FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem: We need the diversity



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FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem: We need the diversity

FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem spoke to Motorsport Network's about diversity in sport and women's rights. “The talent might be in any place in the world. But does he have the opportunity or does she have the opportunity? No."- he said, as quoted by motorsport.com “When it comes to women, we are talking with our departments when it comes to technical [aspects].

If you've got an F4 [car] it might be easy for females, but once you go to Formula 2 and F3, physically, it's harder for them. So what do we do? “The problem is with us, so we have the solution for it. Speaking to our technical [department], every single-seater car has to accommodate both sides.

It's not rocket science. “It's up to the builders of the chassis and we will force them, otherwise we don't have hope. We need the diversity and we will give them the opportunity. If we can, we should do it”.

David Coulthard on F1

Former grand prix driver David Coulthard also spoke about the changes in F1.

“A Grand Prix car generates huge amounts of g-force, which is the neck and your internal organs and what have you,” he said. “But the actual process of turning the steering wheel at 200mph pulling 4G is not difficult, because you have power steering.

“Formula 2 doesn’t have power steering, Formula 3 doesn’t have power steering. They are incredibly difficult. “When I was a test driver in Williams I couldn’t turn the steering like Nigel Mansell.

I wasn’t strong enough. So my limitation was how much steering I could get on the car. “So we need to change as well, not only in helping developing talent, but we need to change the mentality in these feeder formulas, which then do put let’s say a physical preference towards certain size and physically developed men.

“But we’ll do that over time. If you don’t do anything, nothing changes. So we’re going to change things by doing something”. Ben Sulayem said that F1 is more and more popular, not only in Europe, but all over the world.

“There is no doubt F1 in the last few years went beyond expectation,” said Ben Sulayem. “I would say I would praise FOM, for doing one thing during COVID. Instead of cutting the finance they actually invested in it.

So I will say thanks to them. “But then you have more than that; you have how many airlines of the Middle East which are important, and other companies also supporting or sponsoring. Also big oil companies. “Then what we don't want is a circus.

You get the circus here for the weekend and then it goes and it doesn't leave any remarks or any presence here. So we have something important. “For example we have a pretty successful karting here. But the whole Middle East, from the Middle East and North Africa, they all meet in one place. And we had over 170 drivers in it”.