The Editor: ‘F1 welcomes women as fans. Now it needs them as drivers’

Our sport doesn’t half make life difficult for itself. After a mammoth Formula 1 season that culminated in a gruelling three-race schedule, where teams were sleepwalking through time zones, everyone could have done with some much-needed downtime.

No such luck. No sooner had Max Verstappen and Red Bull celebrated a truly extraordinary title-winning year than the FIA announced it was launching a preliminary investigation into the conduct of two of racing’s most high-profile personalities – Mercedes boss Toto Wolff and his wife Susie Wolff, the long-time women-in-motor-sport campaigner and boss of the female-only F1 Academy. The inquiry hinged on a media report that the married couple had leaked confidential information to each other resulting in complaints from other F1 team bosses, the full details of which quickly became academic.

Because as most readers will now know that investigation was abandoned after two days, presumably through lack of evidence – and in the face of all nine other F1 teams displaying a rare united front in issuing identical statements saying that they had not made any official complaints. It was a truly farcical end to the season – especially since it came on the eve of the FIA’s big annual back-slapping end-of-season awards jamboree.

The story quickly moved on to how the episode could be seen as the latest round in the on-going turf war between FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem and the F1 teams and Liberty, still smarting from the president’s involvement in their financial affairs, not to mention his perceived heavy-handedness in attempting to foist an 11th team on the grid.

The Kremlinology of all this is explained masterfully by Mark Hughes in his piece on the subject on our website, which is worth searching out. In fact, it seems the rift is now becoming so wide that there is talk of teams forming a breakaway championship outside the regulatory control of the FIA – something that could become one of the key stories of ’24.

So far, so F1. But what makes this episode so damaging to F1 is the unmistakable whiff of sexism that permeated throughout the whole affair. Susie Wolff called it out. She released a statement saying she was “deeply insulted but sadly unsurprised” by the allegations which seem to be “rooted in intimidatory and misogynistic behaviour, and focused on my marital status rather than my abilities”.

She added that no one from the FIA had contacted her directly about the allegations.

“Only the FIA could get caught up in such a sexism row”

Only the FIA could get caught up in a sexism row with its own champion of women in motor sport. But not only are the ‘optics’ terrible, it also comes at a time when F1 is being left behind by other sports. As I write, the England Women cricket team’s test match in India is leading the sports news with analysts looking forward to the Women’s T20 World Cup next year; it is followed by a story previewing Chelsea Women’s group match in the UEFA Champions League, women’s football no longer only being reported at international level. A few days previously, Guinness announced a sponsorship deal with the England Women rugby team, hailed as “a defining moment for the sport”.

Responsibility for comparative lack of progress must lie at the top, something Lewis Hamilton was in no doubt about when delivering a blistering defence of Wolff. “There is a constant fight to really improve diversity and inclusion within the industry,” he said. “It seems there are certain individuals in the leadership of the FIA that every time we try and make a step forward they are trying to pull us back, and that has to change.”

None of this is helped by the fact that at beginning of the year Ben Sulayem found himself at the centre of a media storm when decade-old comments emerged in which he was quoted as saying he did “not like women who think they are smarter than men, for they are not, in truth”. He and the FIA have since said the comments do not reflect his views and were taken out of context.

Go to a grand prix, or to the Silverstone Festival, read our VSCC column or look up the demographic of the younger Netflix generation fans and you will see gender parity between men and women that is surely one of the most significant changes the sport has seen in a generation. Now look at a photograph of the grandstands and contrast that picture with that of the FIA awards photograph showing all the prize winners from all the championships worldwide: it features one woman among scores of men. It is up to everyone involved in the sport – from regulators to us lowly journalists – to nurture that support and ensure women are welcome as both fans and participants.

Perhaps 2024 can be the year that this truly starts to happen. And who knows maybe one day we will have a women’s world champion crowned by the FIA, not just a champion of women being tarnished by them.

I’ve said before that the Letters page is one of the great joys of this magazine with its mix of erudition, humour and, let’s face it, proud pedantry. This month we’ve had a delightful letter about traditional binding of a year’s copies of Motor Sport, see page 51.

The remarkable thing is that the writer, Ian Dussek, an expert on the HRG marque, and his father have not collected MS from here and there or bought a complete collection but have bought the magazine from Issue 1 in 1924.

Can this be the only “one owner” run of this magazine? We’d love to hear about any other readers who have a similar run from our beginnings 100 years ago. Write to us at the usual address.

In the meantime from all of us here at Motor Sport, a very Happy New Year!

Joe Dunn, editor
Follow Joe on Twitter @joedunn90

Next Issue: Our march issue is on sale from January 31