F1 driver Simona de Silvestro has "discovered that when one door closes on a woman driver in Formula One, another shuts," according to Kevin Eason of the LONDON TIMES. Hopes that the sport had "finally found a woman to take her place among the elite next season were dashed" with Sauber announcing it was looking for "other possibilities." It took "hard cash to get De Silvestro into a position where she had a chance of making the breakthrough that so many have waited for and it is lack of cash that has led to the Swiss woman being dropped." Sauber made "no bones about the fact that they wanted money and there appears to have been no more forthcoming from De Silvestro's backers" in the U.S. De Silvestro’s plight is a "symptom of greater problems in F1, though."
While Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton seeks glory in a car "backed by hundreds
of millions of dollars, the bottom three teams in F1 are clinging onto
life." Marussia and Sauber are "actively seeking investors, with a
series of names leaping in and out of the frame." Caterham is thought to
be in "the worst trouble, though." Sauber "desperately need funds after being let down by a consortium of
Russian investors, who promised much and delivered nothing." The team
will need "pay drivers." Training up a young woman on the "off-chance that she would be
a success, without the guarantee of millions of dollars of finance, is
no longer on the Sauber agenda" (LONDON TIMES, 10/1).