BAR founder, Craig Pollock is looking to return to the F1 grid in 2025/2026 with a new team that would comprise a 50/50 male-female workforce.

Born in Falkirk, Scotland, Pollock was Jacques Villeneuve's manager for much of his career and during that time founded British American Racing.

Leaving BAR in 2002, where he was replaced by David Richards, the team subsequently morphing into Honda, Brawn, then Mercedes, Pollock founded PURE (Propulsion Universelle et Recuperation d'Energie), which unsuccessfully sought to supply power units to F1.

His latest project, is Formula Equal, as he explained to CNN.

"This has been going on for close on four years," he said, "the building up of a brand new Formula 1 team, but taking into it our ambition to deliver and build opportunities and pathways for women to get to the very top level inside motorsports.

"The concept and the idea was to try and build a Formula 1 team that is 50% male, 50% female, which is extremely hard to do if you have an existing Formula 1 team. This is a lot easier with a clean sheet.

"It would be absolutely fantastic," he replied, when asked if this meant a woman driver. "But the reality is to be able to get into the cockpit of a Formula 1 car, you've got to have a certain number of points on your superlicence.

"I can't put my hand on my heart and say yes," he admitted, "but we are keeping a very close eye on it. I just hope for the women that this is the case.

"But to make this very clear, this is not just about women driving Formula 1 cars," he insisted. "This is about throughout the team; we want it even up to the board level if we can do that. We would like to have a gender equal Formula 1 team going forward.

"We know that we are going to have to go through our academy systems," he said of the process by which he hopes to establish the 50/50 workforce. "We know we're going to have to build it up because there are not enough women at the moment who are trained up to the level of Formula One and they've got to earn a place in there at the same time."

In terms of funding, the Scot is eyeing an increasingly popular source.

"We are in intense discussions with I would just say a Gulf area country," he said. "I'm not really in the position to talk about that and be fully open about it at this present time - that will come out in the very near future. I just hope it's going to work because it does take a lot of money."

Indeed, Pollock admits the team would be based in the region.

"Obviously that is linked to equality, diversity, inclusion, and sustainability," he said. "This is not a question of me going to them. In reality, it's them having come to us because we have a turnkey operation with the business plan, with all the costings, with everything ready to go.

"This has to be built from the bottom up in a Gulf state and this is what we are aiming to do. This is a long-term project - this is not short-term."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by didaho, 30/03/2023 12:39

"@Kenji, the stakes (and track record of the subject) haven't changed at all since FW was active?"

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2. Posted by alvarezh3, 30/03/2023 2:08

"@ Kenji........ 10-4 !"

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3. Posted by kenji, 30/03/2023 2:00

"@alvarezh3 IMO, undoubtedly yes. "

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4. Posted by alvarezh3, 29/03/2023 16:45

"@ kenji

Would it be correct to say that the financial support given by Marlboro to McLaren and Saudi Airlines (now Saudia) to Williams, was what propelled these teams to be the powerful competitors of the eighties? And that these sponsors additionally gave them the economic impulse for growth?"

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5. Posted by meatball, 29/03/2023 14:49

"so rather than chase the best talent, regardless of Gender this clown is basing hiring on gender? Good luck with that. Man, Woman, non-binary... the ONLY thing that matters in this is Talent. And then on top of this he's getting funding from the Middle East? An area famous for gross discrimination and sports-washing?? Sweet mother of pearl, it's too early for april fools jokes... "

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6. Posted by kenji, 29/03/2023 12:24

"Saudi funding is an old and accepted source...Frank Williams, if he was still with us, could lay testament to Saudi capital via Saudia. Nothing to see here."

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7. Posted by didaho, 29/03/2023 11:32

"Just a distraction tactic to keep the tongues wagging about anything other than the Saudi funding."

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8. Posted by kenji, 29/03/2023 7:11

"@alvaezh3.....yes, of course. Melbourne has always been the main game. Anything else is a mere sideshow distraction."

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9. Posted by alvarezh3, 29/03/2023 6:28

"@ Kenji

Came here to say the same things you have expressed.

Thank you for saving me some keyboard clicks. :-)

Our attention now to Melbourne!"

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10. Posted by kenji, 29/03/2023 1:40

"Upon further reflection, if this Pollock proposal gets the nod and Andretti don't make the cut then it will surely be a decision based on a false premise that new teams need to have the backing/involvment of a major OEM? "

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11. Posted by kenji, 29/03/2023 1:01

"I am heartily sick of this entire issue. Gender quotas are nonsense. Employment criteria for any business, and F1 is a business, is to hire ,based on pure meritocracy. Anything else is simply, in political language, branch stacking!!!"

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12. Posted by ChickenFarmerF1, 28/03/2023 21:54

"Women don't go into STEM in nearly the numbers of men. The reasons are many and varied, but have resisted substantial long term attempts at being changed. Women on average prefer people, men on average prefer things. It's human nature, not a knock either way. There are women that love STEM, men that hate it. But there's a reason it's 90% male, and that reason is not sexism.

If a team is to be 50% female, it will, by necessity, have lower quality employees. Because you're staffing half the company from the 10% of engineers/STEM fields that is female. Male and female engineers will have a similar shaped curve for quality. But to get enough women to fill up the company you'll have to go much farther down that quality curve to find enough that are willing to work at your team. Either that or you're going to have to pay the women a LOT more than the men to get enough from the good end of that quality curve, but that will dramatically impact the men that are willing to work for you. Especially in a cost cap world, where there's essentially a fixed budget for staff, so you'd have to not just pay the men less than the women, but less than the men can make at other teams. Or you'll have to cut budget from somewhere else to keep the pay for the men competitive, which will compromise your ability to develop a competitive car one way or another.

It would be the same for any female dominated profession like nursing, teaching, etc. If you were to insist that half the employees in a firm in one of those sectors be men you'd have to go farther down the quality curve to get enough men to staff the business than you would with women.

At best Pollock is virtue signaling. It won't actually do anything to address gender differences in any meaningful sense. And could actually harm the case for women in STEM."

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13. Posted by @R1Racing71, 28/03/2023 20:44

"Put this in the same file as Stefan GP and USA F1."

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14. Posted by elsiebc, 28/03/2023 20:14

"And just like that, Williams moves up the grid!"

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15. Posted by Burton, 28/03/2023 18:05

"Not a bad idea, but in the Gulf and the hands of this numpty? Is it April 1st already?"

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Pollock eyes Formula Equal for F1

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