The all-female W Series had grand plans to change the landscape of motor racing, all bold and ambitious, but just over a week ago, when it was placed into administration, the championship was all but over. Out of money and out of time it foundered to a halt, an ignominious end to worthy aspirations. Yet across the three short seasons it ran the W Series left its mark on racing. It may be gone but it undoubtedly made a difference.
In 2019, at the Brands Hatch finale of the inaugural season, it was impossible not to notice the impact of the nascent championship. The paddock thronged with families and crucially hundreds of young girls, drawn to watch and meet the role models that had previously been so few and far between in racing. It was a moment of particular vindication and pleasure for the series’ chief executive, Catherine Bond Muir, who had put three years into building a project that was close to her heart.
Not that it was straightforward. Having an all-female championship had attracted criticism, with strong arguments that women should make it competing in the usual series against men. Yet at Brands that weekend the effect of the simple visibility of having more women on track was palpable.
Britain’s Alice Powell was there for that season and the two that followed in 2021 and 2022, when the W Series gave her a second chance in a career that had stalled due to lack of backing. She was working with her father doing renovations and the day before the call came through from the W Series she said she had been unblocking a urinal.
She recounted the story at the time almost with disbelief at the unexpected lifeline the W Series presented. Its groundbreaking and innovative structure was crucial to Powell and indeed almost every driver. The series met all the costs of competitors and put up an enormous prize fund, starting at $500,000 (£395,000) for the winner. Reflecting on it now, Powell is unequivocal at what it meant to be back in a car after all the sport’s doors had shut due to lack of funds.
“It made a massive difference to me,” she says. “It revitalised my career, I hadn’t lost interest in racing and it wasn’t by choice that I was not driving. The W Series got it going again.”
Powell, like so many others, just needed a chance to prove herself. She won races across all three seasons and has since become a commentator on Formula One, F2 and F3 for Five Live and Channel 4, and is a mentor and driver coach to up-and-coming talent such as Abbi Pulling and for the Alpine F1 team’s all-female Race(H)er academy.
She was far from alone in getting another shot, as drivers such as Emma Kimiläinen, Sarah Moore and Jess Hawkins all found a chance to showcase their abilities once more and benefit from it.
Because it closed out the 2022 season two races early due to a lack of investment and now has entered administration, ending the goal of returning a woman to F1 for the first time since Lella Lombardi in 1976, critics have deemed the experiment a failure. Yet while that goal still remains a long way off to dismiss the series as such is simplistic and undeserved. What it achieved can be better measured in how it has changed lives, the discourse and indeed the very perception of women in motor sport.
“It was bold, it was out of the ordinary because there had never been a championship like it and it did a great job,” Powell says. “It can and should be considered a success at the end of the day, it gave lots of drivers in that championship, opportunities elsewhere that might not have been created if it wasn’t for the W Series.
“People are quick to jump in and say it has failed because it has come to an end. It has come to an end because of money but that does not mean it failed, because it has done a world of good in other areas. It has inspired and opened doors for many people that weren’t just in the championship, young fans and young people aspiring to take part in every area of the sport.”
Among those it inspired must also be considered F1 itself. The championship had shown little to no interest in promoting women in the sport before the W Series, which if nothing else started that conversation. In 2022 the sport announced it was creating its own all-female series, the F1 Academy, which is under way this season and must have contributed to the demise of the W Series. Whether F1 would eventually have followed this route is moot but it is impossible to imagine it would have been spurred on so quickly without the trailblazing lead the W Series had provided.
“It’s more likely the F1 Academy would not exist without W Series,” says Powell. “It was a contributory factor. It opened up everybody’s eyes to the fact there are quite a few female drivers out there. It showed there are females who are competitive and that seats can be filled. In F1 Academy now, all the seats are taken.”
Indeed drivers that are now flourishing in the F1 Academy, such as the championship‑leading Marta García and Pulling, both raced in the W Series. However F1’s model is different, requiring drivers to meet half the costs, which Powell notes would have prevented her and many other fellow drivers from competing had the W Series imposed similar requirements. Yet that model was ultimately part of its downfall, when expected investment and sponsors failed to materialise despite major publicity.
Yet it was clearly reaching people. The W Series race at the British GP in 2021 peaked at 1 million viewers, the biggest live audience for motor sport other than F1 since 2014. This high point made it all the more surprising that just over a year later the following season ground to a halt prematurely. There were failings, such as a lack of track time and reaching too far too soon in going global, and it cannot have helped having Jamie Chadwick win all three seasons at a canter. But these do not diminish what it did achieve. It was bold, it was ambitious and it instigated change. For that alone it and Bond Muir deserve to be lauded.
“Before W Series the only discussion was: ‘When do you think a female driver will get to F1 and can they race on equal terms with men?’” says Powell. “Now it’s so much more and I’ve met girls from four-year-olds and up wanting to take part in racing or to find out more about racing or going into engineering. It’s not only increased interest but it will have increased participation I am sure. In terms of encouraging more girls into the sport, well, W Series has changed that for good.”
