My Team 2.0

Jarno's the only one I could even name, but... there are certainly people out there who worship them like a divine being so I guess the dev's think it will help push sales.

I think the problem is that they wouldn't have the licence for the female drivers who are somewhat competent. 

Chadwick, despite being waaaayyy off F1 level, is the only realistic contender and she was no longer under the F1 branch as she was over in a different discipline now so presumably couldn't be included.   She was in WEC before so, as that is under the FIA umbrella, I think there was leeway.  She's back over here, I think?  So may be okay for next year.  However, not much use for this year.

Florsch has been the woman with the biggest profile recently and she's never progressed beyond the backmarkers of F3.   I guess you could say Calderon has been the most successful in the traditional FIA pathway but she's off doing other things and never seemed to get taken seriously. 

I can get including F1 Academy drivers because of the FIA affiliation but it has to be noted that the drivers simultaneously, when they're compared to drivers of their F4 level, aren't very good. At all.   Sure there's alot of propaganda saying that the women could cut it if they were given opportunities (for example, in the past week or so, I've heard that Doriane Pin would be just as good as George Russell if she was given the chance and also that the only reason Hadjar managed to get to F1 and Pin didn't was opportunity.  It's also hard to take the women, and the academy, seriously when Bianca goes on a UK national radio interview and says she graduated from the academy by finishing 7th in a 15 driver championship with only 20% of the points of the winner that she progressed up with, and then they're not allowed to ask how she's currently 24th in a championship where only 19 drivers have completed all the rounds in case it's viewed negatively so have to talk about FE only).    

I'm a big fan of including more women drivers in the game, but F1 academy isn't the answer unless you want drivers with stats in the 20's and 30's who get lapped four times a race. (Probably only three times if it's Pin or Pulling).  Mayer, most unequivocally, is also not the answer.     I think AEF251 has the best idea so far with the creating your own Icons as, since there's no real-life basis, they can be as good internally to the fiction as you'd want them to be.  Like, in your mind, they could have had the Mayer pathway of winning F2, but without the supremely unlikeable personality.   It still feels a little imperfect but the best of a bad circumstance.    Or, I suppose, you could bring in the F1 Academy with skewed ratings and bin off driver stats being visible to the player and have them work under the hood, or keep them visible and just admit that they really aren't that important and don't particularly need to reflect reality.   My concern with distorting the F1 Academy ratings in that way is it portrays a narrative where women can only be included if you have to really shoehorn them in to pander to a DEI audience. 

If it's just gender-representation that females would want then AEF251's idea is good.   It's possible other diversity groups feel under-represented so being able to create your own Icons is a catch-all win-win. 

Obviously its not a great solution to include F1 Academy, but probably the most viable. Though if they wanted to couldn't they get permission for Lella Lombardi or Desire Wilson etc And as a more left field thing, how about letting us create our own Icon or 2, ie a fictional character who is fast and likeable and suits our ideas of a successful female driver.