Bernie is such a **** moron: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/116761

Also: Saying Powell doesn't have the skill/talent to drive in F1 is one thing. (And likely correct.)

Implying as Tristan does (again) that she is may only be in this position because she ****ed her way to the top (without any evidence) is pure misogyny.

Alice hasn't. But she could try. It worked for Susie Wolff. No wins. No talent. No massive funding that I'm aware of. Married to shareholder of Williams (at the time). It does seem to suggest that marriage and sex played a rather bigger part than talent... Unfortunately that isn't misogynstic - it's a view of one person based on the available evidence

Calling marriage (ideally a lifelong commitment that in this case happened to confer a certain advantage as a byproduct) "using sex to replace talent" is pretty deeply cynical/revealing/misogynistic, IMO.

Well do you think suzie would have gotten that drive had she kept her legs together?

Are you suggesting she shouldn't have gotten married so she wouldn't get a F1 test and get called a slut on the internet?

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Are you suggesting she shouldn't have gotten married so she wouldn't get a F1 test and get called a slut on the internet?

Are you suggesting that her choice of partner had no influence on the people (including her partner) that made the decision about her F1 role?

Hell, men would do it too, but I don't think it would be accepted so easily if some random from GP3 had married Claire Williams and then co-incidentally bagged a drive.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Are you suggesting she shouldn't have gotten married so she wouldn't get a F1 test and get called a slut on the internet?

So we agree that he got the drive because she was married to the right man?

I've never called her slut. I don't think she is a slut. I don't have any kind of negative opinion about her at all. She is not very fast driver at F1 level. That is as far as my critique will ever go apart from few jokes I personally find extremely amusing!

I don't think it is wrong for her to get to drive F1 cars. I don't even think it is wrong for her husband to get that drive for her. But it happened. Not because money or talent. Would I have preferred some actual talent getting that drive? Yes. A woman driver? Sure, put simona in the car and let her show suzie how to do it (driving fast).

Quote from sinbad :

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Are you suggesting she shouldn't have gotten married so she wouldn't get a F1 test and get called a slut on the internet?

Are you suggesting that her choice of partner had no influence on the people (including her partner) that made the decision about her F1 role?

Hell, men would do it too, but I don't think it would be accepted so easily if some random from GP3 had married Claire Williams and then co-incidentally bagged a drive.

Certainly not. She obviously got a F1 role at least in part because of who she's married to. Nepotism is a very real phenomenon that extends well beyond gender, and it's a problem in F1 and elsewhere. I haven't personally seen anything that indicates Wolff or Powell deserve to be anywhere near a F1 car over other more qualified candidates.

However, several posts in this thread (both about Wolff and Powell) imply that these female drivers intentionally, nefariously marry men who they feel can get them a F1 ride in some sort of elaborate long con, cheating their way to the top. "using sex to replace talent," "kept her legs together," etc. That would be a great plot for a movie, but the reality is likely far more mundane.

i.e., woman interested in racing gets involved in social circles that bring her into contact with men who have influence, she falls in love with one of them, he falls in love with her, they get married, loving husband does what he can to give her a chance at her dreams.

Again, it's the fact that some people immediately default to characterizing a benign arrangement (marriage) as a sexually predatory act by a gold-digging female (intentionally or unintentionally) that comes across as misogynistic. (Hyperactive, I know you're a relatively level-headed, sharp dude, so I'm willing to assume "kept her legs together" was in some kind of jest.)

Hope that clears up my position.

Tristan is more qualified to get near an F1 car than Alice Powell. Hell, he could even mould his own **** seat.

It was definitely in jest. It was also very much written in provocative tone and I understand it is a sexist thing to say. If I was trying to say effectively the same thing nicely I'd say something like sex is normal part of marriage while an F1 drive is an expensive gift.

I didn't say that Susie used sex/marriage to get the F1 drive in a precalcukated fashion. But the benefit of the marriage and sex was the chance to drive in F1, and it had absolutely nothing to do with talent or sponsors. Purely because of who she was married to. It wasn't a masterclass to begin with. I agree that that would be wrong to suggest and would be a form of sexism.

Powell hasn't married the right person AND doesn't have the talent or money to achieve that dream either. She's unlikely to get the talent or the money, so I suggested she should try dating an F1 shareholder. It's been proven to work.

No male, that I'm aware of, has achieved an F1 drive via marriage. Talent, yes. Money, yes. Sometimes both.

