Women have only had a very small presence in F1 but there’s hope that this is changing. A venture capitalist has proposed the idea of women-only races, which would be made up entirely of female drivers and teams. Additionally, Formula One sporting director Ross Brawn says he doesn’t think it will take too long for more than half of all racers to be female.
Women have a thin history in Formula 1, but there’s hope that’s changing. There are currently no female drivers in the sport. The most notable woman to race in Formula 1 was Lella Lombardi who raced for two seasons from 1974 to 1975.
Jamie Chadwick has won open-wheel racing titles in a row. The 23-year-old British driver, though, has a challenging route to the top of her sport, Formula One racing.
Since Italy’s Lella Lombardi raced in the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix, no woman has started a Formula One race, and there’s little evidence that will change anytime soon.
A place in Formula One is precious, with only 20 drivers and 10 teams on the grid, and the chances of drivers making it via the feeder series Formula Three and Formula Two are slim, needing not just skill but millions of dollars in sponsorship.
Susie Wolff, the current CEO of Formula E team Venturi and the wife of Mercedes team principal and CEO Toto Wolff, was a test driver for the Williams Formula One team in 2015 and is the last woman to have come close to driving in the sport.
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Tatiana Calderon of Mexico just made it to F2 as the first woman to do so, racing for Arden, and spent the 2019 season as an Alfa Romeo test driver. She’s now a part-time driver for A.J. Foyt Enterprises in IndyCar after failing to gain an F2 seat for the next season and struggling to collect points, ending 21st in the championship.
Could Chadwick make it? She’s now focused on the task at hand.
“I absolutely want to win that third championship from a sports standpoint,” she told ESPN. “But, in the larger view, I want to be as prepared as possible for whatever the future holds. It will still be a difficult task to win the third championship; I have no illusions about how difficult it will be, but I will be more forward-thinking and prepare ahead this year.”
With her status as a development driver for Williams and her success in other series, Chadwick is considered the next hope for a woman racing in Formula One, although she has yet to gain a chance in F3.
“The fact is Jamie is still behind the curve of comparable drivers in a Formula 3 or Formula 2 environment,” David Coulthard, a former Formula One driver who is now the chairman of the W Series advisory board, told ESPN in Miami before of the season’s first race. “She has the future in her hands; she’s won the tournament twice, and she’s received the financing as a result — a million dollars in two years.” If anybody is good enough in the W Series to reach Formula 1, they must beat Jamie, who has established the standard.
“Jamie is an excellent race driver, as seen by her several victories, but let’s not forget that to get to the next level, you must be a Lewis, a Max, or a Charles. I’m not saying they aren’t, but there are plenty of individuals who believe they are, and some of them are currently racing in Formula One. Being competent enough is one thing; being present and having the chance is quite another.”
Jamie Chadwick has won open-wheel racing titles in a row. W Series/Penny Harrison
Catherine Bond Muir and Coulthard, together with many investors, started the W series, which is currently in its third year. The all-female series will be played in a team style this year, with two drivers for each of the nine teams. The series was created to assist promote the prominence of women in racing and to give financial support for women to compete for a $500,000 prize on a global scale. The series will compete on the undercards of eight Formula One races this season, beginning with a double-header in Miami on Saturday, and may provide a glimpse into the future of racing.
“It’s exciting to watch how the series has progressed from its first season, when it was still competitive but featured a lot [fewer] young drivers,” Chadwick added. “It used to be a little top-heavy in terms of most drivers being above the age of 20, but now you’ve got 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds — I believe the youngest is 17 — all coming through and being quite competitive.”
Although there is still a long way to go in terms of equity and diversity in F1’s 10 teams and behind-the-scenes responsibilities, as ESPN noted last year, there are plenty of women working in occupations that don’t feature on TV race coverage or Netflix’s “Drive to Survive.” Many women work in Formula One, typically in support roles like as engineers, directors, marketing, and team hospitality.
So, why have there been no female drivers on the Formula One grid for such a long time?
Coulthard said, “Numbers.” “For so long, it’s just been a numbers game.” If you take 1,000 junior karters, for example, one or two of them have been females for a long time. When only five of a thousand make it to a junior racing series, and only one of them makes it to Formula One, the chances of it being one of those two females are tiny. As a result, as amazing as the W Series has been, the true transformation must come from the bottom up.
“Opportunity is also crucial. We’ll never know how many women were skilled enough to have a shot at Formula One but were unable to do so. That is true of many racing drivers in general: opportunity, money, and timing must all play a role.”
With the support of programs like Racing Pride and F1’s “We Race As One” project, which was established in 2020 with the goal of decreasing inequality in the sport, Formula One is working to become more inclusive overall. Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton have used their celebrity in the sport to promote social change, with Vettel protesting Hungary’s anti-gay laws at the Hungarian Grand Prix last year and Hamilton kneeling before each race and wearing several T-shirts with slogans like “Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.” This season, Caitlyn Jenner, a transgender woman, became the owner of a W Series club.
Before the Hungarian Grand Prix, Sebastian Vettel donned Pride colors on the grid. Getty Images/FLORION GOGA/POOL/AFP
“The climate [in Formula One] is considerably more female-friendly,” remarked Chadwick, a Jenner Racing driver. “There are a lot of examples where it’s very nice to see more women in mechanic jobs, engineer roles, and all these other responsibilities inside the teams for everyone in the sport — naturally, it’s been so male-dominated. It has an impact on the environment and is a wonderful experience. I’m sure a lot of males in the sport believe the same thing. It’s great to see this diversity and a new face of racing emerge in the coming years [since it represents society and egalitarian principles]. Of course, there is still a long way to go.”
