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Saudi woman drives F1 car to celebrate ban’s end

Aseel Al-Hamad poses after driving a 2012 Renault Formula 1 car.

Aseel Al-Hamad poses after driving a 2012 Renault Formula 1 car. Photo: Getty

As Saudi Arabia finally lifts its ban on women drivers, the country’s leading female motorsport figure has jumped into the hot seat of a Formula One car to celebrate the occasion.

Aseel Al Hamad, the first female member of the Saudi Arabian Motorsport Federation, was given the chance to drive a Lotus Renault E20 at the French Grand Prix on Sunday, just hours before the event.

It is the same car former F1 world champion Kimi Raikkonen drove to victory in the 2012 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

“I have loved racing and motorsport from a very young age and to drive a Formula One car goes even beyond my dreams and what I thought was possible. It is a genuine honour to drive the Renault Sport F1 Team E20 car in front of the crowds at its home Grand Prix in France,” Ms Al Hamad said.

“I hope doing so on the day when women can drive on the roads in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia shows what you can do if you have the passion and spirit to dream.

“I believe today is not just celebrating the new era of women starting to drive, it’s also the birth of women in motorsport in Saudi Arabia,” she told Reuters.

“The most important thing I am looking forward to is to start seeing the next generation, young girls, trying [motorsport].

“I want to watch them training and taking the sport very seriously as a career. This is going to be really my biggest achievement.”

Ms Al Hamad also appeared in a Jaguar advertisement celebrating women’s rights to drive, with the hashtag #WorldDrivingDay.

The news came on the day Saudi Arabia lifted its laws against women drivers, ushering in the end of the world’s last ban on female drivers, long seen as an emblem of women’s repression in the conservative Muslim kingdom.

However, amid the celebrations, many men still oppose the practice for reasons ranging from religion to health.

“In Islam, we don’t have this. During our fathers’ and grandfathers’ time, there was none of this women driving,” Wadih al-Marzouki said, a retired government worker in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

He said he had advised his three sons-in-law not to let their wives drive: “It is going to be very, very difficult. God help us the first month.”

The world’s last such ban had been justified on a variety of religious and cultural grounds, including the idea that allowing women to drive would promote promiscuity and sin.

One cleric claimed women were not smart enough to drive, while another warned that those who did risked damaging their ovaries and bearing children with clinical problems.

Just nine months after King Salman announced the policy reversal as part of sweeping reforms to overhaul the economy and open up society, such ideas have not simply evaporated.

Nearly a quarter of Saudis polled in a recent survey opposed lifting the ban. A third of those said they feared it threatened cultural traditions.

Yet criticism remains rare, especially after a crackdown on dissent, including the arrests of 30 clerics, intellectuals and activists last September and more than a dozen women’s rights activists in the past month.

Government supporters say such measures are necessary as the authorities chart a difficult course between liberalising reforms and traditional society.

Some opponents of women driving seem to be coming to terms with the new reality. Cousins Qais and Abdelaziz al-Qahtan object to the decision on a personal level but dare not oppose a royal decree in this absolute monarchy.

“I support it because some families really need to have a female driving,” Mr Abdelaziz, 26, said. “But I don’t think a woman should drive if she doesn’t need to.”

-with AAP

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