The FIA and VW have announced a partnership series called FIA Volkswagen Scirocco R-Cup, which will be for young female racers using cars powered by natural gas technology. Guess which of these two unique selling points ended up being the bigger topic of discussion.

If you guessed "natural gas technology"... ...your thinking is laudable from a technical perspective but you would be wrong. 

This blog entry started life as a comment at F1 Kate, which was in response to that announcement. The FIA is serious about doing something to encourage more women into racing, so it seems a good time to cover the obstacles that it faces in achieving that goal.

There are a number of barriers to women participating fully as drivers in motorsport. Removing them would benefit everyone. It wouldn't take affirmative action but it would take a lot of effort, and unfortunately for the FIA it can't directly make many of the necessary changes.

It's already broadened the age range in which one can transfer from karts to cars (it's now about 14-18 instead of being about 16-18), which indirectly resolved the problem where the initial swapover was at a bad time for young women hormonally (men have a similar effect in their late teens but by then they've generally got a working base from which to establish a career - or at least funding).

Overscrutineering is a problem, but that is likely to resolve itself as more women enter the system and succeed. Everything that is new and different gets extra scrutiny in the beginning, and a time will come when women are seen as neither.  

The biggest problems are the perennial issue of funding (which is even worse for women than men because companies perceive them as more of a risk due to lack of previous successful women) and societal attitudes, primarily at the family/close-friend level. Even places where broad societal expectation tends towards equal rights and responsibilities, individuals frequently do not live up to their society's expressed ideals in their day-to-day attitudes.

Men frequently find this statement strange. This is because male and female social circles, particularly in the pre-teen and early teenage situations, are very different. Prior to that age, girls and boys often mix to some extent, so the ambience of a friendship group tends to be more a reflection of who is in it than of any broad stereotype. However, at a certain point the two genders drift apart and form new social groups, partly composed of whoever of their own gender was in the friendship group before and partly with "outsiders". This is the time when girls and boys tend to orient their thinking more towards what they believe is the thinking of (young) women and men. This is shaped by a complicated mixture of the group's dominant individuals, people's interests and their accessibility, the available attractive role models, biology, cultural norms (at the broad ambient "macrosociological" level and, more so, the local "microsociological" level) and what sort of future is on offer for people with given skills, connections and attitudes.

It is beyond the scope of this blog entry to say exactly how all of these promote and demote the possibilities of a given individual getting the necessary social support (or at least avoid sufficient social antagonism) to make a decent attempt at motorsports in the critical teenage phase. However, it is within its scope to say that the ways immediate social networks function is important - and often different depending on gender.

Social groups of young men tend to be  wired towards being tolerant of "specialisms". Men often require less direct social interaction than women and are more tolerant of divergence. This is not to say they don't need any socialising time or that "anything goes". It means they are more likely to accept shared experiences that don't involve constant conversation as valid forms of socialising, and that when they do speak they are more likely to be primarily interested in what each other did rather than how they thought or felt about it. Actions are usually quicker to explain than thoughts or feelings. Furthermore, provided that certain specific group norms are kept, they often instinctively accept each member of the group being quite different. This means they bring different actions, experiences and skills to the group, which means each member of the friendship group brings different "specialisms". Depending on the particulars of the friendship group, these may get more or less detailed, but at the very least, you are apt to get get the leader, the sidekick(s), the comic, the "techy" one, the "cool" one... ...which means there's more likely to be space for "the speedy one" or "the racing one".

A lot of young women's friendship groups are different. Their role models, as encouraged by the dominant force(s) in the group, tend to be a lot more similar to one another than for men. Women tend to expect more direct socialisation, for friends to open their hearts and minds to other women. All this tends to lead to convergence, settling around a comfortable kernel of shared beliefs over a comparatively narrow range of subjects. Shared experiences tend to have to enable and encourage lots of conversation - but only over the same few topics. Having an opinion on the appearance or scent of something, or the suitability of some young man to some equally young woman, takes rather more common and less specific knowledge than having an opinion on, say, whether it's better to take a corner wide or tight... ...and in the typical young woman's friendship group, less specialism means more scope for mass participation and bonding, and therefore more attractiveness to the group.

Specialisms in studying are rarely much of a barrier because the time lost to studying would be lost anyway; arranging a group shopping experience when those going are all meant to be doing GCSE Maths class is a recipe for disaster and the desire for bonding does not preclude the acquisition of common sense, even among its most extreme exponents. Specialisms involving hobbies, especially ones that can't be indulged properly in school, are a much bigger problem from the social perspective.

