Talk:List of female racing drivers

June 2017‎
I'm pinging you guys because you seem to have done the most work on this list, and I wanted your input. My impression is that this list is not especially informative as it stands now. In order to make it more useful and attractive for the user I suggest organizing by form of racing (e.g. drag racing, rally racing, open wheel, stock car, sports car, motorcycle, etc.). Here is an example of what I would propose switching to with all the A countries. Let me know if you have input.

Open Wheel

Production Car

Rally Car

Sports Car

Sprint Car

Touring Car

— Preceding unsigned comment added by PotvinSux (talk • contribs) 18:27, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Use of flags
User:Dennis Bratland makes the point that flags are inappropriate per MOS:FLAG because athletes do not represent their place of origin. A counterpoint would be that start lists, in North American motorsports at least, virtually always include hometown, and racers tend to be known by and identified with where they are based. PotvinSux (talk) 18:49, 27 February 2018 (UTC) This is perhaps less relevant in Europe as a similar function is served by nation.PotvinSux (talk) 18:52, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You could add their hometown, state or province to the list, in prose without a flag icon, if you really feel it's necessary. The information itself isn't a problem. It's the use of flags, which tends to be divisive and controversial, and the iconography tends to overpower other information. MOS:SOVEREIGNFLAG and Do not use subnational flags without direct relevance. If you don't want to do the work of a search-and-replace to put the information back, without the icons, I could do it. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 18:58, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The idea that flags should be viewed as controversial and distracting as opposed to mildly helpful at best and neutral at worst strikes me as beyond ludicrous, but your reading of the MOS is clearly reasonable. I do think there's a case to be made that place of origin is considerably more relevant in racing than in other sports because of the element of a physical shop at the lower levels, the way careers evolve, and so forth. A parallel might be a sport like figure skating, which is club based. That's good enough for me personally as far as relevance goes, but the bar MOS sets does seem quite high. It's certainly not worth the controversy. The removing of the flags themselves is not the hard part; I just need to think a bit about how else to incorporate this information without the list becoming a nightmare of text. Any thoughts on that score? The issue I keep running into with this list, which I've just come back to after a while, is that none of the parameters seem great. Multiple people participate in multiple series and multiple types of racing, etc.PotvinSux (talk) 19:27, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * On a list that doesn't even tell is if they drive race cars or power boats, pilot airplanes, or ride motorcycles, it seems of little consequence to worry about whether a UK driver is from England or Scotland. We know a US driver is from Texas and not Michigan, but we have no idea if they drove in NASCAR or INDYCAR?With motorsport, it's almost always manufacturer based, or a privateer company. Car or motorcycle manufactures hire whomever they can. Privateer companies do to. Italians ride for Japanese companies, Americans for UK, it doesn't matter. The Olympics and the World Cup assign one team per country, and even if a competitor was born in another country, they go to the Olympics representing the country they play for. In MotoGP or Formula 1 or NASCAR, none of the teams represent any country.It doesn't do any harm if you want to say which province/state/city-state or whatever they were in, but it is low priority information. If anything, I'd reorganize the list by type (car, motorcycle, boat, plane), and then by class (NASCAR, MotoGP), and place Country, State, and City of birth after the birth date. Regardless, no non-sovereign flags. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:21, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Joining this discussion a bit late, but I don't really see any point to the flag icons/crests at all. There's no way to justify the non-free use of any such images in this article, but even the PD/freely licensed ones do not seem to have any real encyclopedic value. If listing the hometown/home province of the individuals is necessary, then these can be linked and the flag imagery can be seen there. -- Marchjuly (talk) 10:55, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The flags ought to be removed. They only confuse readers; the recognition rate of Stema e Qarkut Shkodër.svg and almost all others is indistinguishable from zero. (Don't tell me about mouse hovering that reveals the province/state; that doesn't work on mobile devices.) The MoS has a reason for its guidance. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:28, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree that these subnational flags are inappropriate here. Even though I feel that the MOS guidance's is a bit outdated. Technology has evolved since it was created and these days these flags are generated through templates that allow even the blind people find out their meaning. Nevertheless, if you take Maria de Villota for instance, I have never seen here enter any race under any other flag as the Spanish one. I disagree however with the notion that teams and drivers don't represent nations. All teams/constructors competing in FIA and FIM sanctioned events have to be entered by a national motorsports governing body. And they are judged to represent the country that enters them. Likewise drivers need a license displaying a nationality they are judged to represent. In F1 there are currently a couple of drivers who have dual nationalities (Grosjean, Verstappen, Stroll) and were requested by the FIA to decide which of their nationalities they literally want to represent. Lastly, both the winning driver and team have their national anthems played on the podium for them after each race, likewise to the Olympics. Also there are a number sports at the olympics (eg. tennis, badminton, table tennis,...) were during some events more than one team per country is allowed to enter.Tvx1 14:24, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
 * And to how many of the drivers listed overleaf do these circumstances (FIA, FIM, F1) apply? If you want to change the MoS, WT:Manual of Style/Icons is the place; here, it just needs to be observed. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 15:06, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not as familair with the racing world as perhaps others are, but this list article is divided up by country/nationality. This in my opinion makes even national flag icons redundant and distracting. Icons cannot/shouldn't be used in the section headings per MOS:HEAD or MOS:ACCIM, which means the only real place for them is for each individual entry; however, if every subsection represents a specific country/nationality, then every entry in the subsection is going to be assumed to also represent that same country/nationality, right? If there are dual nationality racers or their country of birth is different from the country they represent when they race, then this can be explained in a free words in a paranthetical after the name or the reader can find more details in the racer's stand-alone article. The same goes for any subnational information relevant to the entry. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:11, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
 * The flags were removed once before here by only to be subsequently be re-added here by . Based upon this discussion, it does appear that a consensus has been established not to use them; so unless anyone  wants to still object, I think they should be removed. An edit sum can be left linking to this discussion for reference. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:42, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that they ought to be removed. Dennis Bratland's edit summary presented the argument clearly, where PotvinSux doesn't provide any. Further, all interwiki links, currently in the form  should be rewritten as   which produces María Abbate. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:57, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * This is all well reasoned, and I concur. Thank you for making the relevant changes!PotvinSux (talk) 19:21, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

