WEC announces end to grid girls

Jack Hunsley · Apr 3, 2015

As the season opener for this years WEC nears ever closer the series have announced that grid girls, at least on the WEC grid, are now a thing of the past

Having been a staple in pretty much every racing series you can name for decades, grid girls will not be part of the WEC circus when the series arrives at Silverstone in a little under two weeks time.

Gerard Neveu, the WEC chief executive, revealed the news stating that 'from Silverstone next week, you will see that for any race we will do - no grid girls like in the past', adding that 'for (him) that is the past. The condition of women is a little bit different now.'

Anthony Davidson, who will start his title defense on home soil in his Toyota TS040 alongisde Sebastian Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima, agreed with the move. Davidson said that 'it's old school to have such a concept as grid girls. Surely the world's moved on? And motor racing should follow quite closely what the rest of the world's doing in that respect.'

Instead of lining the cars up in grid formation they will instead be lined up in an old-fashioned 'Le Mans start' formation, with Neveu confirming that cars would line up diagonally opposite the pitwall and grandstand before starting the formation lap.

Brownninja97 · Apr 3, 2015

Because we need some big hairy grid guys drinking a beer and waving a flag.

Martin Vindis · Apr 3, 2015

... why?

Torcano · Apr 3, 2015

Is this like a late april fool's prank?? xD

Jack Hunsley · Apr 3, 2015

Torcano said:
Is this like a late april fool's prank?? xD

Nope, it's legit:

Joel · Apr 3, 2015

Jack Hunsley said:
Nope, it's legit:

View attachment 88010

*muffled scream

Torcano · Apr 3, 2015

Jack Hunsley said:
Nope, it's legit:

View attachment 88010

LOL... that quote makes 0 sense. What they are saying is - "We already have beautiful women that work with the teams who get a lot of appreciation from everybody regardless of the existence of those bimbos on the grid, but we will go ahead and remove them anyway because the future will scorn us if they ever realized that we had beautiful women who on their own will took the job of holding a numberplate on the grid. We would rather not associate ourselves with the latter as their kind is disgusting, but please don't think of it that way because we are attached to the adjective "beautiful" to describe women more than a koala to a eucalyptus branch, just look at the word beautiful and think that this justifies us looking down on a group of women for being confident in their beauty and willfully choosing modelling as their career path, "beautiful" is our get out of jail free card here so please just glance over our bad excuse and behold how "progressive" we are."

Jeebus, I don't even give a furry rat's backside about those grid girls but this quote is laughable on so many levels that it had me in stitches. Hooray for PC bull

I guess.

But, I'm excited for the LeMans style starts nevertheless, should be fun watching drivers scurrying into their cockpits in their restrictive racing suits which usually ends up making them run like little girls.

Joel · Apr 3, 2015

What's now going to get me excited do the race????

Ole Marius Myrvold · Apr 3, 2015

Am I the only one who sees absolutely no issue with this?

Many would have a problem if they switched it, to attract female viewers. And put out grid-hunks. Muscular manly bodies, in small, and sometimes too tight shorts. Some shaved, some hairy. To cater for the woman that might be slightly interested in racing.

What I would like to see though. Is a heap of local, young karters. Getting to stand in front of a car, in their driving suit, with their helmet. That would be an experience for a young kid. Much like football-clubs (especially in PL) have kids with the players out to the field.
Just think about how proud the kid would be, to stand there.

Pär Öqvist · Apr 3, 2015

Well it was a bit of a silly tradition I have to say

Nice way to cut costs.

Warren Schembri · Apr 3, 2015

Cant we have both??

Not bothered but that statement sounds more sexist than actually having grid girls!

Torcano · Apr 3, 2015

@Ole Marius Myrvold Nope, nobody really cares about the grid girls. If WEC decided to get rid of them without a statement and moved on to the next race I doubt anybody would even notice. The fact that they gave out such a poor and not thought out reasoning as to why they got rid of them is the amusing part. I for one would have a good laugh if they switched grid girls to hunky men wearing nothing but boxers, bow-ties and bunny ears. Take that for being progressive.

James Cook · Apr 3, 2015

Won't somebody think of all the unemployed grid girls.

Yuri · Apr 3, 2015

NO GRID GRILLS? oh girls nevermind

Dan Allen · Apr 3, 2015

Soo, they're complaining about grid girls being old skool, yet they want to go back to the 60's with the diagonal parking along the pit wall...

Not that I have a problem, but to say they want to have progression and yet they go back to something even older is beyond me

Bernd Graf · Apr 3, 2015

Jarvis said:
What's now going to get me excited do the race????

Your hand I suppose. Grief sakes, that assumes that you SHOULD get exited to do the race because of women. Doesn't the act of racing or the participation as a fan do enough already? Grid girls are the sexualization of women...time enough to ax all grid girls.

Joel · Apr 3, 2015

Bernd Graf said:
Your hand I suppose. Grief sakes, that assumes that you SHOULD get exited to do the race because of women. Doesn't the act of racing or the participation as a fan do enough already? Grid girls are the sexualization of women...time enough to ax all grid girls.

Just joking

Eckhart von Glan · Apr 3, 2015

not much of a loss. that press statement, though, is epic

.

Joao Alves · Apr 3, 2015

Ole Marius Myrvold said:
What I would like to see though. Is a heap of local, young karters. Getting to stand in front of a car, in their driving suit, with their helmet. That would be an experience for a young kid. Much like football-clubs (especially in PL) have kids with the players out to the field.
Just think about how proud the kid would be, to stand there.

It'd be even better if they replaced some of the useless stuff they talk about in the pre-race with some details about the stand-out kids. Who knows? Maybe one of the kids holding a flag is 10 years away from winning the F1 WDC. It'd be a pretty life changing experience for someone whose passionate about racing to get to hold the flag for a team on the grid of a WEC event.