Sebastian Vettel Addresses F1 CEO’s Woman Driver Remarks

Sebastian Vettel during the drivers’ press conference ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix weekend.

IMAGO / HochZwei

Sebastian Vettel did not hold back when commenting on F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali remarks about how he doesn’t “see—unless something that will be like a sort of meteorite coming into the earth—a girl in Formula One in the next five years.”

In the Aston Martin driver’s view, “it was a very unlucky choice of words because it’s statements like that, that I guess women are, probably all girls, are probably confronted with when they grow up and sharing their dreams...sitting at breakfast, saying that I want to become a racing driver.

“And the father might just have read exactly statements like that and say: ‘You do like other things, why not focus on other things?’ Maybe they do focus on other things and drop racing or the idea.

“It is important we don’t say these things because there are sparks everywhere.”

Domenicali did not state that he doesn’t believe a woman could compete in F1 but rather focusing on the barriers to entry. A woman has not competed in an F1 World Championship grand prix since Lella Lombardi in 1976. Since then, Susie Wolff is the last woman to participate in a grand prix weekend when she was a Williams test driver during the 2014 and ’15 seasons.

“We are trying to understand how we can—I don’t want to use the wrong term, but let’s say—prepare the right pyramid also for the girls to come into the pyramid at the right age with the right car, because this is really the key point,” Domenicali said, per The Race. “We are very happy with the collaboration with Formula W [W Series]. But we believe that in order to be able to get the chance for girls to be at the same level of competition with the guys, they need to be at more or less [at the same] age [as males] when they start to fight on the track at the level of Formula Three and Formula Two.

“So, we are working on that in order to see what we can do in order to improve the system. And you will see soon some action.”

Regardless, Vettel feels the F1 boss’s comments send the wrong message to women, stating, “I don’t see a reason why we can’t have a woman on the grid. I think the challenges we are facing, they can be faced by women.” 

He said Thursday that he chooses to “do the opposite” of Domenicali.

“I encourage every girl at the breakfast lunch or dinner table to speak up and prove Stefano, in this regard, wrong and all these people wrong. Let’s say that, you know, certain things can’t be done by you because you are a girl or a woman. I think this sort of stereotype thinking is slowly disappearing, but has to disappear completely.”