18/07/2004
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
 |
There is a new book out, The Pits: The Real World of Formula 1, written by Beverley Turner who is described as being a Formula One TV presenter and, on one website, the 'queen of speed'. I have no intention of reading this pap, but then great chunks have been printed in the UK national press, and I have heard her interviewed on the wireless and, believe me, that is quite enough.
Turner has never been a Formula One presenter. She was a deputy interviewer who asked a few questions, occasionally and vacuously. In three years she was used for 15 races and was rubbish. She knew little either about motor racing or about interviewing. There is a world of difference between being a presenter and being an occasional reporter. It is like writing a book about an F1 backmarker and claiming he was a Grand Prix Ace. She not only claims to have been a TV presenter, but she allows herself to be described as 'the Queen of Speed'. Beverley Turner is the Queen of Speed? Did you know that? It was news to me as well.
Turner claims that men in Formula One are unreconstructed Male Chauvinist Pigs. As a revelation, this ranks with Adolf Hitler was not always as nice as he liked to pretend. She is surprised that racing drivers have groupies offering sex without commitment or responsibility and drivers have been known to accept the offer rather than to retire to their hotel rooms alone with Teach Yourself Calculus. Gosh! Does that sort of thing really go on?
Rock stars have groupies, Roman gladiators had groupies, actors in the Elizabethan theatre had groupies, but don't groupies tend to be female? Is not a groupie, by definition, a volunteer? If a groupie cannot get into the sack with the lead guitarist, don't some go down the pecking order which is why roadies can have smiles on their faces? There are girls out there known as screwdrivers, yet the Queen of Speed blames the drivers for being sexist.
 |
How did Ms Turner land a job which saw her being flown to Grands Prix, put up in good hotels, issued with excellent passes and being paid for asking a few vacuous questions while also being able to use that tenuous connection to earn even more money by doing marketing presentations as the Queen of Speed? The answer is simple, Beverley Turner is female and easy on the eye. You do not get downright ugly presenters of any sex on television. Producers are open about this, a TV presenter must be attractive to viewers if they want an audience. It's the same in the theatre and on film. Is there not a saying that someone has the perfect looks for radio?
When Beverley went to interview Mark Webber at his home in Australia, she made sure that she looked her best, so she wore dainty high heeled shoes. The trouble is that Mark lives on a farm. High heels on a farm? Doh! The real Queen wears Wellingtons on a farm, but not the Queen of Speed.
The only reason why Beverley was wearing high heels and make up was to stress her sexuality. She was playing the Bimbo.
No bloke who is as lacking in knowledge or interview technique could get away with what she has got away with twice, let alone 15 times. Beverley Turner was Substitute Bimbo and she should regard herself as being extremely lucky to have had the chance. She says that she left Formula One in disgust, but I am not convinced that she had much say in the matter.
One of her gripes is that there are no women in Formula One, which is like complaining that there are no blokes in synchronised swimming. I have news for the bimbo, girls are not just soft boys with lumps on their chests.
In a modern F1 car, upper body strength counts for a lot. Grand Prix drivers have to have their shirts made to measure because High Street stores do not sell them in such big neck sizes. There are some excellent male drivers who cannot cope with a full Grand Prix distance because they do not have enough upper body bulk. Turner pooh poohs this basic fact and cites 'experts' who claim that there is no physical reason why a woman could not drive a modern car.
 |
I don't care whom she cites, no woman can drive a modern F1 car competitively over a race distance. If she knew her history, she would know that there have been some terrific female drivers. Pat Moss, sister of Sir Stirling, was one of the very best rally drivers of the early 1960s. She was the first Brit to win the gruelling Liège Rome Liège Rally and she did so in an Austin Healey 3000 which was a brutal hunk of machinery. Michele Mouton was a rally star with Audi in the early 1980s. Neither Pat nor Michéle had to apologise for their gender, they were top drivers, but neither had to contend with the g forces generated by ground effect.
It is ground effect and the massive forces it places on the driver which has made the difference. Lella Lombardi (aka The Tigress of Turin) is the only woman to have scored in the F1 World Championship and that was in 1975 when she gained half a point for sixth in the shortened Spanish GP. Lella, however, won three sports car World Championship events, which indicates that she was a pretty good driver. If one sixth place from 12 starts does not sound much, there are more than 100 male drivers who have been in F1 who did not achieve that.