CSV list almost done
I'm converting this list into a CSV table so that you can work with all of it as structured data in Excel or Tableau or whatever application you like, then export it into a formatted table or list using any hierarchy or order of columns you wish. I'll post the result here in a bit. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:24, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Updated with added columns for genre and series of racing. Only about 20 of them are filled in so far. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:28, 28 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Many thanks, this is very helpful. The breaking down of people by type of racing and series is problematic because drivers are adventurous. It's very common for open wheel drivers to go run sports cars, for example, and switching series is obviously common too. Also, coming up with standards for what counts as a notable series also gets messy. So as a results of this you end up with many people in many places and it just gets overwhelming quickly. The list was divided by country when I found it, and that seemed odd to me at first, but the more I thought about it started to make sense as one of those "the worst option except all the others" things.PotvinSux (talk) 19:32, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's true that they move around, but lists are meant to be summaries of the most important facts, not comprehensive. If a motorcycle racer came up from Moto3, then raced in Supersport then Superbike then MotoGP, it's enough for this list to say they are primarily known as a MotoGP racer, since that is the peak of their career, and have a second column for whatever they are also known for, like Superbike. If someone has a really extraordinary number of different categories of racing they are known for, that can be mentioned in a "notes" or "comments" column. So we note that Danica Patrick was prominient in NASCAR and Indycar, without also listing every single minor series she raced in, from like Junior Formula or Sports Car. And we can always just add a third column and include even more of their career details.As far as structure, most Featured Lists in motorsport categories use sortable tables, not broken down with . For example List of Formula One Grand Prix winners, or List of Formula One World Constructors' Champions or List of Formula One fatalities or List of Grand Prix motorcycle racing World champions. So the default sorting could be alphabetical or chronological or by vehicle or racing series, but by clicking a sort button the reader can group the names by country, or put all the car drivers together, or whatever column they like. So we don't have to agonize that much over finding the perfect sort order or grouping, since the door is open to any other sort order. Even if we kept the current format and had a section header for each country, I still think the highest priority is to identify the genre and racing series they are known for.It's going to take a long time to get all of these filled in, since there's 188 of them and you have to do it article-by-article. If you want to add a few, then save it to the list above, I can copy the updated list, add a few more, and save it back here. Once more than half of them are full we can move that into the main article space, and continue to fill it in. I'd still maintain a CSV list, and generate a wikitable from that, because wikitables are a nightmare to maintain or change. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:17, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Interwiki linking
In addition to, another thing I noticed about this article is that there's a lot of interwiki linking. While I understand that this is sometimes necesary, I'm not sure if the way it's currently being done is the best way to do it.

For example, María Abbate is interwiki linked to Spanish Wikipedia using the syntax. There is no article about her (at least none has yet been written) on English Wikipedia, so a conventional Wikilink would appear as a WP:REDLINK. Red links might not be very aesthetically pleasing, but they do serve a purpose when used properly. The current linking style shows blue links, but directs the reader to other language Wikipedias where the notability standards for inclusion might not be as stringent as they are on English Wikipedia.

In such cases, it might be better to follow the suggestion made in WP:ILL and use ill instead; this will show that even though there is no article on English Wikipedia as of yet, there is a corresponding article on another language Wikipedia which reader can look at if they're interested. Using Abbate as an example, the syntax would look like  and the actual link would look like María Abbate. The are lots of others on the list like Abbate which don't yet have even a stub written about them; if these women are really notable per WP:NMOTORSPORT, then at least a stub could probably be written about them making a red link feasible; if they're not, then maybe they shouldn't be included in the list at all per WP:LSC. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:38, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Emphatic . -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:55, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Agreed.PotvinSux (talk) 20:41, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Flick Haig
Missing from UK list a winner in British GT 2019 88.97.0.110 (talk) 12:27, 25 September 2023 (UTC)