Chadwick dreams of breaking down the barriers in F1
EVEN by Jamie Chadwick’s standards, things are moving fast. Since April, the 21-year-old from Bath has won two of the first four races of the all-female W Series’ inaugural season and been signed as a development driver by the Williams Formula One team.
The chance to become the first woman to compete in an F1 race since 1976 is tantalisingly close.
‘This year feels like it has gone fast and my feet haven’t touched the ground yet,’ said Chadwick. ‘In the last four or five months, it’s started to feel a lot more like that F1 dream could become a reality.
‘I’m under no illusions how tough it’s going to be to get to F1. As a young driver, it was something you would always say you wanted but you never believed it was possible. But with the Williams relationship, it’s starting to come closer.’
On confirming her signing, Claire Williams, the deputy team principal of the F1 outfit, described Chadwick as ‘a female role model who will, hopefully, inspire young girls to take up racing’.
The team have been here before. Susie Wolff was the last woman to participate in an F1 weekend when she drove a Williams during practice for the 2015 British Grand Prix.
But Chadwick wants more and this feels different. She appears focused and is supremely fast — the most exciting female driving talent in years.
Yesterday, Chadwick retained her W Series Championship advantage with a third-placed finish in Germany. She leads Holland’s Beitske Visser by 10 points with two races remaining and is favourite for the title.
At next weekend’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone, she will begin her role at Williams. One of three races she will attend this season, Chadwick will sit in on engineering meetings, having already experienced the simulator at the team’s Oxfordshire factory.
‘I feel like I’m comfortable in the F1 simulator now, so that’s definitely a big step,’ she said. ‘Junior motorsport changes so much it’s hard to know exactly what you’re going to be doing in the next few years, so I’m very much focused on the short term.
‘But with the relationships I have with Williams and Aston Martin, I’m hopeful to use those to push on in the future.’
However, former McLaren Formula One driver John Watson doesn’t believe the ‘artificial scenario’ of the W Series should be a stepping stone to Formula One.
‘Whoever wins it has to make the step up to F2 or F3. It’s nonsense to think they can go straight to F1 and I wonder whether anyone will be able to support the winner financially to compete,’ said Watson, who raced against Lella Lombardi, the last woman to start an F1 race back in the Seventies.
‘It’s an artificial scenario because they’re all women, but it does give them a platform. Jamie Chadwick has done quite a bit already in GT racing and looks promising. But Tatiana Calderon (Alfa Romeo F1 development driver) is in the bottom half of the F2 standings this season. The winner of the W Series would be below her because F2 is a really good series.
‘Susie Wolff says there aren’t opportunities for women but that’s nonsense.
‘If she had been good enough she could have made it in F1.’