As David Coulthard once again touches on his optimism for the future of women in motorsport, the comments of several detractors have filtered back into the public consciousness, most notably resurfaced comments from Danica Patrick.
Patrick’s belief is that the “feminine mind” isn’t cut out for racing within the overall scope of motorsport history — but it is a history littered with disempowerment and gender-wide bans that have prevented women from ever having a fair shake at the racing world.
Danica Patrick’s belief in motorsport as masculine — not feminine
At the 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix, Danica Patrick joined a teen-led F1 broadcast designed for children when one of the teenage co-hosts asked the former racer if she thought we’d see a woman compete in Formula 1 in the near future.
Despite having a racing career herself, Patrick’s answer was largely in the negative.
“As I’ve always said in my whole career, it takes 100 guys to come through to find a good one, and then it takes 100 girls,” Patrick began, referring to the sheer number of young go-kart drivers required to discover a stand-out talent.
“That takes a long time to find a good one, right? It just, the odds are not in favor of there always being one or being many of them.”
While that was a fairly astute observation, Patrick went on to conclude, “At the end of the day, I think that the nature of the sport is masculine. It’s aggressive.
“You have to, you know, handle the car — not only just the car, because that’s a skill, but the mindset that it takes to be really good is something that’s not normal in a feminine mind, in a female mind.
“You have to be, like, for me, I know if somebody tries to bow up or make it difficult on me, I would go into like an aggressive kill mode, right? You just want to go after them, and that’s just not a natural feminine thought.
“I say that because I’ve asked my friends about it, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s not how I think.’”
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