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while you are of course welcome to disagree with me, both here and in regards to my original post, i'm not making assumptions about a conversation i haven't been a part of. i made a post in direct response to a handful of posts that i saw which stated that f1a could not and should not be questioned with regards to the role that the series played in ferrari's failure to develop maya weug's career. as with many things, i don't think i actually need to be mindful of every single post ever made on a broad topic to have an opinion about one specific thing.

i also say this with respect, but a majority of the discourse i've seen from f1a spaces has been resistant to any constructive criticism or questioning of f1a's effectiveness as a tool of promotion and development for young female drivers. you say i need to spend more time in those spaces, maybe i do, but the reason i don't is because what i've seen so far is often frustrating at best and delusional at worst.

my opinions on f1a and women in motorsport more generally are not simply based on observation of the f1a tumblr culture, but of years of being a fan of motorsport categories like rally and rally raid, where women are far more active participants than single seaters, and where they have seen success for decades. my personal opinion is that a lot of f1a discourse that i have seen does not engage in the very real success women have seen in other categories, either because they do not want to, or because they do not know about it. personally, i think that if you've seen other categories where women have been succeeding, f1a seems less revolutionary and less helpful to women, than the people who are not fans of other motorsports or not knowledgeable about them. some of the f1a discourse i've seen seems to truly believe that this is the most progressive thing that's ever happened to women in motorsport and i just don't think that's true.

i think f1a has great potential to help women and girls in motorsport, but i also think that it exists within a system that isn't actually incentivised to develop women's careers, and teams are willing to use it as a method of dismissing and discarding female racers. and i think that if f1a actually wants to help women and girls in motorsport it has to question its own system and effectiveness. that's not to disband it or dismiss it, but to change it.