Grid Girls

Grid girls have been the topic of much debate in the motorsport community in recent times. The World Endurance Championship (WEC) banned them at the start of the year, to much complaint from some members of the community. I'm not sure that an outright ban of grid girls was necessary, but we certainly need to have a close look at how we use promotional models, and not just in motorsport.

2014 WEC Grid Girls (Photo: Speedcafe)

Grid girls have an important roll in motorsport; they get your sponsors names on the big screens around the track and on the TV before the race starts. They are walking billboards, and teams and events need sponsors to run. It's the advertising that pays for the show.

Grid girls cause a few problems though, the most obvious of which is that they paint motorsport as being a boys club. The men are the drivers, and the girls are there for the convenience of those men. Of the 168 drivers entered in this years Le Mans, none were female, there hasn't been a female formula one driver in my lifetime, and the last time we talked about women at the top of rallying was in the '80s.

Michele Mouton, Former Audi Factory Rally Driver

This is a sport where women can compete on the same terms as men, and drivers such as Michele Mouton have proven this to us. Some could even claim that they tend to have an advantage, weighing less on average and thus being able to be faster.

Why then are women not racing? It's certainly not due to a lack of interest in young women. Whilst men do noticeably outnumber women around the racetrack, it's not like a significant portion of the fans at most racetracks aren't female.

Women are clearly being disenfranchised though, and that needs to stop. By having grid girls in the form we currently do, we tell women that we don't really care about them, motor racing is a men's sport, and women only really belong as eye candy.

Grid girls in their current form are doing a harm to women as a group. They limit the opportunities for women to progress and excel in motorsport. Now I'm sure that some of the people reading this are thinking to themselves that NASCAR and INDYCAR have female drivers, and it's true. There are even female test drivers in Formula One. But have a look at the photo below:

Carmen Jorda, Lotus Test Driver (Source unknown)

That's Carmen Jorda, the reserve driver for the Lotus Formula One Team. She was 18 seconds per lap slower than the winner in GP2 at Spa last year. She is an atrocious racing driver, but she is pretty. The Williams F1 reserve driver, who is also an attractive woman, just happens to be married to a man who owns 5% of the team, and 30% of another team, which happen to supply engines to Williams.

Danica Patrick is probably the most famous of the current crop of female racing drivers, but she made her career taking her clothes off in commercials for for a certain domain name provider. All of these women are attractive, and none are particularly spectacular behind the wheel.

The grid girl has just been put in the car, because that's an even better way of making money. Grid girls exclude half of your potential audience however. The recent Monaco Grand Prix did something that might help keep females from getting disenfranchised; they had grid boys.

Grid Boys at the Monaco GP (Photo: Motorsport.com)

Perhaps we need to consider half of the promo models on the grid being male, and the other half being female. If we're going to have the promo models, we should try and cater to everybody, and do so in a way that doesn't exclude half of the population from the event.

Let's stop the culture of treating women as nothing but sex objects, let's stop airing close ups of breasts (with the face cropped out) on international TV feeds, let's make the race track a place that women can feel safe and included. Let's give women a chance to make it on skill, not beauty in the world of motorsport.

Le Mans 2015

Porsche have won Le Mans... Again. So apart from how to be excited whilst getting very exhausted, what have we learned over the those glorious 24 hours? Well, we learned that Toyota were further off the pace than anybody expected, and are even discussing changing their hybrid system for next year. We learned that Audi can be beaten, even when they come into the race as favourites. We learned that Mark Webber is actually capable of finishing Le Mans, a feat he'd never achieved before yesterday. We learned that Earl Bamber, Nico Hulkenberg and Nick Tandy can drive.

The Winning Porsche (credit: David Vincent)

The number 19 Porsche drove an almost perfect race, avoiding trouble at every turn. That was what won Le Mans this year, a clean trouble free run. That isn't to say that the drivers were in any way inferior, they all have Le Mans wins to their name now, so they must have talent!

The other talking point of the weekend was Nissan, who failed to live up to the hype surrounding their return to top level endurance racing. Their car was down on power, mainly due to the fact that the hybrid system simply wasn't working. 

Nissan GTR-LM (Photo: Marshall Pruett)

Hopefully we'll see some improvement from them over the coming months, and they can have a real attack on the championship next year, though we need to keep in mind that the car is a Le Mans special, and may not be good anywhere else in the world.

I worry that the days of the Le Mans special are over, however, as the chicanes on the Mulsanne mean that outright top speed, which the Nissan certainly has, cannot dominate the race. Cornering has become more and more important at Le Mans, and that's where the Nissan GTR-LM lost out.