Open-wheel racing series designed to showcase top female racers folded three races short of the season's finish line this season.
- The W Series ceased operations after running out of of funding with three races left in Season 3.
- Officials of the W Series are doing their best to regroup with the hope of finding enough funding to make a comeback in 2023.
- Lewis Hamilton believes that Formula 1 should have stepped in and done more to help support the series and prop it up if necessary to continue to give women an opportunity.
What is being billed as Formula 1’s biggest party of the 2022 season is missing a previously invited guest to Circuit of the Americas this week.
The W Series, a F1 support series featuring top women open-wheel racers from around the world, didn’t quite make it to the finish line in 2022. The series ceased operations after running out of of funding with three races left in Season 3 for the series.
It was a series with U.S. connections, as well. Series champion Jamie Chadwick and American racer Chloe Chambers race for U.S.-based Jenner Racing, which is led by past Olympic champion and reality TV veteran Caitlyn Jenner. Having Jenner and her team at Austin this weekend could have brought some much-needed, or at least much-appreciated, attention to the series.
So, instead of giving the fans in Austin one more on-track event on the weekend race schedule and giving fans next time out in Mexico City a scheduled season-ending doubleheader, the W Series is shuttered and off the grid for the remainder of 2022.
Maybe forever.
And that’s wrong, says seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, who believes that Formula 1 should have stepped in and helped support the series and prop it up if necessary to continue to give women an opportunity to show their stuff on racing’s biggest stage and lay the foundation to ultimately get a woman on the Formula 1 grid.
“One hundred percent I do,” Hamilton said on Thursday at COTA ahead of Sunday’s U.S. Grand Prix. “There has not been enough focus on women in the sport, the whole of Formula 1’s life, and there’s not enough emphasis on it now.”
Lewis Hamilton is critical of Formula 1’s lack of commitment to the W Series.
Clive Mason – Formula 1Getty Images
Women on the grid have been missing in F1 as the F1 series continues to be the most male-dominated major racing series on the planet. The last woman to start a Formula 1 race was Lella Lombardi in 1976—nearly half century ago.
The woman closest to the F1 grid today is three-time W Series champion Chadwick. Chadwick is currently a development driver in the Williams F1 stable, but that team has yet to even allow her to participate in a FP1 practice session on a Friday of a Grand Prix weekend. The closest she’s been to putting a F1 car on the track is in a simulator cockpit at the team’s headquarters.
Chadwick is currently in an on-track testing program with Andretti Autosport in the Indy Lights Series and appears to be much closer to a more woman-friendly IndyCar Series ride than anything in Formula 1.
Meanwhile, the W Series is doing its best to regroup behind the scenes with hopes of finding enough funding to make a comeback in 2023.
“And (F1) is not magnifying enough the great work that is being done there,” Hamilton said in his criticism of F1’s lack of commitment to furthering opportunities for woman or creating a path to place a woman on the F1 grid. “There is not enough representation across the board, within the industry. And there’s not really a pathway for those young, amazing drivers to even get to Formula 1.
“Some people say we’re never going to see a female F1 driver, ever. So that’s not a good narrative to be putting out. So I think we need to be doing more, and with the organization with Formula 1 and (chief stakeholder) Liberty doing so well, it’s not a lot for them to be able to help out in that space. And I think we need to be doing more.”
Mike Pryson Mike Pryson covered auto racing for the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot and MLive Media Group from 1991 until joining Autoweek in 2011.
Keyword: Lewis Hamilton Critical of F1's Lack of Support for W Series