A young man who decides to race is likely to be tolerated by his friends. Given the cultural approval given to young men in particular going fast, many friendship groups composed of young men would welcome having a "racer" among the group. A young woman deciding to race is likely to be distrusted by friends for having a dangerous desire to do activities that make the conversation-orientated group bonding process common among her likely friendship group difficult. It takes a strong woman who doesn't mind sacrificing their entire social group, an atypical social group that is less interested in conversational sense/gossip-related bonding or some means of making motorsport make sense to the typical young woman's social group. Atypical groups are by definition rare and the first option isn't promising for reasons discussed below, so progress in equality of opportunity most likely rests on the latter option - with the note that "making sense" is a matter of persuading the unconverted rather than changing the sport's essence.

For those suggesting that all women should simply sacrifice their entire social group, note that friends of young racers are often key to getting sponsors from outside the immediate family that are based on that individual racer. Without that, sponsorship of racers often comes down to pure commercialism - and junior racing only offers benefits to pure commercialism to companies willing to take a fair bit of risk that they have a future star on the books. Even a very successful racer in, say, Formula Ford will get little coverage at that level. Many risk-averse sponsors fail to look beyond past patterns when it comes to gender, meaning they do not consider the possibilities of the young woman in front of them the way they would when considering the possibilities of an otherwise-identical young man. This isn't particularly fair - 99.999% of men who hold a racing licence don't make it to F1, but if Joe Bloggs in front of a sponsor has excellent results, a sparkling personality and clear skills in both racing and marketing, a company inclined towards racing as a promotional tool will likely take him on. The broad statistic doesn't matter because the company's only sponsoring one driver. If that driver is the next Sebastian Vettel, or even the next Yuji Ide, that investment will pay off bigstyle.

If Jane Bloggs is there with the same results, personality and skills, the sponsor might consider it... ...but history suggests they'll lower their expectations according to historical expectations and either not sponsor her or expect her to market herself at least somewhat "stereotypically". This makes it more difficult to be taken seriously in a realm where ability, bravado and credibility are vital, which then leads to a downward spiral unless the young lady is lucky enough to be the next Danica Patrick.

A sponsor introduced via a friendly peer circumvents all or most of that. A sponsor linked to a young driver through friendship is more likely to see that person as an individual and make the sponsorship decision accordingly, which tends to result in more sponsorship anyway and a disporportionately positive increase in all kinds of non-traditional prospects. Yes, people with sponsors introduced via parents are the mainstay of sponsors,  You'd be surprised at how many young men have benefitted from having that sort of help... ...which they got because typical male social circles are more welcoming of specialist concentrations. A young female racer may or may not lose such a connection by dispensing with their peer friendships, but it does show that certain advantages in the vitally important commercial sector are being lost due to unequal indirect access to sponsors. The front door is equally open to all, but many of the deals done regarding racing are done through the tradesman's entrance, and due to microsociological pressures, the emphasis remains inadvertently on the man.

It's difficult to make progress if companies are being risk-averse and consider proven prior gender success as more important than individual results. 

It's even more difficult when friends tease, bully and ostracise because the racer is more interested in racing than studies and social fripperies (male social circles, especially in youth, tend to be much more tolerant of specialised dedicated interests than female ones).

If the family refuses to fund a girl to the same extent as it would an equally-talented boy, perhaps due to implicitly understanding the aforementioned microsociological pressures... ...then that girl might as well forget about becoming a professional racer (she'd be better off trying to become an engineer, business manager or even a team boss because those emphasise strengths that current cultural mores are more likely to let a girl acquire for herself).

The FIA needs to try to persuade people, one family and one friendship cluster at a time, to be supportive of the ambitions of their talented youth on an equal basis. It's already had experience of broadcasting messages intended to change societal and individual attitudes through its road safety work, so it should be well placed to persuade people of the benefits of equal access to the world of motorsport filtered primarily by merit and what such an attitude entails.

 Good luck, FIA. It's worthy work with potentially rich rewards.

Today's blog entry was inspired by a ;remark by Andy Hone at Sidepodcast's   F1 photographers versus the democratisation of media

Do you honestly think that if the gates are open to anyone they  will go to obscure places on the circuit? No not a chance they will all want to be at the prime locations and it will just be even more uncomfortable for everyone.

I have deliberately not clarified "they" in the quote as this itself appears to be a point of disagreement. Suffice to say for the purposes of this entry, it's photographers wanting to take photos of F1-related things who don't currently get trackside access to do their photography.

