has the upper hand with their car again too, but Vettel should have been many points ahead by now if he hadn’t made all those mistakes.

      1. Hamilton drove like a rookie in Monaco and Russia but I guess it’s easy to forget.
        he also should have been penalized for not getting out of the way for grosjean’s fast lap.
        Vettel did a serious mistake in Baku and should have been penalized a lot harder but in Singapore it wasn’t a mistake .the same kind of driving got him in the lead in Hungary 2015.he just didn’t see Kimi this time and made a bad start.

        It’s funny how Hamilton fans see only mistakes by vettel but last year when ham drove into a wall like a rookie in baku it wasn’t that mistake that lost him the title or the bad starts but conveniently it was just because Mercedes sabotaged him.

        1. I’be never heard another driver say stupid things like this.many think it but know better and are smart enough not to say it out loud.

  10. Regarding the future of F1 – I would like to see a feature or maybe for someone to clarify exactly where the FIA’s mandate ends and the commercial partner’s continues.

    I find it confusing when we talk about Bernie ‘pushing through’ the V6 hybrids, making changes to qualifying on a whim and Liberty hiring Brawn to steer the direction of the sport’s technical direction yet the FIA can decide on halos and engine limits and procedures. I get that one is basically in charge of the rules and the other is basically in charge of marketing the product but there seems to be a lot of crossover. Are they working as closely as they should be? And who decides which part of the technical regulations?

    The 3 engine limit will in my opinion be disastrous for fair competition next year, are Liberty not concerned about this adversely affecting the spectacle? Do they have any pushback?

    1. @offdutyrockstar Bernie was never a fan of the V6’s, He actually did a lot to try & block the switch & did nothing but put them down from the moment the change was announced.

      F1 Group/FOM/Liberty have a seat on the FIA WMSC (And strategy group with the top teams) & are able to vote on regulation changes & put forward changes of there own, However in the grand scheme on things they have very little say & can only go along with what the FIA vote through.

      A lot of the time if something is put infront of the WMSC that has a lot of support from F1 Group & the teams they will vote it through (Thats how we ended up with Double Points for instance), But if opinions within F1 are mixed & there is no clear direction on what to do (The grid penalty debate for example) then the FIA will often vote to leave things as they are unless they can find agreement to do something during the WMSC sessions.

      There is also no 1 person that can push anything through, Regardless of how it was often portrayed in the past the president of the FIA cannot push anything he/she wants through as everything has to be voted on. There are safety related things that can be pushed through if no agreement can be found but most things on the regulatory side can only be introduced with I believe a majority vote in favor regardless of how much the FIA president & owners of F1 group are in support of something, The WMSC can still vote it down.

      1. @gt-racer insightful and informative as always, thank you. And yes you’re correct Bernie was heavily against the V6’s, I don’t quite know why I thought otherwise, I think I had a brainfart and confused his agenda with Todt.

        Also thank you @alianora-la-canta and Muulka, it makes more sense to me now.

    2. FOM/Liberty and FIA can recommend whatever they like to each other, but according to the 2001 settlement between FOM, FIA and the EU, there is separation of duty. FOM/Liberty has absolute control on commercial stuff and the FIA absolute control over regulatory stuff (especially safety matters, as that is why the FIA is allowed to have a monopoly on motorsport in the EU). In those domains, their recommendations to each other are technically no more power than that of any individual fan would be.

      The trouble is that there are areas where that separation of duty is arguably not being followed (and there’s an EU investigation launched on this very subject by Force India and Sauber). In particular, the FIA has a share in FOM, and the WMSC has 6 votes for FOM, 6 votes for FIA and 1 vote for each of the 6 teams on its board (Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull, Williams and the highest-placed team to not be one of the aforementioned – this year, it’s Force India). They do not separate their rulings neatly into commercial and regulatory matters – even though they arguably should in order to comply with the settlement.

      1. You’re confusing the Strategy Group (which technically has no regulatory power) with the WMSC, which is a collection of FIA representatives from countries all over the world and in which FOM has no vote. The Strategy Group makes recommendations to the F1 Commission (not sure on its membership – I’ve never really heard of it changing decisions anyway), which then submits the proposals to the WMSC, which approves them.
        I’m happy to be corrected on these points if someone else knows better than I do.

  11. That blogpost about women in racing can probably congratulate itself of falling into the trap a lot of non-F1 journalists fall into; underestimating the knowledge and insight the vocal F1 fan possesses. The F1 part of the article is really odd, and probably grasping at straws at some points. The writes does herself no favors by, as pointed out above, not really picking a stance between “F1 is pathetic and childish” and the need for women to be present.

