Patrick: Female drivers 'better prepared' by racing against men

Former IndyCar driver Danica Patrick believes that female racers will enjoy better personal development and will be better prepared for the sport's challenges if they compete against men from the outset.

It's been forty years since a woman graced the grid in Formula 1, but the sport is making a concerted effort to break Grand Prix racing's all-male monopoly.

The now defunct all-female W Series was unsuccessful in its attempts to establish itself as an entry-level training ground for female racers, but the Formula 1-supported F1 Academy that was launched earlier this year hopes to succeed where its predecessor failed.

Patrick, the only woman to win in IndyCar – a feat achieved at Motegi in Japan in 2008 – competitively banged wheels with her male counterparts in America's premier single-seater series but also in NASCAR.

But oddly, when asked recently on the Sky Sports F1 podcast if she supported F1's push to carry a female racer up the ladder, she suggested that such an accomplishment was of no importance to her.

"Well, you’re assuming I want that, you’re assuming that is important to me, and it’s not," she said.

"It’s always an interesting stance I have on it. I think that what makes the sport really popular is great racing – you can have half the field out there women and have it be follow the leader, and it’s not going to be interesting to watch.

"Good racing… and that’s what we have so much of these days in Formula 1, I mean pretty much everything other than Max is a toss-up for who’s going to be second, third, fourth, fifth that weekend, and so that’s what makes it really appealing.

"So as someone who obviously was a girl, you’ve just got to come up like normal."

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While Patrick admitted that an all-female series might help kickstart a woman's endeavor in single-seater racing, the 41-year-old Sky commentator argued that competing against a broader field exposes female racers to a higher level of competition, which can accelerate their skill development and improve their overall performance.

"I do have a little bit of… not a criticism, but an opinion about female series, is that it’s fine, it can give opportunity for some who might not get a chance otherwise to show what they can do but at the end of the day, you’re going to have to race against guys.

"So when you watch golf, you watch that a lot of times, a golfer that’s maybe not ranked as high, will rise to the occasion with whoever he’s golfing with

"I think that tends to happen in all sports, that’s why you see some of the best wanting to run around, practice, and be with the best because, then, they get better.

"If you bench[mark] yourself off of something that’s not the best, then it’s gonna affect your effort level, your mental goal, like what you envision yourself doing."

Patrick reckoned that women racers might as well immerse themselves among the best from the start.

"So you really have to put yourself in the toughest situations, and you might as well do it early because it’s only going to get harder," she added.

"Giving proper tests to be able to see if a driver, if a female is fast enough, is a great way to know if there should be a next step forward.

"But, as far as anything beyond that, I think they should be racing with the guys, there’s risk racing in the same series. They’ve just got to get people around them that believe in them.

"The more times that you put yourself in a position to show what you can do, the better off you are, and it’s better to be in the car than not.

"Just more cars, more track time, and more opportunities to show what you can do is just always a good thing."

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