Women Drivers in Formula 1? Renault aims for a first in motor racing history

Renault SA’s Alpine is once again in the run for a Formula 1 championship this season but with a much bigger prize in mind than just gaining a few podiums. It’s seeking women drivers.

The brand, which finished fourth last year in the constructors championship, is boosting investments to develop female talent in professional racing, a male-only realm for the most part in spite of being open to women as well. Alpine has a new center in Enstone, its UK base, to develop performance-based individual training plans for aspiring female racers in an effort to fight gender bias in motor sports.

“There are very few women competing and working in this industry," Alpine Chief Executive Office Laurent Rossi said Thursday evening at an event in London to unveil the new Alpine A523 car that will be racing in the Formula 1 season that kicks off in a few weeks. “By detecting, hiring, developing female talent we want to strengthen the Alpine team. It’s our way of giving equal opportunities to everyone and fuel the performance of Alpine."

Alpine wants more women at all levels of the organization, from mechanics and engineers all the way to female drivers that can help grow the brand with “talent, merit and hard work" beyond considerations on gender or social background, Rossi said. While there will be no quotas, Alpine wants to increase over time the number of female engineers to 30% from the current 14%.

As part of the program, dubbed Rac(h)er, six young women will join Alpine’s young driver karting program and will get trained to better learn how to compete, Claire Mesnier, Alpine’s human resources director, said at the London event. Sophia Floersch joins the Alpine Academy in the FIA Formula 3 championship and Abbi Pulling becomes a fully-fledged Academy Driver in the Formula 1 Academy Series, Alpine said Thursday. Alpine also will be opening up to girls that are still in school in its hunt for female talent.

“We are being quite selfish with this. We didn’t launch the program to change the world or paint everything in pink," Mesnier said. “It’s about racing, it’s about winning, it’s about building power, it’s about doing it better than our rivals."

Alpine has been looking outside the racing world for mentors to nurture its younger talent. French soccer star Zinedine Zidane, who was present at the event, British boxer Nicola Adams and Zara Rutherford, the youngest female pilot to complete a round-the-world solo flight, will be among sports celebrities giving tips on how to best cope with the high-pressure and physically challenging sport.

Alpine also is embarking on years of data collection to gather physical, physiological, cognitive and emotional information that can help better adapt training programs to individual needs, Mesnier said.

“There’s a lot of bias, such as women don’t have the physical capacity to drive in Formula 1 or women are not able to endure pressure in the pit lane or even, for some of them, that motor sports is not at all a woman’s thing," Mesnier said. “I personally believe these prejudices are false but I am not naive — saying so is no longer enough. We need science-based evidence to prove what is wrong about these prejudices."