I am a huge Formula 1 fan, and over the last few years there has been a push to include women more in the sport. From the female-only grid in the F1 Academy, to female mechanics. Not to mention, that it is estimated that women watching the sport is nearing 50/50 with men, with a lot of young girls watching races. This makes sense, because I remember when I was at High School, during the Michael Schumacher/ Ferrari era, all of my group of friends loved f1, and it was really popular amongst a lot of girls in my class. Over the years, with the shift to online, that has only helped the audience get bigger. And, that is without even mentioning the Netflix f1 documentary, Drive to Survive.

Recently, news broke that Christian Horner, the boss of current champions Red Bull Racing, was being investigated over inappropriate contact with a female member of staff. This happened about 3-4 weeks ago, and the news just keeps getting bigger and bigger, with this week it being leaked that the female complainant was suspended from Red Bull. This has lead to the volume of gossip that I have never seen involved in F1 before. And the female fans, who are incidentally the largest growing market for F1, are understandably peeved at the lack of transparency provided by Red Bull. This has lead to many questioning whether F1 is actually really about equality between genders, or is it all just a cover story, whilst everything that matters, stays the same.

This bad feeling has increased, when the teams arrived for media day in Saudi Arabia last week, and some of the drivers were a bit dismissive of the ‘Red Bull’ situation in their comments. With the drivers who were quizzed on it saying things like ‘it doesn’t affect me, I am concerned about what happens on the track’. This, angered a lot of fans, because it felt that they were treating the issue of sexual harassment or abuse as something trivial, that can be thrown away. Which, for victims of such abuse, is completely not true. For generations, women have struggled to get somewhere in their field, without men of a higher position trying to take advantage. You can think of Hollywood, and the idea of the ‘casting couch’, where women were expected to deliver certain ‘favours’ to get roles they desired. Whilst the idea of the ‘casting couch’ has bitten the dust, it is still common occurrence that men take advantage of women in lower positions that them, and then threaten their careers or even life, if they were to tell anyone. It happens with business leaders, politicians, celebrities, even senior members of someone’s own family.

I have had discussions with work colleagues, friends, and family over sexual assault and abuse. And there is a pattern that has formed. I don’t think that people want to believe that such crimes are so widespread, so they don’t believe them. It’s always ‘they are looking for money’, or ‘they are a homewrecker’. Whilst comments like these seem to come from a place of malice, I believe that they instead come from a place of ignorance. Sexual crimes are a very hard thing to understand unless a person has personally gone through it, or knows someone who has. Especially when it comes to harassment, where someone has said something that crosses a woman’s personal boundaries, and makes them feel devalued and uncomfortable. From my own experience, I have been told that I am ‘too precious’ if I let silly comments upset me. And that is from other women. Just because one person felt okay, doesn’t make things okay with every person.

I don’t really know how F1, the FIA, and the teams, make this right. It doesn’t help that the head of the FIA is getting investigated for a cheating scandal, which is being hidden behind the news and upset of the Horner scandal. Is it that the powers that run the sport want the focus to be on the fracturing state of Red Bull Racing, rather than themselves, no matter the consequences? That the issue of female safety is being trivialised as a scapegoat for the FIA to get away with cheating on their own races? It’s an ever changing situation. But I believe the powers in charge of F1 know exactly what they are doing in stretching out the Horner scandal. The situation has been manufactured to be so big that it is an insult to every woman who has anything to do with F1, the FIA, and all its parters.