The history of formula1 has known great champions. People around the world are watching this sport as if it is the most important part of their life; formula1 is ranked as the second most popular sport in the world (Mosley, 2001, p.03). Formula1 races are held all over the world from Africa to Australia to the United States to Europe to Asia, so I think everybody would agree that it is a global sport. Seen this fact, it is pretty questionable that the series never had any black drivers. The FIA formula1 world championship was founded in 1950 and never had an encounter with a black driver from the beginning on. Seen certain facts, I think that we can agree that there were and will not be any black drivers in the near future of formula1.
Formula One is GREAT Britain
Formula One 2011
Formula 1 97The FIA is the organisation that made formula1 a professional sport. FIA stands for FEDERATION INTERNATIONALE DE L'AUTOMOBILE. The FIA's head quarters are in Paris and it is there that they decided to make car sports a global appreciated sport. The FIA owns all the car sports in the world except for some American series like the CART, NASCAR and INDY CAR series.
Silverstone, May 13th 1950, the FIA holds its first official grand prix with only white European drivers. The teams taking place in this event don't even exist any more now a days; Masserati, Alfa Romeo, Talbot and ERA. Before this day, teams would gather up together and race for fun, just to test the performances of their cars.
As you can understand, formula1 is not only a sport to entertain the audience; formula1 is one of the biggest businesses on the world. The main development of regular street cars comes directly from the series. This situation is comparable with a war, when two or more countries are in war, there is a competitive atmosphere, both want to win. In situations like war, a country's economy and technological development gets a huge boost. The same formula goes for car racing, since all teams want to win; they are forced to develop their cars to keep up with their rivals, so they have to make progress.
All this competitiveness makes it understandable that the teams can not afford to make mistakes or to lose money, and we are talking about a lot of money here! A basic formula 1 car costs around and about two million dollars, and the top teams use nine or ten cars a year A basic one day test soon costs 150.000 dollars a day, and in a year, the richer teams test about 50 times. To sponsor a big team, a company has to be prepared to spend millions of dollars on the event (Prost, 1996, p.98). The expenses of the Ferrari team in 2001 were 400 million dollars.
Seen the fact that the world's rich Dom and welfare is in the hands of the whites for more than 85 percent, it is understandable that it is going to be hard to find any other people in the world of F1. If we look at the statistics for the world economy, we can see that the equalization of the world's welfare over whites and the rest of the world increases just a little bit every year. This brings me to the assumption that for the coming 50 years, there will be no black drivers in formula1 nor will there be a lot of blacks in the companies of formula1.
A big group of people claims that we can expect our first black driver in the near future. They base this statement on the fact that there is no reason to believe that the color of the skin matters for the driving skills one has. I fully agree with these people, but there is one thing these people have to keep in mind. The heart of racing is in Europe. It is there that they started racing. This is where the champions got raised. Since Europe is almost only white, we can assume that the chances a black driver will come forth almost to zero. As far as the rest of the world goes, it is pretty straight forward. High competitive racing like F1 is not popular in America because there is not enough entertainment for them, probably because there aren't enough accidents because the drivers can actually drive their cars. In Asia, racing is very popular but they just don't seem to be able to bring a good driver forth. It is also hard to believe that a black driver will be coming from an Asian country since they don't have too many of them over there. In the rest of the world it is either one of both sides. Or racing is not popular enough to spend money on it, or it is popular but there simply isn't any money to develop their drivers.
It is scientific proven that black people have a slower life style than any other race. This is because they adapted to their climate. Even the black people that did not get raised in their own country have this life style in their selves (Peters, 1998?). This way of live is buried in their genetically environment. This brings another argument that black drivers will not be. Because formula1 is the fastest sport out there. The reaction of a formula1 driver has to be faster than a fighter pilot. You have to be focused for more than 150 percent. Seen the back ground of the blacks, it is hard to believe that these people will ever compete in racing sports. It is the same as asking a turtle to do a running game with a puma. It is just not in the turtle's genes to give that performance. It does not mean that the puma is a better creature though, because if they do a swimming game, it will be obvious who wins.
Trough out the world, the everlasting battle against racism goes on and on. In formula 1, this same battle takes place. If we want the blacks to be in the sport, they first will have to be accepted by the whites. Even though everybody says that they are not a racist, deep inside they still are, but in a kind way. This rule goes for everybody, from Europeans to Canadians to Americans to Africans. When a lot of white people own the money in a business, it is going to be hard for them to share it with other people. It is also hard for one to break through the ice, to break out of your secure, protected world, to deal with something strange to you. On the 24th of September 1999, prins malik, a black man from Soedan, bought a 45 percent trade in the Arrows team. Within six month the respected business man was gone, sold his stocks back to the previous owner. He said that even though everybody was friendly and hard working, he still felt necklected (Malik, 2000, p. 78).
All over the world, black people are participating in sports on the higher levels, in running, rowing and basket ball, they are even the superior players, so why don't they have a future in formula1? The exact reason for this will never be found, but as they say in the racing world, "racing has to be in one his blood, it cannot be developed"ÃÂ. (Eccelstone, 1999, p.02)In history, it is proven that the black people don't have it in their blood. This makes me believe that the will not have it in the future either, after 100 years of not having it, they will not have it within the next 100 either.
Up until now, there have only been a couple of black people who almost made it into the fast lane. One of them even did some tests for the late steward team. As predictable, the poor guy did not have enough money to enter the team and participate in formula1. The roots of this problem are really simple. Black people often come from poor countries. To enter the premier league, a driver needs either an awful lot of money from sponsors, or an excessive amount of talent and experience. If we realize where most of the black people come from, we can see that that is from poor areas or areas with money but just not enough for expensive sports like Formula1. This also explains why these people are successful in other sports. For instance, when a kid is five years old, it isn't that expensive to buy a basket ball or a soccer ball for him. These sports can be practiced rather cheap, starting on a young age, that explains why they are successful in other sports, car sports is just simply too expensive.
The talent issue is also quickly solved. Successful race car drivers have been racing since the age of five. Their dads had to drag them to the go-cart circuit and kick them into their carts, five times a week. Since racing is not really popular in areas where a lot of black people live, it is unimaginable that little kids will be motivated to go carting, they probably don't even know that there is such a thing as Formula1 out there.
I hope that one day, the war against racism will be won and every body will be seen as an actual person. The poorer countries should get more help to develop themselves and to get an industry going. The money will have to be equally spread over the world. That day will be the day that formula1 will see drivers of all colours in its cars.
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