I remember the furore about this at the time - the first people to complain about it were the Grid Girls who essentially had their living taken away from them so someone else could feel comfortable about the image of the sport. A fairly predictable response. One of the grid girls was interviewed on UK TV and she explained she liked her job and had never been forced to wear anything or do anything she hadn't wanted to and if feminism was about empowering women then why was her means of earning a living being stopped? The thing that really stuck in my mind was the response from the feminist activist who was being interviewed with her and supported the move - she simply told the grid girl she shouldn't be thinking like that. The conversation reached a sort of impasse at that point.
F1 is a sport but cheerleaders exist in other sports so grid girls and guys should be in F1. People like looking at beautiful people. It is the grid people's choice to go into said job/career. They obviously don't mind being looked at and it's not hurting anyone, infact it's helping. It's a small draw to the sport and more advertising from the uniforms/costumes they wear. The only people it upsets are those who probably don't watch anyways and of they do its such a small percentage they don't mater. They're just loud.
They still have cheer leaders at COTA and other American sports have cheerleaders so it’s clearly not an American thing. Not to mention other motorsports don’t have grid girls anymore.
Ofc it exists , Japan has ine of the biggest media fanbase regarding motorsport , SuperGT , Formula drift , formula nippon these are at least the disciplines where grid girls enjoy huge success , bless Japan ❤