    I guess she got what she wanted, Keith to publish this in the round-up (the writer mentioned Keith in a tweet), so in that regard it’s a successful article. But not mentioning the likes of Tatiana Calderon (involved with Sauber), Beitske Visser (involved with BMW), Sophia Floersch (German F4 podium finisher, sponsored by Force India sponsor BWT) and many more girls in karting, or even the Dare 2 be Different initiative, it strikes me as a snipe at the history at F1, rather than an accurate analysis of what is going on with women in the sport right now. Naming Mrs Wolff (who, let’s be real here, got involved with Williams due to Toto’s shares) and Carmen Jorda (cancer survivor Dean Stoneman won races in her car) as reasons F1 still isn’t open to women strikes me as naming Narnain Karthikeyan and Johnny Cecotto Jr as reasons F1 isn’t open to drivers from ‘new’ countries.

    F1 is very much representative of the real world, as being born in a prosperous family will provide you with more leverage and a larger network of people. There’s a reason why Daniel de Jong drove for MP Motorsport as long as he did; his dad owns the team. Max Chilton got into Manor because his father had a hand in purchasing shares. I’m sure everyone has a story of a friend or a loved one working for a business and a promotion being stalled to bring in the offspring of higher management. Is this a problem? Of course. Are we going to solve this by writing sniping blog posts about individual sectors? Probably not.

    1. The writer is a vocal F1 fan, as it happens, the stances you state are not mutually exclusive (however much each of them can be debated) and if F1 is really supposed to about family leverage and people’s networks, then it is not a sport (which breaks its own description of what it is supposed to be).

      1. I never said the author wasn’t an F1 fan, I said she underestimated how weak of a case she had for some of her points. As several people above me have commented, she names a very narrow reference in 1988 and the past 3 years. Minor mistakes like “Nikki” Lauda don’t help her case.

        My question towards the stances is this: why do women need to get into a sport that is silly and outdates? Their presence alone will not turn this around and magically make F1 more relevant again and get current 13-18 year olds to care about cars.

        Again, I did not even imply F1 is supposed to be about familiar connections, but stated they help. There are 20 drivers on the F1 grid, but millions watch it. How many of those millions actually give trying to get into f1 a try and how many even get to international karting, let alone world championship karting, let alone F4, F3, F2 and even within a hundred miles of an F1 seat? It’s not going to be the still white, still heterosexual boy living below the poverty line. Even Hamilton’s humble upbringings were in a house that exceeds anything my parents have ever lived in.

        As I commented above, if a driver that isn’t a white heterosexual male gets within reach of F1 they probably should be helped to the seat, but they should not be of the calibre of Suzie Wolff or Carmen Jorda. Much like Narnain Karthikeyan did for Indian drivers, it’ll damage their reputation more than it’ll help new people coming in.

  12. ok, the mic in exhaust is just fully idiotic

  13. On women in F1.

    There is a young 11 year old girl in Japan Juju Noda (Daughter of Hideki Noda) who there’s been a lot of buzz about recently. She jumped into an F1 car at the age of 10 & started breaking track records & I’ve seen people in the know (Talent spotters & the like) talk about her been a very special talent with her already managing to sign a big sponsor.

    She’s not actually able to race those cars for another few years but to jump in & she the speed she has done has got people talking.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2017/06/30/could-this-11-year-old-become-the-worlds-first-woman-f1-winner/#1bd25e9b7a93

    1. I hope Juju is able to progress in the way her precocious talent indicates is possible, because that much skill at that young an age warrants a good chance to show itself in a racing environment :)

    2. Would be great to see her really get there @gt-racer. Certainly looks like she is exaclty the level of talent to ge us all excited.

    3. Exciting to read, reminds me a little of 2008/2009 reports of Max Verstappen, and we know how that turned out. Japan also has a great infrastructure for young drivers, so it might be time for a google alert..

    4. Talented as she may be, she will never be the first female F1 winner as Desire Wilson already won the 1980 Evening News Trophy.

  14. The cars sound so horrible you have to put a microphone in the exhaust! Maybe F1 can pump that sound through the PA system at the track for the fans paying to watch also.

  15. Michael Brown (@)
    23rd September 2017, 16:51

    Ah the women F1 driver discussion. While men (generally) have the advantage over women in terms of stronger muscles and faster reactions, women tend to be smaller and lighter. I wonder if this is enough of an advantage for female drivers?

    1. As the minimum weight includes both car and driver, it gets cancelled assuming medium-sized male driver gets under the minimum weight in which case ballast may be used to reach the minimum weight.

      I think Indycar does have just car weight in the rules.

      1. It gets cancelled overall but it allows finer placement of balance. A contributing factor to Lando Norris’s times in testing in my opinion, the guy is absolutely tiny.

