Female race car drivers...your opinion

Juen-Jen Wang · Mar 28, 2011

Yann Laprevotte said:
Quite surprised no one has mentionned Michele Mouton yet, probably the most successful woman in motorracing so far AFAIK.

Do they have a place in motorracing? Of course, if they have the talent.

OMG I was gonna be pissed if I read this thread and didn't see Michele Mouton mentioned. Srsly, the french women is probably the most successful and honestly gutsy female driver ever; did fantastic in Group B and almost took a champion from Walter Rohl.

Honestly, female drivers? When I watch a race... no matter the discipline I only see drivers. I dont pay attention to arbitrary factors like gender. So should girls race? sure.

Hiroshi Awazu · Mar 30, 2011

Did anyone watch the St Petersburg Indycar Race? There is a new female driver Simona da Silvesta. I think it was her first race,please correct me if i'm wrong but she came in fourth and was sweating Tony Kanaan for quite a few laps. Watching her race, i think she just may become Indycars best female driver.

Ryan Callan · Mar 30, 2011

She did the whole of last year.

Best result of eighth and led her debut race at Sao Paulo last year.

Hiroshi Awazu · Mar 30, 2011

Ryan Callan said:
She did the whole of last year.

Best result of eighth and led her debut race at Sao Paulo last year.

Thanks for correction, pretty impressive results i would say.

Juen-Jen Wang · Mar 31, 2011

Hiroshi Awazu said:
Thanks for correction, pretty impressive results i would say.

I do love watching indycar. Simona is better than Danica imho and she is set to impress this year

Hiroshi Awazu · Mar 31, 2011

I should pay more attention to Indycar. It is a good race series.

Juen-Jen Wang · Mar 31, 2011

Hiroshi Awazu said:
I should pay more attention to Indycar. It is a good race series.

Yeah IndyCar is going through a renaissance. It's really exciting to see IndyCar start to grow more towards CART year after year. Plus there's Sato

Hopefully it can regain a lot of it's lost prestige when it split from ChampCar.

Hiroshi Awazu · Mar 31, 2011

Juen-Jen Wang said:
Yeah IndyCar is going through a renaissance. It's really exciting to see IndyCar start to grow more towards CART year after year. Plus there's Sato Hopefully it can regain a lot of it's lost prestige when it split from ChampCar.

Yeah i noticed that Takuma Sato has joined Indycar. Good on him!

Eric Estes · Apr 2, 2011

I'm a fan of a lot of forms of racing, and watch all of the F1's, most NASCAR Cup, ALMS and Grand-AM when available, but the one race I absolutely will not miss, is Indycar at Texas. The slicing and dicing at 350 kph+ is incredible. This year's edition is going to be twin 275's - should be good.

Agree that Simona is the best current female Indy driver. Very much a potential race winner.

Gary Lennon · Apr 2, 2011

Worra load of politically correct bollox guys,seriously!,the harsh and blunt fact of the matter is most female racers are utter rubbish perpetual back markers,they could be spending their time much more rewardingly in the kitchen,or bedroom

.

Hiroshi Awazu · Apr 2, 2011

Gary Lennon said:
Worra load of politically correct bollox guys,seriously!,the harsh and blunt fact of the matter is most female racers are utter rubbish perpetual back markers,they could be spending their time much more rewardingly in the kitchen,or bedroom .

ROFLMAO!!!!!

Hiroshi Awazu · Apr 2, 2011

I better not let my GF see these posts or there will be no bedroom, no food and a uncomfortable couch for me to sleep on! LOL LOL :wink:

Juen-Jen Wang · Apr 2, 2011

Hiroshi, does Sato actually still have a following from the Japanese audience? Just curious cause I figured such a high (or formerly high) profile Japanese driver would bring more fans to IndyCar since Hideki Mutoh was fairly useless.

Cause I know he has a very cultish fanbase in China, which is dwindling a little because of poor relations between the two nations.

Gary Lennon said:
Worra load of politically correct bollox guys,seriously!,the harsh and blunt fact of the matter is most female racers are utter rubbish perpetual back markers,they could be spending their time much more rewardingly in the kitchen,or bedroom .

