Saudi woman drives F1 car
Aseel Al-Hamad drove an F1 racecar ahead of the start of Sunday’s French Grand Prix. Trailblazer takes lap of Grand Prix circuit on day driving ban ends Al-Hamad is the first female member of the Saudi Arabian Motorsport Federation.
For Aseel Al-Hamad, the moment that preceded the French Grand Prix marked the end of one era and the onset of what she hopes will be a new one.
Al-Hamad, who is from Saudi Arabia, drove a Formula One car for a lap of the Le Castellet circuit Sunday, the day that a ban on women driving in the Gulf kingdom ended. She climbed behind the wheel of a 2012 Renault as part of a parade of Renaults marking the company’s return to the race, which was won by Lewis Hamilton.
“I believe today is not just celebrating the new era of women starting to drive, it’s also the birth of women in motor sport in Saudi Arabia,” Al-Hamad said (via Reuters). “The most important thing I am looking forward to is to start seeing the next generation, young girls, trying (motor sports careers). I want to watch them training and taking the sport very seriously as a career.
“This is going to be really my biggest achievement.”
Women exuberantly took to the road at midnight, ending the world’s last ban on female drivers. King Salman ordered the ban to be lifted last September as part of reforms pushed by his son in what is a conservative Muslim kingdom. The ban had come to symbolize a “harsh subjugation of women,” the Washington Post’s Kareem Fahim wrote.
“This is a day I’ve been waiting for,” Dania Alagili told him, “for the last 30 years.”
A Saudi interior designer and business executive, Al-Hamad had driven the car, which Kimi Raikkonen drove to victory in Abu Dhabi in 2012, earlier this month and her lap went smoothly Sunday.
“It was perfect. Everything was smooth, I felt I belong in the seat,” she said afterward. “I loved the fact that there was an audience around. Today is magical.”
Al-Hamad is the first female member of the Saudi Arabian Motorsport Federation and serves on the Women in Motorsport Commission set up by Formula One’s governing body. She also was the first woman to import a Ferrari into Saudi Arabia and has taken her 458 Spider to tracks around the country for workshops.
She hopes there will soon be female race drivers in her country. “For sure, definitely. And this is going to be my mission in Saudi.”
Cradling her 4-month-old daughter, Nour Obeid scans the car showroom and heads to the midsized SUVs.
In the past, a woman looking to buy a car in Saudi Arabia would focus on the features in the back, but Obeid is checking out the driver’s seat, picturing herself doing grocery store runs or school drop-offs.
On Sunday, the kingdom lifted the world’s only ban on women driving, a milestone for women who have had to rely on drivers, male relatives, taxis and ridehailing services to get to work, go shopping and get around.
The move could help boost the Saudi economy by ensuring stronger female participation in the workforce, meaning increased household incomes.
Car companies also see opportunity in this country of 20 million people, half of them female.
Ahead of the ban being lifted, they’ve put Saudi women in sales on showroom floors and targeted potential new drivers with advertising and social media marketing.
Earlier this year, Ford sponsored a driving experience specifically for women in the city of Jiddah.
Saudi Arabia is the largest automobile market in the Middle East, with at least 405,000 cars expected to be sold this year.
That’s down significantly from a few years ago, and the cost of buying a new car has gone up with the introduction of a value-added tax.
Still, car sales are expected to increase between 6 and 10 per cent once women start driving, the chairperson of the national committee for cars at the Council of Saudi Chambers told the daily Saudi Gazette.
The government recently began allowing women to sell cars as well.
Sales jobs had previously been reserved for men in the highly conservative country, where unrelated men and women cannot freely mix.
Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia issued its first driver’s licences to 10 women who already had licences from other countries. Since then, dozens more have been licensed. None can drive until the ban is officially lifted.
The overwhelming majority of women in Saudi Arabia still don’t have licences.
Many haven’t had a chance to take the gender-segregated driving courses that were first offered to women only a few months ago.
There’s also a wait-list of several months for a course at Princess Nora University in Riyadh.
And the classes can be costly, running up to several hundred dollars.
Others already own cars driven by chauffeurs and are in no rush to drive themselves. “We were princesses … We were in a good place. Now we’re going to be in a better place,” said Maram Al-Hazer, who is a manager at several car showrooms, including Ford, who has two family drivers.
“To be honest, everyone wants to relax and sit in the back seat and have someone to drive for them.” Though women don’t need a male relative’s approval to get a driver’s licence or buy a car, the moral and even financial support of a husband or father is key in this male-dominated society, where men have final say over a woman’s ability to marry, travel abroad or obtain a passport.
Nourah Almehaize started selling cars for the first time two months ago, but had already worked for six years in a call centre handling queries about vehicles.
She’s eager to learn how to drive so she can test-drive the Ford Explorer and Edge she’s been selling to customers, but her husband is telling her to wait.
“He is telling me not to (drive right away), to postpone it for a year until we see what it will be like, but I will apply anyways,” she said.
“Currently, I have a driver. After a year I may not need him if I’ve had enough practice and I’m comfortable.”
Uzma Chohan, 38, has never driven and relies on a driver or her husband to go places.
She prefers to run errands with her husband, which means waiting until he’s back from work in the evening or until the weekend.
The couple from Pakistan, who have two boys, has lived in Saudi Arabia for the past 17 years.
They’re looking at larger SUVs for the family, but she won’t be driving just yet.
“In the beginning years, like to two and three, I’m a little scared about the people. Some naughty guys, you know,” she said, giggling shyly.
“But after two years, after one year, it becomes normal, inshallah (God willing).”
Meanwhile, Obeid, who already has a driver’s licence from Jordan, plans to obtain a Saudi licence when she returns from travelling abroad this summer.
“Me personally, it’s what the car looks like that’s important to me. Then I ask my husband about the specs so he takes a look at it to see what it’s like and if it’s durable,” she said.
Obeid’s husband, Mustafa Radwan, is encouraging her to drive and says he’d feel safer knowing that she and their two kids don’t need to rely on ridehailing services.
He’s optimistic and hopeful that Saudi men will be courteous to female drivers on the road.
“It’s different than what people expect. Myself as a man, or any man, when he sees a woman, he’ll give her the priority and give her the right of way to drive, and protect her.
“Maybe it’s in the culture,” Radwan said.
Not sounding as convinced, Obeid said: “I wish there were more men like you.”