        1. *ballast

  16. I greatly enjoyed the linked article and it’s various responses and I’ve actually learned a few things and would like to thank the participants for a respectful encounter which in itself, is somewhat unusual these days. It has sparked a lot of interest and so I think Keith was quite right to link the article. I have no real issues with the original piece as after all they are opinions and everyone has one but I was quite amused to see that by inference in the final para, Piquet & Senna were NOT a pair of rich kids racing round in circles!

  17. Great guy this Hamilton I’ve never heard anybody say this about another man’s misfortune not only in f1 but in sports in general.you can think it of course but need to be an uneducated man to say it.I guess he’s daddy was using too much of he’s time to teach ham how to brake and forgot about other things.

    1. Obviously your dad also didn’t educate you to read beyond a headline. Pity you are not a racing driver to make up for it.

  18. Sophia Flörsch impressed me with her performances in Ginetta Junior races, then she went back to Germany. She’s doing OK in F4, not setting the world alight, but still only 16. Not noticed any other up and coming females beating the men.

    That ‘women in F1’ article was however the ramblings of an SJW obsessed by identity politics. She [I assume from ‘Steph’] needs to get out into the real world where girls and boys have different interests and ambitions and many fewer women are interested in a career in motor sport than men.

    Relative gender talents were succinctly analysed recently by James Damore of Google memo infamy. Despite the fact that it was written in response to a request for feedback on an internal Google run course, such is the madness of political correctness, it got him the sack. Weak management and unfortunately a sign of our times.

  19. Michael Brown (@)
    24th September 2017, 2:01

    Perhaps if Sky and the other broadcasters would put effort into mixing the audio we wouldn’t be having these noise complaints.

  20. OK, some of the comments here on the article about women in F1 are just misogynistic tripe. So far, I’ve seen ‘women just aren’t as good’, ‘women just aren’t interested’, ‘ women should set up their own series’, ‘the person who wrote it must not be a racing fan and therefore doesn’t understand the issues’ and ‘putting a woman in the car would just be a token thing at this point’ arguments – all are generalising, making assumptions on things they have no idea about or making unrealistic assertions.

    Every point in that article is correct, so what on earth is so bad about criticising the status quo and encouraging more women to get into the sport. Or is it really that a lot of people want to keep it a men’s only club? Incidentally, my respect for Checo has dramatically reduced after seeing the comments he made when Susie Wolff was driving in practice in 2014.

    Also, a top tip – if the comment says anything about ‘SJWs’, the content is worthless and your time is better spent elsewhere

    1. Steve,

      It is beyond obvious that women have different interests. Men and women make wildly different choices, for example, women choose education and caring professions much more, while men choose engineering professions much more. No one forces men and women to do this at gun point.

      But we now live in a world where obvious truths that you can see all around you must be ignored or you are called a misogynist.

      1. @aapje – everyone has different interests and you’re right, no-one in this country is being forced at gunpoint to pursue them but they can be heavily pressured into them, regardless of interest. Why is questioning the status quo and challenging the sport to do better a bad thing? Sponsorship is a big deal and the 1997 study which @alianora-la-canta cited seems like a contributing factor in talented women being dropped for little discernible reason.

        One final question; you make your argument about why you think there aren’t many women racing. I don’t agree at all but fine, they’re your reasons – outside of Lewis Hamilton, the sport hasn’t seen a single black driver compete in a race. Is this also due to ‘different interests’?

        1. Oops, the comment below was meant to be a reply to you.

  21. The issue that the sport is being blamed for things it has nothing to do with. It’s not Formula 1 that invented gender roles and forces them on society. This is the general problem with feminism: it blames the wrong people for things they can do fairly little about.

    I can’t find that study by googling and in my experience feminists misrepresent the science, so I have to examine it in detail before I will comment on it.

    As for black racers, motorsports seems very unpopular among black Americans and in countries with many black people. The countries that have traditionally supplied most racers have a small percentage of black citizens. Also, black people are poorer on average and motorsports is a rich people’s sport.

  22. I watched the J Ross show where this quote was taken. There was nothing mean or spiteful about it, in fact he complimented Vettel describing him as one of the best drivers the sport has produced.

    Jeez. Some people just have a problem with Hamilton. Seems he can’t say anything without someone somewhere being upset about him.

  23. @tiya
    it is just making noise to get some hits, otherwise unnewsworth conversation!

    People love to frame stuff that suits their agenda and gets rating with fake/click-bait stuff… nothing new

  24. RE: the photo of the 2013 cars next to the COTD…

    I’d already forgotten just how ugly those cars were. I can get over the narrower cars even though the wider cars this year look far better. But the tall, skinny wing and the nose as high as the driver’s head. They look ridiculous.

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