Netflix’s “Drive To Survive” has brought the sport to a broader audience, and ESPN’s own TV viewership is expected to climb to 949,000 viewers in 2021, up from roughly 550,000 in 2018. The 2022 season opening in Bahrain received 1,353,000 viewers, the most for an F1 race on any of ESPN’s networks since the sport returned to ESPN in 2018. The previous best was 1.2 million viewers for last year’s U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, which broadcast on ABC.
“I believe there is a domino effect,” Chadwick said. “I keep repeating it, but I believe that once it begins to happen, as we’re seeing with more and more women being engaged, it will spread fast because it will suddenly become a lot more varied atmosphere and more comfortable for women to be in.”
“That, I believe, will make a significant impact, and I believe that interest in the sport is currently high. People used to argue that women aren’t interested in motorsport and that this is why they don’t participate, but I believe they are today. I believe it is evolving, which is great news for the sport.”
W Series also benefited from its first two seasons on free-to-air Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. It inked a three-year agreement with Sky Sports in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany this year, with C4 showing highlight packages, and it was reported this week that the series has teamed with ESPN in the United States. The W Series doubleheader this weekend will be broadcast on ESPN at 2:30 p.m. ET on Saturday and 10 a.m. ET on Sunday.
“We often say,” Bond Muir remarked, “if you can envision it, you can be it.” “W Series has had incredible exposure. We’ve witnessed an increase in the number of people following women’s sports in recent years, which has been quite beneficial to us. People overlook the fact that we are just in our third year. Things will not change fully overnight. However, watching the W Series on TV, which is so strongly associated with Formula One, should let females recognize that there is a road for them. It doesn’t have to be about driving; we want more women in STEM fields, and this will hopefully encourage more people to pursue those careers.”
“People used to claim that women aren’t interested in racing and that’s why they don’t participate, but I believe they are today,” Jamie Chadwick remarked. Darron Cummings/AP Photo
W Series exposure can only help, but the greatest barrier to placing a woman in an F1 seat is still money. To make it to F3 and F2, much alone F1, all drivers, regardless of gender, need an enormous amount of finance. The sport is still only available to those who can afford it.
In order to level the playing field on expenditure, F1 teams will have a budget ceiling of $140 million in 2022. Mercedes, on the other hand, spent $442 million in 2019.
Lance Stroll and Nikita Mazepin, for example, are funded by their rich families. Lance Stroll’s father, billionaire Lawrence Stroll, purchased the Aston Martin team. Because of his billionaire father’s ties to Vladimir Putin, Russian driver Mazepin was just fired from Haas during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, many drivers get funding from a variety of sponsors, which might be tough to come by.
Obtaining money has traditionally been a challenge for female athletes wanting to get into the sport. The failure to acquire sponsorship affected Alice Powell and Abbie Eaton’s careers, and they chose sideways career changes before the W Series. Powell became the first woman to win a Formula Renault championship and the first woman to collect points in the GP3 Series in 2012, but she was unable to get sponsorship. On the Amazon Prime vehicle series “The Grand Tour,” Eaton became a stunt driver.
Aside from getting a job, some experienced drivers have had other chances that they hadn’t previously had. This season, Powell, Naomi Schiff, and Chadwick have been frequent analysts for F1’s broadcast coverage, a departure from the traditionally male-dominated television personalities.
The only racing series in which drivers do not have to pay to compete is the W Series. That made room for Chloe Chambers, Chadwick’s Jenner Racing colleague and the lone American driver in the W Series.
“When the W Series was established in 2018, my father and I formed a plan that he would finance my first year in cars and ideally that would give me enough momentum to be recognized by W Series, get asked to a tryout, and then get into the series,” Chambers said. “That was our strategy all along, and we were successful.”
In the W Series, Chloe Chambers is the sole American driver. W Series/Lou Johnson
Chadwick has gotten a lot of attention thanks to her two W Series victories and her participation in other racing series like Extreme E, but she has yet to break through. Winning and gaining exposure do not always imply financing.
“I believe that occurs a lot in racing, at levels comparable to the W Series, when drivers win and then can’t go up the rankings,” Chadwick added. “From my perspective, even a year later than I’d want, I believe it is still the aim.” W Series has given me a third chance to strive toward that goal, and I am quite appreciative.
“Certainly, I believe the times are changing. It’s just a question of time, if you look at women’s sport in general, especially football [soccer], where some of the major sponsors are getting involved.”
Motor racing is one of the only sports in which men and women may compete head-to-head, provided that the necessary funding and chances are available. Chadwick believes that overcoming the obstacles that women face in open-wheel racing begins with those chances.
“I believe first and foremost, coming right out of the W Series, the chance to be in a competitive environment and to be equipped enough to compete in F3 or F2 is vital,” she added. “And then, comprehending the problems of F3 and F2… because, in my view, there must be a reason no woman has ever been successful in those two championships.” chevalier. chevalier. chevalier. chevalier. chevalier. chevalier. chevalier
“Once we have more women in there and in that setting, we’ll understand.”
“I absolutely think there’s a whole crop of new talent coming through that, if a road is built a little more for them and they know what route to follow, I really feel it’ll be doable,” Chadwick said.
Bethan Clargo and Nate Saunders contributed additional reporting.
Women have a thin history in F1, but there’s hope that’s changing. Women have been driving in the sport since 1983, when Lella Lombardi became the first woman to race in an official Formula One event. In 2018, we saw the first female driver win a Grand Prix with Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas taking victory at the Russian Grand Prix. Reference: female f1 driver 2021.
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