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“We want to have a Saudi team, hopefully, one day in the near future. “Our goal is not just to host events, we want to have a bigger role, a bigger part in Formula 1,” he said. He also cited the potential suitability of Neom, a ‘smart city’ project in the North-Eastern corner of the country, which could be the ideal home for such a team given the desire to house significant industry there. Speaking in Jeddah ahead of the recent Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Saudi Motorsport Company chairman Prince Khalid Bin Sultan Al Abdullah Al-Faisal talked of the country’s interest in having an F1 team, albeit in general terms rather than specifically in relation to Pollock’s project. He described it as “not-badly placed” considering the current structure of the F1 calendar.īut it would be particularly appealing given the potential level of investment as part of the country’s wider ‘Saudi Vision 2030’ strategy designed to diversity its economic activities. Running a Formula 1 team out of Saudi Arabia would be a challenge in terms of finding staff, but Pollock argued it would be a geographically-sound decision. “But this is not just about women driving Formula 1 cars, this is about throughout the team you want even up to board level, if we can do that, a gender-equal Formula 1 team going forward.”

I just hope for the women that this is the case. I can’t put my hand on my heart and say yes but we’re keeping a close eye on it.

“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.

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“I think it would be absolutely fantastic,” he said when asked by CNN if it would have a female driver for its first race. Pollock stopped short of promising that if the team were to be granted a place on the F1 grid it would field a female driver, but did support the idea provided a suitable candidate available. The ambition for a 50/50 male/female split applies to the entire organisation, including the driver line-up. It’s a lot easier with a clean sheet of paper.” “The concept and the idea was to try and build a formula 1 team 50% male, 50% female, which is extremely hard to do if you have an existing Formula 1 team. “This has been going on for close on four years, building up a brand new Formula 1 team but taking into it our ambition to build and deliver opportunities and pathways for women to get to the very top level inside motorsports,” said Pollock. A company called ‘Formula Equal Holdings Ltd’ was incorporated on 6 February 2018 in the UK, with Pollock listed as a director. Pollock indicated that the Formula Equal project has been worked on for almost four years, with the caveat that he was careful about who he talked to about it in F1 to avoid leaks. It’s unclear what financial resources the team has, with start-up costs and the $200million anti-dilution fee meaning any aspirant would require, as Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff put it last year, “around one billion”. He also created PURE, which made an unsuccessful to enter F1 as an engine supplier for the start of the V6 hybrid turbo era in 2014.

Pollock, who led the BAR team that joined F1 in 1999 until he left at the end of 2001, was Jacques Villeneuve’s long-time manager. The process requires a team to establish their financial and technical prowess as part of a comprehensive plan although the FIA also requires a candidate team to “illustrate how they intend to achieve a positive societal impact through its participation in the sport”. The other contenders include the high-profile Andretti bid. This puts Formula Equal among those pursuing the potential available extra F1 entries as part of the process that was opened up earlier this year. If this is pulled off, this will be the first Formula 1 team that is truly outside of Europe.”

“This has to be built from the bottom-up in a Gulf state and this is what we are aiming to do. “That will come out in the very near future. “I’m not really in the position to talk about that and be fully open about it at this present time,” Pollock told CNN.

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