The last woman to compete in a Formula 1 grand prix was Giovanna Amati in 1992.although he could not even qualify to be part of the grid. Since Lella Lombardi in 1976, no woman has seen the checkered flag at the ‘Great Circus’, and the British pilot Abbie Eaton has a hypothesis: there would be a “glass ceiling” in motorsports.
In the BackSeat Drivers podcast, the former W Series driver, the exclusively female championship and precursor to the F1 Academy, and winner of several touring car series, stated that The absence of women on the Formula 1 grid is due to the lower category system: “The bosses of Formula 2 do not want to”he remarked.
According to Eaton, there are several components of the cars that are too tough for women: “There have been conversations about why there are no women on the grid [de F2]. ‘You have to put power steering in cars’, and they say ‘we don’t need power steering’. Okay, no problem, there will be no women in your championship then“said the British.
The pilot, widely recognized for her appearance in the popular Amazon Prime program The Grand Tourstates that in motorsports there is “a glass ceiling”a theoretical structure that would prevent the progress of women in the professional environment and established by patriarchal society, according to gender studies. “Things are made for men”he assured.
“These are our toys, and we are going to leave you where we want you to be” would be the position of the F2 bosses with respect to women, according to the English driver, who also assures that they have more options in categories with less power: “F4 is not particularly physically demanding, so girls tend to do well in F4. When you get to F3, it becomes demanding. The G-forces aren’t too bad, but the steering and downforce are very heavy.”
Not all women in motorsport share her ideas. Sophia Flörsch, for example, affirms that there should not be exclusively women’s championshipsand prefers to also compete against men on equal terms rather than driving in the F1 Academy.
Faced with these criticisms from the German pilot, Eaton charged against her discordant opinions: “She is wrong in some of her arguments. We all think the same thing, honey, but here we can earn a lot of money, and it is not difficult for us to runbut she has a very wealthy family and sponsors. “She is a fantastic pilot, and if you look at her social networks, she is very combative, but I have heard that many times it is not her, but her father who publishes on her social networks,” accused the British.
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