Carmen Jorda, Formula E, Saudi Arabia, 2018

Jorda explains why she avoided W Series selection process

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In the round-up: Former Lotus Formula 1 development driver Carmen Jorda explains why she didn’t participate in the W Series selection process last week, which meant she could not advance to the second round.

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Comment of the day

Are expectations too high around Renault?

Is it just me or is anyone else nervous about all the ‘good news’ stories emanating from Renault.

Maybe I’m just a bit cynical but we’ve heard promises from them before that have fairly quickly been retracted just before testing commences.

I’m really hoping for the best but know full well what usually happens when a team changes ‘everything’ for the next car (Ferrari were masters of it a few years back) only to find that they’ve taken a huge step backwards.

So looking forward to the start of testing. Then I guess we’ll get some idea of whether it’s just smoke or something real.
DB-C90 (@Dbradock)

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On this day in F1

  • Born today in 1966: JJ Lehto, who made his only F1 podium appearance with Scuderia Italia in 1991

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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40 comments on “Jorda explains why she avoided W Series selection process”

  1. that picture of max really makes me appreciate how little photos of me were taken at that awkward age where you really wanna grow a beard but you really can’t and you don’t realize that yet

    1. how little photos of me were taken at that awkward age …

      @mrboerns – And ain’t that a blessing! :)

      1. You have no idea @phylyp

        1. @mrboerns – I can guess… every time I look in the mirror…

    2. Haha, @mrboerns! I was just thinking how much his face has matured since he came into the sport.

  2. Bernie ready to step in to solve the problems he creates. Dude is desperate to get back in any way he can – except at financial loss!

    1. Certainly explains the tone and timing of that race promotors letter, doesn’t it. @v12beard

      1. pretty much yeah. Also those rumours about Liberty being alledged to want to sell the business and BE being “willing to buy it back for a fraction of the sale price” @bosyber, @v12beard, @spoutnik

    2. So obvious that it’s gross.

    3. FOPA complaining that the move away from FTA hurts their business… which is Bernie’s doing!

      How short are their memories? The posturing does my head in!

  3. Nice story from Brendan Hartley.

    We sometimes forget that drivers are human.

    I’m disappointed that he didn’t get a bit longer but the reality was that he lacked the couple of tenths that Pierre Gasly was finding. I think he may have clawed some of that back but the pressure he was on the end of is not really conjusive to delivering at your absolute best.

    I wish him well in his next venture.

    1. Ditto, worth the read. Not sure I’ve ever read/heard from a similar point of view; usually after a career the drivers publish an autobiography or become TV pundits, or they don’t know their career is over until the next season starts. This was a nice insight into “one part of your career is over before you turn 30, how does it feel?”.

  4. Good Ol Bernie eh… No rest for the wicked..quite literally in the case.. Hahaha

  5. “I don’t want to lie on my deathbed and see the sport I created go downhill.”

    Oh, Bernie, always playing the helpful little guy. While it does seem that Bernie has been around forever stirring up the paddock, now we have confirmation. Bernie created the sport of Grand Prix Racing!

    @DieterRencken will have to revise some historical pieces. Not just the stories from the late 20th century. Or the 70s and 60s. Or Fangio’s feats from the 50s. Or the Silver Arrows, Auto Unions or Nuvolari’s Alfa of the 30s. Or the Bugatti legend of the 20s. Over 100 years of Grand Prix racing, all thanks to Bernie!

    Or maybe Bernie just means the more recent mess he created with CVC, the high-paying authoritarian regime-sponsored races and secret agreements that etched Bernie’s divide & conquer legacy into the carbon fibre of F1.

    1. @dieterrencken
      I have a suggestion: As a new series (like the paddock diary last year), we would like to see your old articles/work from the past (something like a ‘this day that year’, etc); maybe even about a certain season/event.
      Not only would we know more about how the sport evolved, but also relive the all the action through your words.

      @jimmi-cynic Thanks for the trigger.

    2. @jimmi-cynic He probably means the sport he created in 1981. It looked almost identical to the sport as it was in 1980.

  6. There’s something really wrong if W-Series can accommodate a driver that already had sponsors. We knew that W-Series had their own sponsor but commercially blocking driver that already had one was against its purposed.

    W-Series always brag about now there is no need for women driver to have backing sponsor to enter world series and said they will be the one that promote its best drivers to F1 later. It looks like a noble thing to do but in reality W-Series is just a reality show. An X-Factor with David Coulthard acting like Simon Cowell and won’t promote any singer that had any commercial backup other than Syco Records.

    1. edit:*can’t accommodate. I forgot to add that this might be ‘whole package’ things.