Dustin - I don't believe I am. At the absolutely most I'd say equally qualified, but she did have a GP3 drive bought for her (I haven't had that) and she did score a point via a couple of disqualifications. And she did out score me over the 2013 season of amateur club racing, even if I was quicker, had more poles, wins and fastest laps overall. I do not consider myself anywhere near good enough for the proper F3/GP3 championships, let alone GP2, let alone F1. You won't find a single single human being that disagrees with me.

I think Alice bought a WSR3.5 car (well, her granddad did, but I don't have a problem with family funding, as most drivers have had it at some point), and tested it quite a lot, but I don't know how far off the pace she was other than "several seconds".

Quote from Hyperactive :

It was definitely in jest. It was also very much written in provocative tone and I understand it is a sexist thing to say. If I was trying to say effectively the same thing nicely I'd say something like sex is normal part of marriage while an F1 drive is an expensive gift.

Fair enough!

Also, can we discuss that ridiculous Bernie interview?

"I'm not interested in tweeting, Facebook and whatever this nonsense is."



"Young kids will see the Rolex brand, but are they going to go and buy one? They can't afford it. Or our other sponsor, UBS — these kids don't care about banking. They haven't got enough money to put in the bloody banks anyway." (Doesn't seem to understand that kids grow up and make choices influenced by brand exposure.)

"Who had ever heard of Bahrain before we went there? Nobody. I didn't even know where Bahrain was, but now I do. Singapore has been a great country, but all it used to be was a flight stop-over to go somewhere else."

Well one of the signs of good businessman is that you don't invest into something you do not understand. And bernie is still living firmly in the 70s-80s and he understands tv so that is his focus. He doesn't understand social media so he doesn't see it as being important.

All in all it is all very contradictory interview. In some cases he manages to contradict himself twice in one sentence. Like he says it was a great idea for tobacco companies to get children to smoke early so the kids stay loyal to your brand when they grow up. And then saying kids are not important for f1 and F1 should focus more on wealthy 70 year olds.

I can't blame bernie though. If I was 140 years old, had billions of euros and people still wanted to read my interviews I'd probably say the dumbest things too just to see how much of it will they print.

I get what he means...with the way money flows in current F1 there's no point in trying to reach the social networks more than they are doing now. IMO when something you do has to be aimed at pleasing the social media crowd first you are f**ked.

Is it that you think he is wrong ? Or is it that what he said shouldn't be said like kids are poor and bahrain didn't exist before us?

His statements are kinda funny considering 5 years ago I cared about and watched F1, staying up or waking up at ridiculous hours to watch races. Now, as a young adult with more disposable income than I know what to do with, I couldn't care less about watching F1 because it's simply uninteresting to watch

Quote from IsaacPrice :

She won't get anywhere near an F1 drive. She surely doesn't have a super license for one, before you even get to the fact the amount of money quoted is toilet paper for what Caterham would need for it to be worth running her. Then there's the problem that they aren't even looking likely to be on the grid for Abu Dhabi. Oh and that she's nowhere near good enough, probably not fit enough to drive an F1 car even in the state they are now.

And this is what racing has become..all about money. So freaking sad.

Quote from IsaacPrice :

EDIT : REMOVED by Scawen - original misogynistic post now deleted

Removed two misogynistic posts and banned the users for 6 months.

For the record, I think Isaac was posting satire there.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

For the record, I think Isaac was posting satire there.

I also read it and I'm sure he was being satirical. He doesn't deserve a ban.

Of course it was a satiric post, how anyone can miss that is beyond me...

Well I am too busy to study threads which are reported as having misogynistic content, and decide if somehow posts are acceptable because if you look at it one way it's satire. Better not waste my time. I have work to do but I am not going to host a forum with statements like "women belong in the kitchen". That is not acceptable. It's not acceptable either to, for example, post a sentence insulting people of a particular race and then say it's fine because it's satire. Now matter how hilariously funny you think it is, and how everyone knows that you are really just being warm and cuddly, don't even post misogynistic, racist, homophobic content on our forum, or anywhere else. These things are read by the impressionable and they copy you. The internet is crawling with people insulting women these days. This forum isn't going to be part of it.

To be fair, Scawen has been banning people for saying "women belong in the kitchen" for like 6 years now. I got banned by the same thing AGES ago, and it's been made crystal clear in the last few years that any sort of hateful speech will be banned. Satire on the internet doesn't often work unless it's basically prefaced or ended with a "THIS IS SATIRE" (or is on a site like Onion, which people still fall for that as being literal often)

Lol... Why is everything seen as hate these days?

It could be his opinion, he (still) has the right to have one, a commonly shared opinion or not..

Anyway.. I regard your post more as a request for a ban than anything else.. as I guess the context he wrote it in, says enough?