Jamie Chadwick credited former Olympic champion and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner with a huge role in helping to launch her racing career in the US.
Chadwick is competing in Indy NXT – a feeder series to IndyCar – this year. This latest career move comes after three consecutive titles in the all-female W Series, the third of which came as she competed for Jenner Racing.
Jenner's involvement, it was hoped, would help to shine a light on the series. But the more telling effect it had was beneficial for Chadwick herself, who not only cemented her status as one of the top female single-seater racers around, but also helped her to catch the attention of those across the Atlantic.
As a result, she landed a drive with Andretti Autosport in the Indy NXT series. She made her debut last weekend in St Petersburg, Florida, but didn't get the clean start she would have wanted – finishing 13th after being involved in two incidents on track.
Appearing on the Fuelling Around podcast after the race, Chadwick was keen to show her gratitude to Jenner for helping her to secure this opportunity. "It was part of the reason for coming back to W Series with the Jenner team, especially now, and it's become more prevalent, looking at opportunities in America," said the Brit.
"It felt like the opportunities and exposure she could give me, everything, to get that next step up and the budget and everything required for that, it felt like that was quite a good environment to put myself in.
"In terms of racing for Caitlyn and being involved with her team, it was actually really cool because, like I've said, she does do it for the right reasons. She's just genuinely passionate about supporting women and the sport.
"She loves racing, when she came to the first race in Miami, she spent more time just with the mechanics and the engineers than she did anyone else. I think it's just quite cool as she just genuinely loves the sport."
Opening up on her first conversation with Jenner, the Williams academy driver explained: "It was meant to be a Zoom call with a group of us on and for whatever reason that didn't happen and I just got a message saying 'call this number'.
"I wasn't necessarily expecting it to be Caitlyn. I was told that it was to do with Caitlyn Jenner having a team in it but I didn't realise the call was going to be with her and you do not mistake that voice. Because it was with America, it was quite late at night so I had a couple of glasses of wine to relax myself into it before and she was awesome, actually.
"As soon as I kind of got over the fact that I was on the phone to Caitlyn Jenner, her understanding of the sport was really, really good. She knew everything about me, everything I'd done which was really cool."
