What a "shame" that F1's next stop is China because its "notoriously protest-intolerant government surely wouldn’t look kindly on crowds of demonstrators venting against" F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone's latest "put-down" of women drivers, according to John Leicester of the AP. Yet people "should vent" because there's a "whiff of sexual apartheid in the latest madcap suggestion from F1's billionaire boss" that teams should launch a championship exclusively for women. Segregating female drivers in a separate, "second-fiddle series that few fans will watch cannot be the best way to advance their cause." To be fair to Ecclestone, perhaps his motivations are "noble." Perhaps he recognizes that the enduring stranglehold of men on F1, with "no women actually racing and too few in positions of power behind the scenes," undercuts its "pretensions of being the most modern of sports." Or having declared 10 years ago that "'women should be all dressed in white like all the other domestic appliances,' perhaps the 84-year-old wheeler-dealer who built F1’s commercial success is becoming a campaigning feminist?" Parading women like this "smacks suspiciously of being more about money, an attempt to use them to revive F1 television audiences, rather than being an about-face" for equality. Former rally driver Michele Mouton, who now works with the FIA, wrote, "I am annoyed and very disappointed!" that Ecclestone maybe is "thinking 'about women only for the show!'" If Ecclestone really wanted to help women drivers, he must "get them onto F1’s grid with the men." That could be done by "forcing every team to hire a woman as a third driver." Doing so would, in turn, "force teams to do a much better job of scouting and nurturing female talent." The teams' two main male drivers would also all be made to "skip a minimum of one race per season, giving the seat to their female colleague" (AP, 4/3).
