Rebalancing the grid: female drivers in F1

F1: Chequered Flag

BBC

Sports

4.2 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2025

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When will we next see a female driver in Formula One? Eleanor Oldroyd is joined by former F3 driver Alice Powell and BBC reporter Charlotte Simpson to examine why there aren’t any female drivers currently at the sport’s elite level.

They look at the existing programmes designed to boost the number of female drivers and ask what more can be done.

Leading female driver Abi Pulling talks through her experiences in the sport, while Susie Wolff explains the aims of the F1 Academy in developing female drivers. We also hear from McLaren’s Oscar Piastri on what the future may hold.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I want to tell you why I love podcasting.
0:04.7	Hi, my name's Tommy Dixon, and I make podcasts for the BBC.
0:08.4	I'm a big fan of stories, always loved a good book.
0:11.4	But when I started commuting for my first job, I discovered podcasts.
0:15.4	I was blown away by how a creative idea and the right mixture of sounds could take you into
0:19.2	a whole new world full of incredible stories. You know, the type that make you go, wow. And that kind of inspired me to
0:25.2	give it a go myself, which to cut a long story short led to a BBC training scheme and a whole
0:30.0	new career giving other people that exact same feeling. So if you want to hear amazing stories
0:34.2	that make you go wow like I did, they're just a tap or click away on BBC Sounds.
0:40.8	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:45.1	This is Five Live Sports with Eleanor Oldroyd. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:53.7	Welcome to Five Live Formula One, rebalancing the grid.
0:57.7	Over the next 90 minutes, we'll be exploring why no women currently race in F1, what's
1:02.5	being done to change that, and when we might see a female driver line up on the grid for
1:06.8	a Formula One race.
1:08.3	You're going to hear from F1 Academy Managing Director Susie Wolfe,
1:11.9	F1 Academy driver Abby Pulling, and McLaren F1 driver Oscar Piastri, along with many more.
1:18.0	Alongside me is BBC reporter Charlotte Simpson, who spent the past year looking into why there are
1:22.8	no women currently racing in F1. What was your key takeaway from that, would you say? Hi, Ellie. Well,
1:29.7	my key takeaway with that is that there's been a real drive in recent years to get a woman to the
1:35.3	top, but it's just going to take some time. Now, I really got interested in this topic because
1:42.4	I've always been a sports fan, and when I was younger growing up,
	...

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