The broader problem sparking this comment can be separated into separate pieces (links below go to specific comments so you don't have to wade through what at times was a very heated argument):

1. There  aren't enough photographers in place to record every important events at Grands Prix
2. There are sufficient photographers for the idea of extra ones to cause tension bordering on fear  
3. The main thing that causes 2), other than potential loss of livelihoods, is doubt over the quality of the incomers
4. The market for blog photography is heavily underserved
5. The situation described in 4) applies despite the likes of Paul-Henri Cahier making inroads into the sector  
6. The market is starting to use other methods to bridge the market gap alluded to in 4).

What we have here is a classic disruptive market opportunity. There's an information gap (1), a demonstrated resistance to the most obvious remedy from current providers (2), a barrier that could be removed to lower that resistance that the current system doesn't help remove (3), customers for those who exploit the information gap even if they aren't 100% successful (4), proof that it doesn't have to be an outsider who serves the market (5) and signals that the window of opportunity will close by itself if not appropriately exploited (6).

That last point is important. Without it, the resistance to the idea of providing for the bloggers' market would make provision there a niche at best. There's a reason why point (5) mentions only Paul-Henri Cahier. With it, the needs have to be served - by the current providers of photos if they're willing (with the potential for suitable recompense), by newcomers (or by piracy) if not. 

The experiences of other intellectual media (music, writing, movies) has shown that underserved markets will find ways of satisfying their needs. What F1 photography needs is a method of serving those needs in an economically satisfying way that respects the list of limitations and conditions given previously?

Wonder if tiered passes would work? The photographers with a excellent and extensive track record would get a particular level of pass (call it gold for the sake of this discussion) that would allow them to access all areas and have priority in any location.

Less experienced photographers who'd nonetheless demonstrated their skill could have a different pass (silver, maybe) that would allow them into any photographer-suitable trackside area (though perhaps not the paddock, which invariably seems to be full) but only if nobody with a gold pass was there at the time. If anyone with a gold pass decided to go there afterwards, the silver pass people would be asked to leave (extra marshals may be required to help, but at Grands Prix that shouldn't be too much of a problem). 

Newcomers could get a further different pass (bronze) and be assigned a spot in a place where past experience showed neither gold nor silver pass-holders went. Allowance would be made for the occasional gold or silver photographer who wanted to take photos from there. It would be especially useful for those photographers who are only able to reach one or two circuits in a given calender, because these would be the ones getting the least practise at shooting F1 and having them in set places would enable better scrutiny - not just of quality but of behaviour. 

Photographers would move up and down the scales based on what they were producing and the audience they were getting. I would anticipate the bronze-silver transition to be primarily done on quality and the silver-gold one to be mainly based on how many people and from how wide a range of sources were looking at their content.

The system would give newcomers a chance to prove themselves and perhaps to experiment with the photography model for bloggers and other places that need low-quality images, allow the experienced people to get "the shots" and go where they see fit, and also provide a method for transitioning between the two states as people get more confident in their skills and perhaps want to have a go at getting the big time.

No system is going to get everyone who wants to be a F1 photographer through the gates, nor need it do so. What this system does is meet a demonstrated need/desire in the market while still maintaining the quality of F1 photography and also not changing the system so sharply that current practitioners have no chance of competing. Yes, the current brigade will need different skills to thrive, but that's a different blog entry altogether.

This entry has taken me some time to figure out how to write. Something's been bugging me about recent F1, primarily since the Turkish Grand Prix. However, it was only when Duncan Stephen wrote his item on why he was finding 2011-spec F1 not to his taste that I figured out how to write my own objections to what's been going on. My first reaction to the piece was:

Hurrah! Somebody doesn't think that the current F1 is a) the bee's knees or b) only ruined by excess overtaking.

For me the proximate problem (i.e. the one that's directly causing me dissatisfaction with F1) is meaningless overtaking. In Turkey in particular, the method of generation of overtaking caused lots of zero-sum exchanges - lots of passes but most of them were never going to affect anything in a month of Sundays. They were just going to get re-passed later in the corner sequence or else in the DRS zone the following lap.

DRS foreshortens the process of passing even when it's producing a reasonable net increase of overtaking. This makes it less skilful and also less significant in the context of a race. Those comparing Turkey 2011 to Japan 2005 have forgotten, among other things, that many of the overtaking moves in the latter took laps to set up. Yes, it was normal for cars to be innately 1-2 seconds faster or slower than each other that year, making things difficult enough for complaints, but that still shows planning and skill were important.

