Women in Motorsport – Episode No. 1: The Creation of the W Series
On the occasion of the creation of a 100% female automotive championship, the editorial team of Motorsinside invites you to revisit the role of women in motorsport, particularly in Formula 1.
The W Series Championship is a motorsport championship dedicated to women. This new competition, which will start in May 2019, will bring together 18 to 20 women selected by a prestigious jury, including former Formula 1 driver David Coulthard and talented engineer Adrian Newey, currently the technical director at Red Bull Racing. Although the jury is presumably entirely male, the president of the championship is a woman, Catherine Bond Muir.
It is behind the wheel of a Tatuus Formula 3 that the participants will compete on 6 European circuits: Hockenheim (Germany), Zolder (Belgium), Misano (Italy), Norisring (Germany), Assen (Netherlands), Brands Hatch (United Kingdom). The main goal of this competition is to serve as a springboard for these drivers to access other categories and potentially allow a female to secure a position in F1. Let’s recall that currently only two women are driving a single-seater: Tatiana Calderon, 16th in the GP3 Series before the final race in Abu Dhabi, and Sophia Flörsch, ranked 22nd in the European Formula 3 championship.
DC and Dutch GT4 racer @beitskevisser check out our Tatuus F3 T-318. Hope you both like our race car! 📸 pic.twitter.com/QLT3eCOWU7
— W Series (@WSeriesRacing) 13 octobre 2018
No financial support is needed to access the W Series, the drivers will not pay anything to participate in this championship, the need for funding which may have previously been a barrier for some women entering motorsport will therefore not be a problem for this discipline. Beitske Visser, a driver in the GT4 European Series, has already expressed her interest in the discipline.
David Coulthard declares about this new category: At W Series, we firmly believe that women and men can race against each other on equal terms if given the same opportunity. Currently, however, women seem to hit a glass ceiling around the GP3/F3 level in their development, often due to a lack of budget rather than a lack of talent. That’s why a brand new single-seater championship exclusively for women, W Series, is needed to establish a competitive and constructive environment where our drivers can acquire the skills necessary to reach traditional high-level championships and compete against the best men on equal footing.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that this discipline does not have unanimous support. Indeed, while Carmen Jorda saw Bernie Ecclestone’s idea in 2015 as a “wonderful” one, other observers and players in the automotive world do not view this innovation positively. For Corentine Quiniou, a rally driver, this championship risks putting in the public’s mind that the Formula 1 World Championship is not open to women.
The last woman to drive in Formula 1 was Giovanna Amati in 1992, so let’s hope that more than 20 years later we will once again see a woman driving in F1 and who knows, maybe become the first female Formula 1 world champion.
