{"id":88297,"date":"2025-05-09T20:45:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T20:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/88297\/"},"modified":"2025-05-09T20:45:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T20:45:12","slug":"claire-williams-highlights-f1s-lack-of-female-leaders-i-dont-get-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/88297\/","title":{"rendered":"Claire Williams highlights F1\u2019s lack of female leaders: ‘I don\u2019t get it’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Claire Williams, who led the Williams Formula 1 team from 2013 to 2020, has spoken about the lack of female representation in the sport.<\/p>\n

She is just one of two women to have managed teams in the sport – the first being\u00a0Monisha Kaltenborn, who previously held the position of team principal for the Sauber F1 team.<\/p>\n

During an appearance on the F1 Beyond The Grid podcast<\/a>, Williams spoke about the importance of having more women in motorsport. She explained:<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s not a case of there not being women out there that can run a Formula 1 team\u2014and jeez, if I can run a Formula 1 team, anyone can, quite honestly. I don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n

“When I am asked that question\u2014and I am\u2014I still go out and talk to students, and they ask me that: why? I have no answer, because I absolutely believe that there are women out there who are perfectly capable.<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t know what it is, but I do think it\u2019s a shame. Because, as much as there\u2019s all this brilliant work promoting female drivers, I would love to see another female team principal. And I think it\u2019s really important\u2014you do turn on the telly and still see a sport that is very male-dominated, because the TPs, the drivers\u2014they\u2019re all men.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 48-year-old continued, referring to the work by multiple people to increase the female representation in Formula 1. One of the biggest initiatives is the Susie Wolff-led F1 Academy, which now works in close collaboration with F1.<\/p>\n

\"George <\/p>\n

George Russell, Williams, Claire Williams, Deputy Team Principal, Williams Racing and Robert Kubica, Williams Racing at the Federation Square event<\/p>\n

Photo by: Mark Sutton \/ Motorsport Images<\/p>\n

“There’s been a huge amount of work that’s been done over the past 10-15 years in this space, and you are only going to get or see the repercussions, the reward of that hard work in a generation. It’s not a work of a moment, this kind of stuff. It takes a long time in order to see change because you need to get the critical mass at the grassroots level if you’re going to see change.<\/p>\n

“And we haven’t had that yet. I still don’t see many five or six-year-old girls, and I’ve got a seven-year-old son, so I know that the girls in his cohort aren’t asking their parents to go go-karting on a Saturday afternoon, whereas the boys might. What I am seeing, though, which is brilliant, is much more teenage girls falling in love with Formula 1.<\/p>\n

“So therefore, whatever that generation is, the 15-16-year-old girls, you might see them stepping up into the more administrative business-type roles and therefore taking the TP roles later on.”<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Claire Williams, who led the Williams Formula 1 team from 2013 to 2020, has spoken about the lack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,33805,707,4200,24496,969,79,970,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-88297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-f1-miami-grand-prix","10":"tag-formula-1","11":"tag-formula1","12":"tag-miami-gp","13":"tag-nosyndicate","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-trendingteam","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114479833044850846","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}