28/03/2023
NEWS STORY
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."