Formula One drivers have finally realised that taking the knee before races is a hollow, meaningless, unproductive piece of pretentious political theatre and will end the practice this year.

While many will be glad to see an end to the socially destructive Marxist Black Lives Matter tribute, the rest of us just hope it means grid girls will soon be back on the track.

Remember the grid girls? You probably don’t. And you probably don’t remember Formula One being exciting to watch either. But drivers were tempted to make passes when grid girls existed.

The practice of having attractive women standing beside race cars was ditched in 2018 at the height of the #metoo movement and amid a growing effort to increase the number of women in science, engineering, and mathematics. Using women in a purely decorative function was seen as anachronistic.

History records that the demise of grid girls made absolutely no difference to the number of leggy women solving maths problems; much like race drivers taking the knee made zero difference to the lives of black people.

Politically correct Formula One – where pretty girls were hidden from public view in science labs, and where race drivers began every event with a morally superior look-at-me posture effectively blaming their fans for history – was boring. A once heady mix of glamorous models and death-defying racers had become a prosaic procession of woke.

Could the end of taking the knee signal a return to the good old days, when the world’s premier motor racing category was about men driving cars fast rather than coddled millionaires castigating onlookers before parading around a race circuit in formation?

Formula One chief executive Stefano Domenicali announced this month that the time set aside for taking the knee before a race had been removed.

This is welcome news. We can only hope that Cricket Australia, the AFL, the NRL, and the ARU agree with Formula One organisers that the era of pious moral preening is coming to an end.

Race drivers taking the knee was instigated in 2020 by seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton who wanted an opportunity for drivers to show support for anti-racism.

While most drivers joined Hamilton in taking the knee, it was clear to the worldwide television audience – despite the best efforts of race-day video editors – that several remained standing during the allotted time.

And therein lies the real reason for Formula One abandoning the gesture; pandering to lunacy with fatuous virtue signalling collapses unless universally acted out.

Domenicali told reporters: ‘The gesture has been important for the ones that believed it was an important gesture. But now is the time to move on and take some other action.’

Translated, that corporate gobbledegook means, ‘Pretending to do something while actually doing bugger all will now be replaced with something else.’

No, that doesn’t mean they will take the knee against carbon emissions.

They could commit to treating everybody on their individual merits.

Or they could refuse to race in places where the population is oppressed by tyrants such as in Russia and Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia and Victoria.

None of this will happen, of course, since the supreme goal of Woke is to avoid doing the obvious in order to concentrate efforts on inane tokenism.

So Lewis Hamilton, one of the most privileged people on the planet, has announced from his home in Monaco that he will set up a commission to investigate privilege.

Lewis insists there should be greater diversity in the sport. No, that doesn’t mean drivers who support Trump or who are unvaccinated. Specifically, he wants to know why blacks are underrepresented among race drivers. When that pressing question is answered, he will hopefully use his millions to tell us why white people are underrepresented among rap artists.

The lack of race car drivers with skin rich in melanin pigments is an intriguing question.

How is it that the greatest driver in the history of Formula One is black, and yet this is apparently not enough to inspire other black drivers? Could it be that most black kids are just not interested in elitism? Maybe they prefer football, basketball, baseball, and athletics where they dominate. Has anyone asked them? Did anyone ask the grid girls if they’d rather be female Faucis manipulating bat germs?

Meanwhile, Formula One has decided to place a worker from an underrepresented background in every race team.

While opponents of political correctness might baulk at this idea, it deserves support. Picking people according to diversity quotas rather than merit to prepare cars to race at 350 kph is guaranteed to bring genuine excitement back to Formula One.

They could go a step further and let the grid girls drive. Beautiful women driving underprepared race cars at breakneck speed for the chance to win a science scholarship would not be any more of a circus than Formula One has already become. But at least it’s a circus we’d watch.

You can follow James on Twitter. You can order his new book Notes from Woketopia here.