If pressing buttons is the new hot skill for F1, why aren't all the F1 drivers being sent on evening typing courses? Why aren't fit typists with clean driving licences being considered for F1 testing roles over the heads of those who have toiled in F3 and GP2?

Besides all that, DRS should never have been experimented with in a race weekend. It should have been tested properly prior to use, and then implemented equally and effectively in all races.

Despite the emphasis on changes to the racing, qualifying has now become the be- and end-all of F1. The only reason it's not become the only non-accidental deciding factor is because many teams haven't worked out it's merely a question of getting your single lap per session faster than those around you. It's no longer possible to waste tyres doing two runs. If you're first into the first corner, DRS means you'll be able to pull out a big lead and protect your tyres as you will while everyone battles behind you. I felt like kicking Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button when they did their little duel at the start; by focusing on each other they lost time to Sebastian Vettel and wore out their tyres, which made it impossible for either to do anything about the race leader.

That's right, to get exciting racing for the lead in this system you need a team to qualify both its drivers right behind the lead one (without the pole-sitter's team-mate or any other team being in between) and then execute firm team orders on lap 1 to stop them from attempting to race each other. The "no. 2" would be tasked with staying 1.1 seconds ahead of 4th place and then keeping a consistent pace to remain 1.1 seconds ahead of 4th place, preserving the invisible barrier. "Good" thing systematic team orders are permitted this year, else every race win would be unsalvageable.

If you're not a potential race winner, qualifying is still vital and still has to be done as a single-lap run for each of the three sessions. This would be one set of tyres for Q1 and Q2 and then a second set for whichever session is believed to be the final one. If you get through to Q3 when it wasn't expected, simply sit out the session to preserve your strategy. This is because if you can't look after your tyres, the best strategy is to have as many new ones as possible. If you can do that, it's irrelevant whether you can pass the people around you (with gimmicks or not) because you'll probably gain a pit stop on them - especially if your car is relatively kind to tyres like the Sauber is). Even if you don't, you'll gain considerable amounts of time and flexibility.

It's bizarre that the strategies dictated by fragile tyres and ease of DRS-based tactics mean that the act of passing - DRS-based or otherwise - is almost irrelevant to the results.

The trick is to evenly space out all tyre changes according to when your car will need them, which should be quite straightforward to determine based upon performance in the first stint. It doesn't even need anyone to bother doing a pre-race equation - it's simply a question of chucking tyres at a car when it needs them. Pit strategy outside the options a car may deny has now got so little relevance that the discretionary laps can be deployed whenever the team wishes. All the strategy divergence is down to two factors: a) due to the tyre philosophy being new, different cars treat them very differently and b) many teams do not appear to have figured out what's going on yet, so haven't even taken the obvious step of going single-lap each session up to this point.

So we now have the single-lap qualifying some people have called for. It's not improving the racing - it's taken it away. Duncan Stephen has called it "one step away from fixing the result". I wish I could be so reserved on the matter. As far as I can see, it is fixing the result to whoever happens to be the fastest one-run driver/car combination in qualifying, and for most of the top 10, stupidity and extreme tyre wear permitting, they are fixed in the positions in which they qualified.

KERS doesn't seem to do anything to help the sport - it just seems to be something tagged on to keep the stupider elements of the environmental movement a little more content. It's in F1 in a form that will never be utilised on the road (road KERS will be a very gentle addition for all accelerations, not a big boost done occasionally), delivering power in a way that makes overtaking more difficult (which may be protecting us from even worse problems with DRS) and with a lack of freedom which places it firmly in "gimmick" rather than the "feature" it is about to become in sportscar racing. That it's not facing a campaign for removal at this time shows just how much of a problem DRS presents.

One of the things which worries me - and I think it's one of the things that's made it difficult for me to blog - is that so many people don't seem to see the medium-sized picture let alone the big one. They see lots of passing, lots of energy, lots of confusion - and start cheering. They do not see that it's causing very predictable strategies, very predictable results and a very samey feel to races. Energy and confusion might have got many into the sport but if it had kept being those things at the expense of everything else - especially the surprise element - they'd have stopped watching within a season because there'd be nothing to grip them with. If I wanted to know the winner 24 hours before the race and the result of a race for most of the field on lap 15, I'd put on a season review DVD. At least then there'd be decent camera direction...