    2. It might be ‘unfair’ demands from Jorda’s sponsors. @ruliemaulana
      Maybe they demanded more exposure for her. Maybe they demanded that she would be guaranteed a seat. Maybe they demanded that racing would be done without helmets and at speeds which would not disturb her hair (if it’s a make sponsor director) :P

      PS will there be a TV series following the selection and qualification process. It would be great TV, and good publicity for the series.

      1. Maybe we have this conversation because we failed to see any proper ‘explains’ on Jorda’s tweet, @coldfly
        Maybe W-Series should explain how they gonna manage the series commercially before creating any list. Long or short.

      2. It’s quite possible her sponsors agreements have stipulations about their logos been on cars etc if she ever obtained a race seat, and maybe that’s not possible with W series. From what I understand the W series seats are funded (or part funded) by championship itself, so I imagine they have some pretty stringent requirements from their sponsors as well

    3. petebaldwin (@)
      31st January 2019, 16:23

      The reality of it is she didn’t enter for the same reason I didn’t enter the Miss World contest. I’m not an attractive woman and she isn’t a race driver.

      1. I have to agree with you here. I’m pretty this series would have been an embarrassment to her, and probably her sponsors!

        1. Bah *pretty sure*

      2. But she can enter the MWC but you can not enter f1 ;)

    4. It can be something as simple as jorda being sponsored by adidas and the series being sponsored by nike (for example). The main enemy of all racing series is the finances (which is why the earlier all women gt series failed) and if you are going to pick your drivers and give them drives then you don’t want them to bring their own sponsors. After all they are not paying much for anything. The series organizer is and sponsorship money is key part of that income.

      That being said it is good for the series to not have her. She is hopelessly slow. Her wikipedia page is extemely selective of her results too. Look at this: “In the 2007 Spanish Formula 3 season, Jordá finished fourth in the Copa F300 standings – recording three podium finishes during the season”

      But when you look those results you’ll learn the f300 was a mini championship inside the spanish f3 which had 9 drivers in it and only 4 of those drove the full season. In other words her “podium finishes” and 4th place in the championship are at best midpack finishes and last place in the championship. In reality her best result was 12th:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Spanish_Formula_Three_Championship
      Good enough for f1 test driver if you have the right gender I’d guess. Good riddance.

    5. Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me. Carmen has a habit of having to explain why she can’t do something when others around her can… ….though as this was a fish-in-a-barrel exercise on paper, I was expecting her to at least make a W Series grid before she found herself in this position.

      I don’t think this W Series is aimed at women with sponsors, though. As a TV series that happens to be about motorsport, it will have complex product placement opportunities that would be stymied by permitting significant exposure for thid-party funding. This also allows it to position itself as a series that doesn’t require funding to participate in – if driver sponsors have to pay for it, then the statement would be false (at least, by the standards motorsport uses).

      Since W Series isn’t formatted for women with sponsors, and every series contributing points onto the F1 Superlicence system is, it underlines that W Series won’t help women get to F1.

  7. I’ve been critical of specific actions and initiatives of Liberty.

    But, man, there’s no quicker way to make me a Liberty supporter/apologist than the phrase “Ecclestone ready to lead F1 peace talks”

  8. A fascinating story by Brendon Hartley, exciting reading, and although I’m going to miss him a bit the fact still stands that he wasn’t too much of a match for Gasly most of the time.

    Regarding the COTD: That could be although I still don’t necessarily entirely agree with the expectations being too high, but we shall wait and see.

  9. Wasn’t she the one who sowed the seeds for this gender segregation in the first place ? Wasn’t it her universally panned comments that ignited the (unfortunate) creation of W-series ? Wasn’t it her who took three steps back for the women racing (and succesfully) in the top motorsport series after her “appointment” in to a role in the FIA

    And now she doesn’t even take part in what she helped create.

    1. Ironic, isn’t it…

  10. Anything to do with Jorda isn’t normal now is it, though? When she tested for Nissan in Formula E, we were never able to see her times, because she shared a car with Buemi, so it came up as Buemi / Jorda on the timing screens. So I wasn’t terribly surprised to see the Tweet. Surely she would have never made it in anyway.

  11. You gotta admire the cheek of Bernie. You watch he’ll unite all the race promoters behind him and he’ll be facing off across the table from Liberty dismantling the race deals he made.

    1. All while telling us he’s doing us a favour (and probably pocketing a paycheque from FOPA in the process).

  12. “I don’t want to lie on my deathbed and see the sport I created go downhill.”
    Is this dude for real?

  13. Really great read on Hartley blog, it gives you really the perception of how is to be an f1 driver. The feel you have in a qualifying lap must be so intense! But the pressure and the politics ….really sorry for the outcome. But life is already harsh at f1, and at Red Bull, it’s worse.

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