Valtteri Bottas’ Injury Highlights the Struggle to Find a Female F1 Driver

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: March 21, 2015

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Despite Bernie Ecclestone's assertion that, "It is inevitable that there will be another female [Formula One] driver," as reported by Luke Smith and Christian Sylt in Forbes, recent developments mean a woman on the F1 starting grid is anything but inevitable—at least in the near future.

Williams test driver Susie Wolff is currently the closest female driver to a race seat. Last season, she became the first woman since 1992 to take part in an official F1 session during free practice at the British Grand Prix. For 2015, she was promoted from reserve driver to test driver, with the promise of further practice outings.



Then, at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix last week, Williams race driver Valtteri Bottas injured his back during qualifying and was unable to race. The F1 sporting regulations state that any driver substitutions must be made before qualifying, so Wolff was ineligible to race in Melbourne.

But surely if Bottas is still injured next weekend, when the teams travel to Malaysia, Wolff will get the race seat there, right? That's what all those test and practice sessions and hundreds of hours in the simulator are for, no?

A full-time race seat at this point is highly unlikely for the 32-year-old Scot, but a one-off to replace an injured team-mate would be the perfect opportunity to get her some race experience.

Not so fast.

"Susie Wolff is our test driver not our reserve driver, "deputy team principal Claire Williams told the BBC in Australia. 

"I don't want to think about what we will do if he's not fit," she continued. "But clearly we'd have reserve drivers," although they don't have one right now.



In other words, for a one-race cameo, it seems the team would be open to bringing in a new driver with no experience in the Williams FW37 rather than use Wolff, who drove the car in preseason testing. And that, despite the mas...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Formula 1

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