Formula 1 will “without question” have female representation on the grid in the years to come, with David Coulthard adamant it is “utter bulls***” that women don’t have the strength for F1.
His comments fly in the face of former IndyCar driver Danica Patrick’s belief that F1 is a step too far for women.
Women can’t race in F1? ‘Bulls***’ says David Coulthard
Patrick, an IndyCar race winner and top ten finisher in NASCAR, went into punditry after her racing career and joined Sky F1’s team, where she downplayed the prospect of a woman making it into the “masculine” world of Formula 1.
“As I’ve always said in my whole career, it takes 100 guys to come through to find a good one, and then it takes 100 girls. That takes a long time to find a good one, right?” she said. “It’s just, the odds are not in favour of there always being one or being many of them.
“At the end of the day, I think that the nature of the sport is masculine. It’s aggressive. You have to, you know, handle the car – not only just the car because that’s skill, but the mindset that it takes to be really good is something that’s not normal in a feminine mind, a female mind.”
She went on to declare that having a female in F1 is not important, she’s just here for the racing.
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“You’re assuming I want that,” said the American. “You’re assuming that is important to me. And it’s not.”
But while Patrick may not be interested in seeing women progress in Formula 1, 13-time Grand Prix winner Coulthard believes they should and they could as the claims that women do not have the strength, often said in relation to neck muscles, is just that, “bulls***”.
“Of course it will happen,” the Scot insisted to the Daily Mail. “Without question. It’s utter bulls*** that women don’t have the strength to do it. Anyone who doesn’t train doesn’t have what it takes to perform in motor racing — whether you’re a man or a woman.
“An untrained person doesn’t have the strength to do anything. I’m 53 and I wouldn’t be able to drive an F1 car quickly for more than 10 laps in my physical condition, now that I’m on the other side of my peak of fitness. I had to train like an athlete twice a day, with a trainer, for years, to be able to do my job.
“One of the things I saw with the W series was that we took the best women available to try and qualify to become part of the championship — and some of them just weren’t fit enough. I looked at them, going: “What’s your excuse for not training? You have to present yourself as being serious as a pro and that means training like an athlete”.
“Therein lies the issue. There’s no physical reason they can’t do it. We know what it takes to be physically strong enough to be a racing driver and all of the data shows that women comfortably fit within that category of physical performance.
“I remember my PE teacher at Kirkcudbright Academy — long before I ever imagined I would be an F1 driver — telling us these would be the fittest days of our lives, because most people will leave school and never really exercise properly again.
“For most people, that’s correct. You leave school, get a job, you might go for a walk or join a gym, but for most people it’s a normal thing. I became a pre-professional and then got into training and acted like a person who wanted to be on the big teams.
“The main thing is, are the ones driving right now good enough to make it? It’s not an opinion. It will be based on lap times. Ultimately, it’s the stopwatch that dictates things.
“You can either do a fast lap time or you can’t. And, if that is the case, as I say to my son, you can join a long line of people with good excuses as to why they didn’t do a specific lap time — why this, why that. Sport is about delivery.
“It’s not my opinion that there will be a woman in F1, It’s just a fact, but I can’t tell you right now who that person is. I assure you that every single F1 team would sign someone up right now, if they thought they could get that person.”
The former Williams, McLaren and Red Bull driver bases his opinions on his own sister, Lynsay, who competed in karts as a youngster. Despite claiming she was “fast” and “talented”, Lynsay never received the same support as Coulthard and eventually hung up her helmet.
“My sister raced karts,” he said. “She was fast, talented, won races, but she was six years younger than me and started racing at eight.
“When I moved on to cars, I got signed to Paul Stewart racing, and was then tested for Williams at 18, 19 years old. We were then off on this magic carpet ride of European racing and, a few years later, I was an F1 driver. So she just never got the support. She eventually stopped racing.
“I spoke to her about it a lot and she never resented it at all. I just feel that she wasn’t given the same crack at it. I can’t say she would ever have been a Formula One driver — who knows? I can say, however, that she was talented enough to take that talent to some level of professionalism.
“So, my belief that women can compete in motor racing is based on personal experience — not on some sort of guilt or ideology.
“I’m invested in the growth of women in the sport in memory of my sister — who didn’t get to take the opportunities that I got, because the family couldn’t support us both. I got the momentum, I always think that she never got the chance, so I have invested time, effort and money not in any one individual, but in a new system and science-based programme to have more of a data-driven approach.
“I believe in the ability for women to compete on an equal level in motor racing, but we just haven’t had anyone who has had exceptional talent. It’s this desire to have the exceptional that drives the teams forward.”
Lynsay passed away, age 35, while Coulthard went on to play a crucial role in the W Series as the women’s racing series chairman.
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