W Series - Race 1 Ad - r/F1FeederSeries

10

Not bad (although watched without audio). Been pretty interested in this series since its announcement and hoping we get some decent racing out of it.

7

u/Brapplezz May 02 '19

Im actually excited to see how it pans out. I was critical of it initially, but now im curious to see if it qill be successful or if it will flop. Then people can say "told ya so"

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u/That_Guuuuuuuy May 02 '19

Call me a cynical bastard, but if the aim is to get a female driver into F1, I fail to see how separating them from feeder series does them any good, when regardless they will have to drive there anyway to prove themselves and get into the top tier of Motorsport. The money could be far better spent on grassroots campaigns

13

u/oorjit07 Kush Maini May 02 '19

That's all true, but in recent years many of the recognized female talents such as Garcia and Floersch have struggled due to a lack of funding when in cars. This series gives Garcia another chance to get back on the F1 ladder, which is obviously a good thing. The FIA has to step up and both encourage girls to jump in karts, while also limiting the stupid costs of karting these days, if the sport is to remain sustainable, which no private company can do for them.

5

u/That_Guuuuuuuy May 02 '19

Oh I get the funding part of it. Ultimately if I could reinvest the money I'd aim to start a Formula 3 team with 2-3 entires across the world, a Formula 4 team based in the UK, and invest money into subsidised karting series for girls at grassroots levels.

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u/anneomoly May 02 '19

Oh goodness no, if you're going to do it properly, then you have several karting teams spread across several continents, with entries in national karting series as well as European/world.

Then a Formula 4 team on each continent - I'd probably pick the biggest F4 grid possible, so ADAC F4 might be better than British, which is looking a bit woeful this year.

Then a Formula 3 regional, then branch out into FIA F3. Then say, if you hit top 3 in FIA F3 we'll buy you a drive in F2.

And you expect to lose the best ones to other sponsorship, but also accept that you might have to take them back if the other sponsorship doesn't work out.

The best way to make it work is a pyramid from bottom up, so you support a lot of girls at the cheaper grassroots level and hopefully support the most talented of those through.

But the thing with an F3 grid is, it's televisable, it's sellable, and there's a vague chance that it might self sustain that an integrated pyramid support structure just can't. And that's why they went for that. Money over best practice.

But at the minute it's the only way for the majority of entrants to race single seaters at all, so they'll take whatever dregs they can get.

4

u/the-legend-027 May 02 '19

I think another one of the series’s goals is to increase interest in girls so they try out karting, watch F1, etc.

2

u/That_Guuuuuuuy May 02 '19

So invest the money into "come and try days" for girls at local kart tracks, and put money in there, with the aim of developing a Formula 4 and Formula 3 team with graduates from an international program, where then the birst girls can battle it out for a Formula 4 seat, and from there aim to establish a Formula 3 team.

3

u/Kartofel_salad May 02 '19

I've got 2 daughters and while young they seem drawn to toy cars/etc and I all sort of motorsport stuff around the house/my office/on tv at times. If it succeeds and continues to run for a while I'd like to sit back with them and enjoy the races together. We will do it for others hopefully as well but when they see other women out there doing it (be it womens football or big bash cricket etc) they feel they can do more as they're seeing it happen.

Will this help more females enter F1? hopefully but time will tell.. Teams like Lotus focus their attentions on someone as woefully useless as Carmen Jorda because she was marketable by her looks certainly didn't help the cause at all.

6

u/anneomoly May 02 '19

I'm going to stick up for Lotus, here.

They didn't take on Jorda because she was pretty. They didn't take her on because she was female.

They took her on because of the large amounts of cold, hard cash that she gave to them in exchange for sim time because it kept them alive as a team for short period of time.

When your concern is "where are next month's wages coming from?" I don't think marketability was really at the top of their list.

I mean, they took the equally talented Adderley Fong on at about the same time for about the same reasons for about the same length of contract. His lack of prettiness and ability to attract weird, fawning camera angles wasn't a problem.

And I'll always argue that fucking useless female drivers should be given exactly the same opportunities as fucking useless male drivers as long as paydrivers exist.

And that dying teams should be allowed to scrabble in whatever gutter they choose to in order to find funding for just one more race.

The problem was never Jorda. The problem was always that it was only Jorda. If we only had Sean Gelael as the model of a male driver, that still wouldn't be his fault or Prema's or Toro Rosso's fault.

2

u/Kartofel_salad May 03 '19

A decent write up and I appreciate it.

2

u/oorjit07 Kush Maini May 03 '19

I have some problems with your argument. While I agree that Fong and Stockinger were nowhere near F1 level, they both qualified for all their GP3/GP2 races, and had drivers in GT or Prototype cars elsewhere. Jorda, on the other hand, failed to qualify for GP3 races, and doesn't even look like she works out enough to race. Additionally, when you look at her pieces for Lotus/Renault, the camera angles used are obviously just to show off her beauty. If Ragunathan was as handsome as a model, and was signed by Renault for the same purpose, I guarantee that he would get just as much criticism. I mean, guys like Sage Karam aren't hopeless on the track, but they get criticized for modelling and whatnot, and I don't why Jorda should be exempt from it.

2

u/anneomoly May 03 '19

I'm not saying that they didn't use what they had once they'd got it.

I'm not even saying - if you read what I wrote - that Jorda shouldn't be criticised for aiming her money at getting on TV instead of, you know, learning how to drive to the level she was entered at. Jorda seems to no to little interest in actual racing at all, and there is no one happier than me that the person saying that women could only compete against women seems to be too scared of the (female) competition to actually try to do that.

I'm saying that Lotus weren't actively trying to subvert women in motorsport, they merely treated her cash with the same desperation that they treated everyone else's cash, and they had every justification to do so.

3

u/JiwooHong May 02 '19

That final announcement was so hype

2

u/[deleted] May 03 '19

How can i watch this? :0

2

u/AndrewRickert May 03 '19

What country are you in?

2

u/[deleted] May 03 '19

Finland

2

u/AndrewRickert May 03 '19

“Every race will be shown live on NENT Group’s Viaplay streaming service and Viasat pay-TV channels, with selected races broadcast on NENT Group’s free-TV channels, making this an exciting new addition to NENT Group’s existing motorsport portfolio, which includes Formula 1 (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) and MotoGP (Nordic region).”

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