At Brands Hatch you may sit in the Desiré Wilson grandstand, named for that fine South African lady. In 1980, Desiré won a Formula One race at Brands Hatch, and is the only female to have won an F1 race. True, it was only in the Aurora Championship, a British national series, but the opposition was good. On the back of that she obtained sponsorship to race a private Williams FW07 at the British GP, also at Brands Hatch. Desiré failed to qualify the Williams yet, that year, she won two sports car World Championship events. The only driver who won three WC sports car races in 1983 was Riccardo Patrese, in a works Lancia. Desiré was that good, when not coping with ground effect.
Beverley Turner bangs on about there being no females in Formula One, but there are several things to consider. The first is, why should there be? There is nobody from the Netherlands in F1, or from India, or China. From whence will we spirit a female F1 driver? From F3000, or F3? There are no women in either. Women are not barred from these categories, there are just not any attempting them.
 |
If a likely female driver of single seaters came on the scene, she would have no problem with sponsorship. She would be batting sponsors away. She would get a short cut to F1, just as Turner got a short cut to a chance on television. Can you imagine the marketing potential of a female F1 driver? Would one of the major manufacturers in F1 like a female driver?
Turner reckons that such a woman would have to be pretty, but she is wrong. Virtually everyone who is fit enough to be a top athlete, tennis player, driver, whatever, is attractive. They have a glow and presence about their very fitness which is attractive. They do not need a pretty face, they have an overall presence. Any female who can drive a current F1 car will be welcome with open arms.
I am giving advice to a young driver and my first job was to convince him that the fact he is black can be a huge advantage when approaching some sponsors. Look at Alex Yoong, Malaysian money put a Malaysian in F1. Zsolt Baumgartner is in F1 because he is Hungarian. If my man can get beyond some initial hurdles, and he is on course, he will find some doors open simply because he is black. A black driver is lower down a sponsor's wish list than a woman, but he's on the list. The black pound, Euro, or dollar, is becoming something that marketing people cannot ignore and that is our advantage. Follow the money, always follow the money.
Turner complains that guys in F1 are sexist. Bev, babe, there is this thing called testosterone and it is evident in motor racing. Fast cars are a guy thing. Fast cars are a mating call which is why some pretend sports cars are called 'hairdresser's cars'. Fast cars are also a girl thing, because you have never seen an ugly woman in a Ferrari. The Queen of Speed complains that a driver once told her that she was only there to look at, but why else was she there? Can she really be so stupid as to think that she was there because of her profound knowledge of the sport, or her peerless ability as an interviewer?
It amuses me when I read revelations in the gutter press of the testosterone related activities of this footballer or that cricketer. If the Formula One grid was exposed to such scrutiny, the tabloids would have to print special supplements. I can recall, a few years ago, when a cricketing hero was caught with his pants down and there were calls, from the self righteous, self serving, gutter press, for his dismissal from the national team. If the same demands were made of an F1 grid, there would be nobody there.
 |
A Formula One driver once said to me, "I love my wife and my children, but I just wish they were waiting for me sometime in the future. I go away to races and there are all these birds gagging for it. I hate being unfaithful to my wife, but you have to do it, don't you?" The groupie/star relationship has been with us for as long as there have been stars and it is an understood relationship.
Mind you, there was the occasion in the mid 1960s, when an irate French woman attacked a mechanic in the pitlane at Reims when she discovered that he was not Pedro Rodriguez. George
The thing about being a top line racing driver is that if there are three of them in a bar, neither wants to buy the drinks because the person who does is the loser. If a girl walks into the bar they all need to shag her, not because they necessarily want to, but the one who does shag her has beaten the others.
According to the Queen of Speed, one driver criticised the Foster's Girls, the bimbos who parade in skimpy skirts before races, on the grounds that they were 'dogs'. I can understand that, the Foster's Girls are not of the quality of the pulchritude as the Hawaiian Tropic girls, in their high heels and amazing bikinis, but how can Beverley Turner object?
These girls, all volunteers, are well paid to exhibit their brief moment of beauty. It helps them pay their way through college, or whatever. What is wrong with that when their obligation is no more than to flash their thighs and cleavages if they so choose? If one falls out of the team, there will be dozens fighting to take her place because, after all, it is money for old rope. I do not think there will ever be an edition of Playboy which will carry the apology: Sorry, guys, that are no nude girls in this issue. The fact is that we could not find any bimbos prepared to take off their kit for money.
As an occasional TV reporter, Beverley Turner, you were crap and you only got on the box because you looked quite good, not because you were actually any good at the job for which you were paid. You exploited that, so who are you, Queen of Speed, to lecture the rest of us about sexism?
Mike Lawrence
To check out previous features from Mike, click here