Sport is a form of entertainment. If done properly, it will be entertaining whether or not the "show" is considered (the "show" only affects how many people get entertained and the length of the entertaining). The decade-long trend towards considering "show" over "sport" is nearly complete. But F1 is not reality TV. Reality TV tropes do not necessarily work for sports such as F1, even with extreme tweaking. The cost is that F1 will soon be unable to be called the pinnacle of motor sport, on the grounds that it will not be a sport at all. The sport needs urgent attention in order to save it, to take away the worst of the gimmicks. That way it might be possible to see how to get the enjoyment of racing to run clear again.

Though I'll let the powers-that-be tweak the "show" enough to get a competent TV direction system and crew. The current one hasn't worked since FOM took over the job and 2011 is exposing their weaknesses so much. It's even more frustrating to be watching a predictable race when perfectly competent commentators, used to having at least vaguely usable images to commentate from, find themselves clueless to things you figured out 30 laps before because you, unlike them, could see the little ticker-tape running across the bottom of the screen...

I've had a fortnight of not really wanting to blog for some reason. I promised mageshmagi this blog entry on Mercedes and Schumacher's underperformances before I went on unintended hiatus.

First of all, it was always going to be difficult for Mercedes to match its precedescor's antics. Brawn managed to win the one driver's and constructor's title it entered with considerable aplomb. Nonetheless, it had to do so with an unusual resource distribution. When the car was designed in mid-2008, money was practically falling from the sky, but by the time it hit the track the primary funding source (Honda) had reduced dramatically. It funded the season's running costs (albeit only for a much smaller operation than the one it had been when the team was called Honda), but did not fund  the creation of the 2010 challenger. Therefore the 2010 car was hamstrung by a serious lack of funds.

Then Ross Brawn made an intelligent move. By hiring Nico Rosberg, he gained a driver who is intelligent and ready to take a step up from his previous team - the plucky but gracefully-declining Williams. He'd been team leader there for two seasons and proved to be a good team leader for Mercedes.

That wasn't the plan. The plan had been for Rosberg to ably back up a seven-time world champion who would break all records and be a legendary touchstone for all at Mercedes - Michael Schumacher. He was duly hired, to the astonishment of most of the F1 community. He said the right things (though I was somewhat worried that how he said them didn't match how he'd said them before) and testing wasn't terrible for him.

Just as well it wasn't terrible for him because it was quite clear that the Mercedes W01 had suffered for its lack of development funding.  It wasn't a dominating influence or even on the pace of the likes of Red Bull. This was going to be a tough season. The engine was beautifully fast but the chassis didn't respond well to its tyres. Michael and Nico (along with Felipe Massa at Ferrari) frequently noted that the front tyres did not support their driving styles, which tend to involve quite hard braking.

Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, who'd been at Brawn in 2009, both have much gentler braking styles and would have suited the Mercedes W01 better. However, neither of them were options for Mercedes. Jenson wanted a fresh challenge and Rubens had been harbouring a desire to race for Williams for quite a while. Still, without a hard-braking driver to ask for tips during development, it is easy to see why this significant flaw appeared in Mercedes' first car.

What is more difficult to understand is why the 2011 car met a similar fate. After all, Felipe's 2011 Ferrari is much more to his liking. There was a major reshuffle in the factory staff towards the end of 2010, which delayed completion of the W02. There was also a decision made to start with a basic car and upgrade it a lot as soon as possible, even though that didn't really work for them in 2010 either. An upgrade can fix many things but not a fundamental weakness in the car.

Due to that philosophy, we may see considerable improvement across the season. Upgrades can fix minor problems. Even though the problems with the Mercedes' tendency to consume tyres rapidly do not constitute "minor", things can be done to reduce that flaw and fix less noticeable difficulties such as a lack of downforce compared to Ferrari and Red Bull. The engine's still strong (unsurprising due to engine sorbet regulations) but it's not enough.

Michael Schumacher does not seem to have adapted to being in an imperfect car very well. He tends to make more mistakes in that situation than we were accustomed to seeing in his previous time in F1. Hence he tends to hit cars instead of passing them, impairing his performances in an already non-optimised car. He's also started to show tendencies towards crumbling in whichever qualifying session is his last one in a given day. This is the very effect he used to trigger in other people back in 2006. It's the sign of a driver that, for all his determination, diligence and innate skill, has gone from the hunted to the hunter - and vastly preferred being the hunted.

If Michael ever wants to see a podium again, let alone a win, he needs to re-assume the mentality of the hunted - the one who leads and is forever trying to escape, willing to experiment to improve but ever holding their nerve while doing so. Perhaps Mercedes may benefit from a little of that too, but mostly it just needs to put more emphasis on getting the car right the first time.