Women are every day more involved in motorsport as racing drivers and today we'll analyse the differences in training methods that they need to cope with males
WOMEN IN MOTORSPORT
Day by day more women enters the world of motorsport and this is a positive scenario for the movement, because they help this sport to grow and become more popular even among categories of people that before didn't pay any interest in motor racing. The idea that woman aren't as good as males in driving ability is gradually disappearing with the spreading woman in important races such as 24h of Le Mans or F3 and F2. Despite a lot of organization issues, Wseries was another step to add female quote in motorsport with a category reserved to woman.
PHYSICAL AND MENTAL DIFFERENCES
The best operation to understand better the possibility to compete at same level with males is to evaluate physical and mental differences among genders according to scientific licterature and try to give an answer.
STRENGTH COMPARISON
Until 12 years old the two genders shows very little differences in strength, but after puberty this gap increases and in adult age women have 70% circa of males strength.
But considering that driving a car, even in F1, doesn't require extreme strength levels, with a good strength training plan they can eliminate this disadvantage.
ENDURANCE ABILITY DIFFERENCES
Comparing men and woman performance in 1500m run and marathon, the difference in running time is circa 11%, manly due to different body composition
( > fat tissue in females).
This is a relatively low difference and considering that even on stamina qualities, motorsport isn't requiring maximal values, girls can compete without disadvantages with men on endurance ability simply following a good stamina training routine.
BRAIN COMPARISON
Brain in female is smaller by 10% but it has the same amount of neurons. There are little differences between males and females in human but these differences aren't always so clear and differ a lot case by case. It isn't also clear that this difference is responsible by different behaviour or if the social role plays a great part in the brain evolution process. Probably experiences done especially in childhood years modify the abilities of a person lifelong, regardless of gender.
HORMONAL COMPARISON
It's well known that women have lower testosterone levels (1/10 compared to males) and they are subjected to menses periodically. Menses could be a disadvantage if create big performance decrease for more days compromising training plan or the race, if they unfourtunatly appear around a race weekend. Higher testosterone levels boost cognitive functions, competitive and aggressive behaviour and increase spatial abilities.
This 2 factors can create the bigger gap between gender abilities in motor racing.
Menses are unavoidables and testosterone levels can only be little increased with strength training. An high testosterone level probably favour bravery on track especially in wheel to wheel situations.
TRAINING APPROACH FOR WOMEN
If mens which race in motorsport can have periods of low training volume without affect heavily performances, women can't or their track performance drops immediately.
Girls should dedicate more hours weekly to strength training because the gap between boys is bigger than other training areas and the testosterone release can benefit performance.
Endurance training should also be included in their routine without big differeces with males one.
Training plan have to be personalized, flexible and adapted to menses periods to optimize performance outcomes.
A WOMAN IN F1
Can ever a girl enter the top of motorsport again?
For me someone can enter the big circus just in few years. To arrive in F1 a woman should first of all have a great talent, a strong physical training plan and just do what males do with technical and mental training. And don't forget money, but for sponsors can be really interesting to support a girl which has great hopes to arrive in F1, creating a lot of interest.
Bibliography
Weineck, J. (2013). Biologia dello Sport. Calzetti & Mariucci Editori.
Bear M.F., Connors B.W., Paradiso M.A. (2016). Neuroscienze: esplorando il cervello. Quarta edizione. Edra S.p.A.
Written by
Enrico Repossi
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