The future of motorsport in Britain

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http://www.sportspromedia.com/quick_...david-richards

MSA chariman David Richards made some interesting claims.

On grassroots racing:

There are a reduced number of people participating in MSA events in this country, especially in unregulated corporate kart racing. There’s a high level of participation in other forms of unregulated motorsport -track-days, for example- but we’ve created too much bureaucracy at the grassroots level of the sport, and too much cost for participants at that level.

We’ve got to look at this entire level of grassroots motorsport and try and find ways of reducing the burden of bureaucracy, legislation and cost, and open it up to more people, and be far more embracing of other elements of motorsport that today perhaps traditionalists have felt to be outside our scope.

On karting

Historically, or today, if you wanted to do motor racing as a youngster, you’d end up going and buying yourself a crash helmet and a set of overalls and a go-kart and off you go to a kart track.

But there are some very good corporate kart tracks around the country that are well-managed, well-run and very safe, where you can just turn up and pay a modest amount of money and just have a go.

But we must not just automatically assume our whole purpose of being is to create Formula One drivers. Our purpose of being, in my view, is to create fun for people to go and participate in motorsport.

On relevancy:

If you look at car manufacturers today, their primary focus is going to be around electrification, around autonomous driving, and around the environment. And so we have to start to think to ourselves, how do we make our motorsport more relevant to car manufacturers and to the buying public? And this is an ongoing task.

On diversity:

It’s quite illogical that we have a sport in which men and women can compete on absolutely equal terms - and yet we don’t appeal to women.

Women only make up five per cent of our licence-holders. And if you look at universities as well, there is a far smaller percentage of women doing engineering degrees.