Drive to Survive: Claire Williams helps make season six the second-best for women’s speaking time
- Gemma Roper
- Feb 27, 2024
- 2 min read
Women’s speaking time across the six seasons remains below 3% of total run time
Women spoke for 3.1% of Season 6 of the hit Netflix show Drive to Survive, the second highest proportion out of all the seasons so far. They totalled just under 14 minutes of speaking time out of a running time of seven and a half hours across 10 episodes.
Across all 60 episodes of Drive to Survive, women have spoken for slightly over an hour in total. This is just 2.65% of the more than 39-hour run time.
Season 2 has the highest proportion of women’s speaking time at 3.6%. This is thanks to an entire episode focused on Claire Williams in her role as Deputy Team Principal at ROKiT Williams’ Racing in the 2019 season.
In Season 6, Williams appeared as a pundit alongside Formula 1’s Will Buxton and former INDYCAR driver and Sky Sports F1 presenter Danica Patrick. The inclusion of these two women as pundits helped boost the amount of speaking time for women in the show.
Last year the show had no female pundits. Seasons 3 and 4 featured BBC F1 broadcaster Jennie Gow who is gradually returning to the sport after having a serious stroke.
This season marks a significant change from last year as Season 5 only featured six minutes of women’s speaking time, just 1.5% of the total runtime. This attracted widespread scrutiny, including from F1 Academy Director Susie Wolff.
Speaking to BBC Sport last year she said: "I saw a terrifying quote that if you look at Drive to Survive, I think it's 1.8% of screen time features a female.
“How should a young girl, who's eight, and maybe loves F1, how can she visualise herself getting into that paddock if she can't even see participation or women working in the paddock?"
Wolff is one of the other women who feature in Season 6, speaking about the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula 1 Team which is managed by her husband Toto Wolff. She is named on screen as the director of the female-only Formula 1 feeder series, F1 Academy, which enters its second season this year.
The only other women to be named on screen were the wife of Haas team Principal Guenther Steiner, Gertraud Steiner and Reyes Vasquez de Castro, the mother of Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz. Five women were named on screen this season, down from six last year.
Sophie Ogg, Director of Communications at McLaren appeared in episode 3, advising Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Zak Brown on their communication strategy during a difficult period for the team but she was not named on screen. The show did appear to highlight the role of women engineers and mechanics more than in previous seasons, with shots from the team garages and factories often featuring women.
Currently, all the team principals and drivers in the Formula 1 paddock are men, making an imbalance in women’s screen time more likely. The race commentary used in Drive to Survive also only features men.
What do you think about the female representation in Drive to Survive? Please share your comments with us.
QuickBooks Integrations Online Accounting Software Usa. Qbis Helps You To Sync Your Data With Quickbooks Online As Well As Quickbooks Desktop.
Elevate your wardrobe with the refined elegance of a suede jacket from Fit Jacket. Crafted with precision and attention to detail, these jackets offer a soft, luxurious feel that adds a touch of class to any outfit. Whether you're dressing up for a night out or adding polish to your everyday look, Fit Jacket’s suede collection brings unmatched style and comfort together effortlessly. Discover the perfect balance of rugged and refined with a suede jacket that speaks to your unique taste.
In a press release from yesterday, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson put it as well as anyone in saying, "Today, General Tom Stafford went to the eternal heavens, which he so courageously explored as a Gemini and Apollo astronaut as well as a peacemaker in the Apollo-Soyuz link mission. Those link of us privileged to know him are very sad but link grateful we knew a giant."
While we're most accustomed to associating these nicknames with another certain watch industry titan (with much link larger price tags, no less), it strikes me as a brilliant strategic move to partner with an affordable watchmaker like link Timex on a project like this – though I'm sure it will no doubt ruffle some shirt collars along the link way. And, both brands are curating a sort of "speakeasy" effect by not directly mentioning the nicknames themselves.
Would you link look at that – it's 2025! Though it's much too early in the year link to start calling what trends we might see come and go, it looks like Longines is declaring that the forged carbon trend is here to stay. One of the silent hits from the Swatch Group in 2024 was the Tissot PRX Powermatic 80 Carbon, and the watch seems to have surpassed all expectations as we see it link constantly fluctuating in and out of stock across retailers.