Chadwick says lack of funding led to W Series return for third season

19 comments on “Chadwick says lack of funding led to W Series return for third season”

1. 

   Roger Ayles (@roger-ayles)
   25th February 2022, 0:47

   I don’t agree with Chandhok’s tweet TBH because trying to force/create unpredictability by simply cutting how much running they do pre-season would not only not have much of an effect beyond the 1st few races (As Chandhok himself admits in a reply) but it also hinders rookie drivers more & makes it harder for any new teams who will end up coming in far less prepared then they need to be.

   It’s another example of putting the show above the sport by constantly trying to create or force unpredictability either via artificial means (The awful high degredation tire concept we have suffered through the past decade) or by simply cutting track time which does nothing but give fans less track action & shoves it more towards simulations which we fans obviously don’t get to see.

   I’d also argue that one of the biggest reasons things are more predicable now isn’t because of how much track time they get (They already get less testing than they used to) but because a lot of the spec components, development freezes, cost cutting measures & long life component requirements has taken away a lot of the required management & unreliability that used to produce some unpredictability naturally.
   It’s nothing more than a side effect of the dumbing down of F1, A lot of which was done due to putting the show above the sport.

   Karun, Croft & most the others on Sky do nothing but push the view that teams/drivers should get no running because all of those on Sky clearly don’t care about the sport & are only interested with a show regardless of how artificial it gets or how meaningless, fake & contrived the results end up becoming.
   I bet they would love sprinklers to make every race end like Sochi last year even though that would just cheapen the results & quickly become less interesting than it is when it happens naturally once in a blue moon.
   1. 

      Coventry Climax
      25th February 2022, 1:52

      Amen! Although you might as well replace Sky and it’s personnel for FIA and it’s personnel.
      1. 

         Coventry Climax
         25th February 2022, 1:54

         sorry, typo; replace with
   2. 

      Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
      25th February 2022, 1:55

      Having no testing makes no sense. Nobody does anything ever without some practice, at least anything good. Logic 101.
   3. 

      Red Andy (@red-andy)
      25th February 2022, 11:09

      @roger-ayles The main reason for restricting testing over the last 10-20 years has been to reduce costs, rather than for entertainment purposes. Honestly, I think the current balance – a few days’ pre-season testing and a few test days tagged onto the end of GP weekends – is about right. I wouldn’t want to go back to the days of some teams putting in hundreds of laps at their own private test tracks every opportunity they get.

      You also have to remember that Chandhok made his F1 debut in a car that had not only had no pre-season testing, but also didn’t participate in any of the free practice sessions before qualifying.
2. 

   Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
   25th February 2022, 2:25

   Another article that underlines why I really like Colton Herta. He’s still so young and has so much confidence, yet is so grounded and has no ego. Really hope this is his year.
3. 

   bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
   25th February 2022, 4:42

   Does anyone know if Haas are obliged to remove Uralkali because of sanctions? I don’t know how sanctions work, but Uralkali as far as I’ve seen aren’t implicated. Did the team themselves choose to remove the logos / paint scheme?
   1. 

      MacLeod (@macleod)
      25th February 2022, 8:00

      I hear the car will be total white but i think the team removed everything themself as sanctions are not that fast normally. Haas is still a American team and if they lose the sponsor maybe Mario can take it over…
      1. 

         storm962
         25th February 2022, 9:09

         If Mazepin Snr wants his son to continue in f1, he will have to still pay up, logos or not.
4. 

   Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
   25th February 2022, 7:58

   It feels like W series missed a trick or two. I was enthusiast after the first few races as the racing was generally good and the idea to give visibility to women drivers commendable. But surely, this should always been a platform towards getting women in mixed gender series, not having them compete on their own. I wish that they would have a graduating champion not participating in next season, as well as limiting the number of seats for consecutive seasons (like top 12 can reapply). They need rotation to give chances to a big number of drivers and eventually showcase the unexpected one that can climb up through the ladder.