That is true but that isn't an inherent trait of their gender tho. I will always gladly admit that most female drivers suck. But I will never attribute that to the gender itself. Simona De Silvestro, and Michele Mouton have completely countered that. Actually Mouton is one of the most ballsy driver who ever lived period.

Brian Duddy · Apr 2, 2011

Hiroshi Awazu said:
Yeah i noticed that Takuma Sato has joined Indycar. Good on him!

He drove there for all of last year, too! Not very well, though...

Hiroshi Awazu · Apr 2, 2011

Juen-Jen Wang said:
Hiroshi, does Sato actually still have a following from the Japanese audience? Just curious cause I figured such a high (or formerly high) profile Japanese driver would bring more fans to IndyCar since Hideki Mutoh was fairly useless.

Cause I know he has a very cultish fanbase in China, which is dwindling a little because of poor relations between the two nations.

That is true but that isn't an inherent trait of their gender tho. I will always gladly admit that most female drivers suck. But I will never attribute that to the gender itself. Simona De Silvestro, and Michele Mouton have completely countered that. Actually Mouton is one of the most ballsy driver who ever lived period.

Because i didn't follow history of Japanese drivers, i don't know. But didn't Sato do the best out of all the Japanese drivers that entered F1? . I hope i'm correct on this but i don't think Japan has ever had a very sucsessful driver in open wheel motor sports.

Juen-Jen Wang · Apr 2, 2011

Hiroshi Awazu said:
Because i didn't follow history of Japanese drivers, i don't know. But didn't Sato do the best out of all the Japanese drivers that entered F1? . I hope i'm correct on this but i don't think Japan has ever had a very sucsessful driver in open wheel motor sports.

Yeah he and Aguri Suzuki both have a best finish of 3rd. That might change with Kobayashi tho as Kobayashi is better than Sato. Asia in general hasnt had a successful driver in open wheel IndyCar or F1

mathew7 · Apr 3, 2011

Gary Lennon said:
Worra load of politically correct bollox guys,seriously!,the harsh and blunt fact of the matter is most female racers are utter rubbish perpetual back markers,they could be spending their time much more rewardingly in the kitchen,or bedroom .

But how many males are also back markers? Is she the last in the championship? If not, then your argument is just like "most of the female racers". For every stereotype, there are exceptions, like blondes who can driver very well and males that always hit something when parking (or driving).
And your kind of argument is the reason they are so few and cannot give the best samples to rise (usually a father guides his son and the mother guides the daughter).

Juen-Jen Wang · Apr 3, 2011

mathew7 said:
But how many males are also back markers? Is she the last in the championship? If not, then your argument is just like "most of the female racers". For every stereotype, there are exceptions, like blondes who can driver very well and males that always hit something when parking (or driving).
And your kind of argument is the reason they are so few and cannot give the best samples to rise (usually a father guides his son and the mother guides the daughter).

I mean, generalizations can have some truths to them. It just depends on how you use it. Anyone who uses generalizations as an absolute rule are idiots cause... as you've said, there are always exceptions to generalizations.

However, you can use generalizations to understand certain situations. For example, saying that Americans like NASCAR is a generalizations. I know plenty of Americans who hate NASCAR. That in itself doesn't mean that "Americans like NASCAR" is an inaccurate statement.

If you take all generalizations with a grain of salt, then there's nothing wrong with stating generalizations.

I do however, think that women suck at racing is a bad and inaccurate generalizations tho. Because females aren't really always at the absolute back of the grid and most of the worst drivers in history of motorsports are actually male. To be honest, if you look at female driver's performances. Most of them are midback to upper backmarkers. Which in itself makes them better than a lot of males. Then you also have those who perform fantastically well (Michele Mouton). So the statistical average of female drivers dont set them behind males. But then again, there are also like a million more males than females in racing. So the fact that female driver's statistical averages dont look impressive could also be that there's not enough of them in the sport.

I'm sure there are plenty of females that are more talented than Danica Patrick or even Michele Mouton. They probably just aren't into racing.