Why this is a good thing, please read.

Yes, fundamentally males or females don't have an advantage in esports. That is not what this is about though.

Gaming, and simracing especially is very male dominated. And the sad fact is that girls/women are often discouraged. 1/? https://twitter.com/F1/status/1381566436297076737

For anyone that frequents my stream, we have seen it happen first hand. Whenever a male friend is on stream, no questions are asked. Whenever a female friend is on stream, there are always people that question the reason why.

She can't be enjoying this hobby so there must be a reason she is here.

Sometimes this also goes further than that, with active comments like typical women driver. Sometimes it is not even malicious intent, for example she's not bad for a girl.

All of this discourages girl/women to enjoy the hobby we all do, simracing.

Having this wildcard in F1 esports and hopefully finding someone that can be competitive will encourage girls and women to participate and serve as example for the rest of the community that women can kick our asses just as men can do.

What is holding them back now is purely the numbers. If 100 times as many males do simracing, the top levels will be male dominant as they are now.

This is only a first step, but it is a step that helps us go in the right direction. The long run goal should be to have girls and boys getting into our hobby and with more equal representation females will get to the level of males also in the top of simracing.

That is when we do not need 'gimicks' like this. For now, this is a very good step in the right direction for simracing.

Thanks for listening to my TED talk :)