While the W Series, the FIA’s Girls on Track initiative and the new More Than Equal campaign, backed by David Coulthard, focus on promoting female drivers to motorsport’s top categories, Alpine’s program extends also engineering and many other disciplines.
As a Formula 1 team with healthy funding and the support of a road car manufacturer like Renault, Alpine has enough resources to carry out its objective.
Even before announcing Race(H)er last month, the team had already taken some steps towards it. In March they confirmed that W Series rider Abbi Pulling would be joining Alpine’s young rider program. A couple of weeks later, she had the opportunity to test drive the E20 F1 car at an exhibition in Saudi Arabia, as did local driver Aseel Al Hamad , a member of the FIA Women in Motor Sport Commission.
In May, Alpine announced that Alice Powell was joining with the goal of recruiting talent and in turn developing the Academy’s programs, with special responsibility for mentoring Pulling as well as scouting for new female talent.
Now, these steps make even more sense after creating the Rac(H)er program.
“The program was born at the same time as Alpine’s rebranding,” says Alpine Cars vice president of human resources Claire Mesnier .
“And the idea was that if we want to be world champions, we have to have the best driver in the best possible car.”
“And obviously today we don’t have all the talent available to us. We’re depriving ourselves of half of humanity, because we’re not looking enough at women. So that was the starting point of this show. And we also refer to the talents in the world of engineering and other aspects”.
As for the drivers, the main challenge is always the small percentage of girls who compete in karting. Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer says that has to change, and that motorsport has to encourage more girls to want to go into racing.
“At a young age, when you make a choice, do I want to go karting, do I want to go figure skating, or do I want to play volleyball? There aren’t many girls who say I want to go karting,” says Szafnauer. “And so the niche that future talent is born into is small. If you make that pool bigger, you’ll get better talent.”
“We don’t have a role model. That’s why most young girls don’t see anyone to identify with. One of the goals of our program is to create a benchmark, to show that reaching the highest level is possible.”
One intriguing aspect of Alpine ‘s new project is that the company wants to take a more scientific approach to finding out if there are real differences between men and women that could have an impact, negative or positive, on their potential to become top-level pilots.
There are many theories, for example that body strength plays a key role in the lower categories, where there is no power steering.
“That’s one of the great pillars of the program,” says Mesnier . “Even in the case of male drivers, they are all different, they are not the same size, weight or talent. For sure we have physical, cognitive and emotional issues to deal with. And there are differences between men and women.
“For example, we already know from data and scientific facts that, for example, women are better at withstanding pain. But in terms of reaction, it is slower. I suppose that in all physical, cognitive and emotional aspects there are differences.”
“It’s a very complex job being an F1 driver, there are a lot of different things you have to be very good at.
“We are working together with the Paris Brain Institute on the cognitive side. On the emotional side, we have a Ph.D. who will join us and work on it. And on the physical side, we are working with a Doctor of Physiotherapy.”
“I am sure that Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso will help us and will participate in different tests, also Abbi and Alice . We have to base ourselves on the facts to try to dismantle and erase all the prejudices and stereotypes that we have, because there are many”.
“But I’m not sure we have a lot of data, not even on the drivers who are at the top right now. We have data on the cars, but on the drivers, who is the best driver in the paddock, with science and physical?”
Once these young talents are identified, Alpine will try to advance them from karting.
“It’s the second pillar of the program,” says Mesnier . “The same for boys and girls, it is an eight-year program exactly the same, let’s say, with specific training.”
“The program will start in a few weeks looking for the most promising girls. And the idea is that four or five girls enter this program for eight years. It will be an ongoing process, it will not be to do it once and wait eight years to see who comes out. hence with sufficient level”.
“We’re going to develop the show with the same company that did the Lando Norris show. So it’s the same kind of philosophy. And of course every step of the way we’re going to have to adjust, adapt and decide whether to go forward or not.”
Alpine Cars director Laurent Rossi believes the young talent will shine.
“We’re going to try to find someone who is good enough to beat everyone, and then we’re going to help them grow as much as we can.”
“By the end of this season, we should already have identified at least one or two talents to start supporting, and then make sure we have a plan of action for the next four or five years.”
“It’s clear that finding a woman to become an F1 driver is going to be a long-term process. Increasing the number of women on Enstone ‘s staff, which is currently 10%, is a shorter-term goal. term”.
“When we go recruiting to the top universities, we have to make sure we do a very good job and give a very good image so that the girls with the best engineering degrees will be interested in Alpine and obviously also in F1,” said Szafnauer .
“Getting more women interested in F1 in their internships doesn’t mean that after doing that year they go back to their final year of engineering at university and automatically say ‘I want to work in F1’.”
“But if they live it from the inside and they really like it, they are likely to say, ‘Hey, I want to go into motorsport.’ Formula 1 will not be so asymmetric.”
Another challenge is that in the UK only 23% of engineering graduates are women. One of Rac(H)er ‘s goals is to send ambassadors to schools to encourage more girls to jump into STEM subjects.
“From high school, we have to get more girls interested so that the current 23% is 30%. And then, out of those 30, for example, get them interested in motorsports, and then you will have more options to choose from. to the best.”
“You have to remember that the real goal is for the F1 team to be the best it can be, so everything will depend on meritocracy. But right now, when we go looking for graduates, there are only two or three girls, so it’s difficult. So what we want to do is make that number bigger.”
Rossi insisted that Alpine is very committed to the Rac(H)er goals, but also acknowledges that achieving them will be a challenge.
“We are only a small part of all this. We do what we can, but I think and I hope that we can trigger something in the system. However, I think that the number of [women’s karting] licenses is always going to be very small.”
“Our idea is to go out there and find people who are just as smart, or smarter, with cognitive abilities equal to or better than those already in their jobs. Because there’s no reason why a woman can’t do better than a guy.” men”.
“We are not going to change society, let’s be honest. But we can change our little bubble, our environment, build an environment that is more conducive to having the best talent,” the Frenchman concluded.
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