   In a sense Extreme E has been more successful, while it is hard to read exact comparison between male and female drivers times thanks to the format, we can clearly see a trend between the first race and the last. Guys were able to catch up to 20sec on the women during the semi-final/finals but this gap has shrunk massively. There is also genuine exchange in the team to make both drivers learn, go faster and get the team win. Having a target (and quite good ones with Loeb, Kristofferson and the likes), and their data is probably best way to learn.
   1. 

      Qeki (@qeki)
      25th February 2022, 9:36

      From the get-go they should have made a deal with F3 that at least the champion should have a full season with them. If they really want more women in motorsport they should do like F1 who pushing young drivers through FP outings. I also have a fear that some sponsors are more keen to back up men than women.
      1. 

         Martin (@f1hornet)
         25th February 2022, 9:47

         It does become a bit of a dead end without a graduating seat in F3. If the FIA want to help improve the visibility of women in motorsport, and encourage more girls and young women into the sport, you would have thought they could do something along with the W Series to fund that.
      2. 

         David
         26th February 2022, 9:21

         Giving a paid F3 seat to the W-series winner is a serious risk to the series as a whole.

         Jamie Chadwick has dominated W-series up to now, but she’s also already been in F3 machinery and wasn’t particularly competitive – certainly she didn’t get the results that would have got a male driver noticed.

         The likeliest outcome of the paid seat is that it will prove that the women are not as fast as the men – yes there might be an exceptional woman out there somewhere that can compete, but they seem to appear once in a generation, not every season. W-series is not a grid full of overlooked talent. It’s a grid full of talent that has got stuck on the mixed-gender ladder.

         Its time to decide whether motorsport is split gender or single gender. I don’t have any issue with the W-series existing – but maybe we should acknowledge that instead of increasing diversity, it is only giving women a series they have a better chance of competing in, and which they will also get trapped in for the rest of their career.

         Female representation in the sport is something that the media and a handful of campaigners care about. The general public, and the motorsport public, don’t. Rather like women’s football, which at the national level has minimal attendance outside friends and family, but which still gets front page headlines on the BBC website.
   2. 

      Aapje (@aapje)
      25th February 2022, 10:48

      @jeanrien

      They need rotation to give chances to a big number of drivers and eventually showcase the unexpected one that can climb up through the ladder.

      What does ‘showcase’ mean to you?

      To me it is meaningless to merely have drivers in a car. What really matters is how they shape up against known quantities. I would actually like for a few drivers who didn’t make it in F1 to go back to the feeder series, to be a benchmark, as well as for winners who don’t get to move up to stay.

      Without a benchmark, you don’t know whether a driver won due to a weak field or due to actually being very good.

      In martial arts, they have the concept of a gatekeeper: a skillful and well-regarded fighter who isn’t good enough to win titles, but who is used to evaluate newcomers, people coming back from injury, etc.
5. 

   Jere (@jerejj)
   25th February 2022, 8:09

   So she couldn’t get enough sponsor backing for competing in another series.

   Chandhok’s tweet: Perhaps next year again with wholly stable technical regulations.

   Herta first needs to reach 40 SL points before he could be a realistic option even later, although this should happen by 2024.

   COTD: indeed.
6. 

   NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
   25th February 2022, 9:45

   This is the real unequality.. Your gender does not matter.. Your money matters.

   If you do not have it, you do not progress.
   1. 

      Martin (@f1hornet)
      25th February 2022, 9:49

      That’s actually something I think the W Series gets really right in comparison to other junior series: drivers qualify for the series through past performance / testing performance not the size of their bank account. They’re then all in equal machinery so there aren’t teams that have a big advantage over others (although I’m worried the move to more explicit teams is going to change that). The best female drivers get to race in it, and the best one wins (which is not necessarily the case in F2 or F3). Of course, as soon as drivers step out of the W Series, it’s a problem again….
7. 

   Aapje (@aapje)
   25th February 2022, 10:36

   I like to imagine that the tweet about Eduardo Freitas and Niels Wittich shows the before and after images of some treatment in a sketchy advertisement.
8. 

   nandy
   25th February 2022, 10:53

   If the excitement for getting a woman into F2 was there, the money would be flooding in.

   Maybe its just not a thing that people are desperate to see, and that’s ok.

   Forced diversity to tick a box is even worse than none.

Comments are closed.