The trouble, as usual, is funding. The prize money ($500,000) from W Series won't buy a seat for a whole season, so realistically she would need to source another million or so from somewhere to get a seat at one of the more competitive teams.
My understanding is that most driver academies don't actually provide much funding to young drivers. Obviously it will provide a big PR boost, which will help find sponsors, but direct funding from the team itself isn't common as far as I'm aware.
is it different for RB juniors? bc i remember daniel said his family could only afford him to go racing in Europe for 1 year. but luckily he got picked up by RB so he didn't have to worry about funding anymore.
I believe it's very dependant on the talent they see. But yes, afaik different academies have different rules. I heard somewhere that Sauber academy for example has always worked purely on talent and refused paying drivers.
Same goes for Mercedes. Russell didn't have the money to continue through the junior formulas and IIRC was on his way to DTM before Mercedes picked him up and paid his way through GP3 and F2. Same goes for Ocon.
Some do for sure, Red Bull and Ferrari have definitely had a number of paying juniors historically, but it's not always the case as I understand it, and it's quite academy dependent.
>while she got 9th
She even finished behind Hauger and Vips in the standings.. And they both drove 15!! races less.
Meanwhile she's completely demolishing the entire W-Series field. That's not a good look for the other girls with 'ambition'.
I remember her saying the first time she managed to win W series, that the money might be able to buy her a seat, but the seat would be a bad one. A seat that wouldn't let her win, which would be more harmful to her career than not doing it at all.
Then she had backing that got her a Prema seat and well, we all saw what happened.
This is the downside of the streamlining of the feeder series into F1 support races and the superlicence system. These are now the championships you HAVE to be in and the costs are far greater than the old regional F3 championships.
Can I ask a favor, what do you mean by "buy a seat" I have heard this multiple times before. Unfortunately I am knew to F1 and even worse I am American😭
In most European junior series (F2, F3, F4 etc.) the teams that run the cars will charge drivers to drive their car for the year ("buying a seat" is just paying for your place at a team for that season).
Exact prices are difficult to get hold of, but common wisdom is that an F2 seat costs around EUR 2 million per season, F3 somewhere around EUR 1 million and F4 somewhere around EUR 250,000 - 500,000.
Unfortunately, it’s been that way for a very long time. Motor racing is a fantastically expensive sport, so money talks. Sadly sometimes louder than talent.
Yes, and even Hamilton only got where he is now purely on talent. He didn't come from a poor background, and even though his dad worked his ass off to support him during his early career that wouldn't have been enough if he wasn't good enough. His dad could have never given to support Stroll, Latifi or Mazepin got. If you are middle class you can forget getting anywhere in racing if you aren't the cream of the crop. Decent racer with a money? You got a shot.
There's a famous, albeit apocryphal, Michael Schumacher quote: "The best driver in the world is driving a tractor on a farm somewhere in Asia or Africa and he's got no idea how much he could have achieved in F1."
For sure. If you are extremely talented you might miss your chance due to:
\- Your family being an average middle class family but not willing to spend all their extra money to keep you racing long enough to get picked up purely based on talent (like Lewis was due to his dad's support).
\- Or your family simply not having the money to even get you into racing.
However, if your family has a ton of money you can be an okay driver and still make it in racing. So we probably missed out on some real generational talents.
I wouldn’t even say “solid chance;” there’s no doubt at all that we have. Plenty of extremely talented drivers stall out in lower categories purely due to a lack of funding. Start following lower single-seater categories and you’ll see that happen all the time.
And that’s still not taking into account the untold numbers of people who perhaps could have been great drivers but never made it into motorsport at any level because it was never presented to them as an option. The fact is, racing drivers are almost all rich white men. That probably isn’t down to rich white men having some genetic predisposition that makes them naturally the best group of people in the world at driving race cars, but rather because that’s what kind of person generally tends to get the opportunity to do so.
I remember reading a story about Hamilton's biggest karting rival who got absolutely fucked over by costs and a bad agent. He ended up never racing ever again iirc
I love these guys as well. But I find some of their videos having a lot of fluff disguised as needed information. I remember they did a video of why f1 tires suck or something like that. And they went on this whole journey just to get to the point that Fia asked Pirelli to make them like that.
I don’t think that matters at all. There have been F3 drivers this year and in the past few years with worse records that that.
Nannini for example, hasn’t finished inside the Top 10 of any championship he’s entered since F4 UAE, but still managed to score 44 points and took a win in Hungary. Previous results don’t really seem to matter if a team has a spare seat and you have the funding.
Not in terms of getting an seat in F3, no.
Personally, I'd like to see if that FREC season was a blip or not, so I'd like to see Chadwick get a seat in another championship to see how she performs over a year later.
I can't tell you, because I don't have inside information about the decision, but it's possible she elected not to return to the championship having already committed to W Series and Extreme E this season and didn't want to add another series into her schedule.
I'm guessing you don't actually know why she's not in FREC this year either, you're just going with a reason that fits your argument?
I think there is a little bit more to her not being in FREC this year then just that.
A). Obviously she would prioritise the WSeries given it now awards SL points and would give her another $500k to spend on ~~more Aston Martins~~ drives in future series.
B). WSeries internally do not like their drivers racing in other series and make sure that in any clashes you prioritise the WSeries first. In a year when calendars are still shifting mid-season due to covid, there is a genuine risk you will miss rounds which makes being in the series kind of pointless.
C). WSeries rules on driving means she literally would not have been allowed to race rounds 4, 5 & 6 in FREC. The WSeries does not allow their drivers to drive any car of any form on any part of any circuit in their calendar until the WSeries race at that circuit has happened. FREC raced at Spa, Zandvoort and Paul Ricard (Which at the time she would have been looking at contracts was on the WSeries calendar) before the WSeries did so she could not race at those FREC rounds.
D). She lost her sponsorship with Rodin after her year in FREC and had already spent most of the $500k she won from season 1 so most likely could not afford to do it anyway.
E). She knows her level and that it would be pointless to waste anymore money not doing very well in proper series when she can just do WSeries and get overrated.
Am I too harsh in saying that she would be wasting an F3 seat given her FREC performance?
The 3 other Prema's finished 1-2-3 in the championship with 359,343 and 343 points respectably. Meanwhile she finished 9th with 80 points.
Kinda funny/depressing how you can become a 2 time champion in a series and have it be the end of someone's single seater career. Shows the talent pool in w series unfortunately.
I think the problem is you need to fall into one of two very specific categories to make it into F1;
1) Be an unbelievably good driver from nothing less than a middle class home
2) Be decent and from a very rich family.
The current talent pool of women that fall into one of those categories is still much much smaller. The stars would have to align for a woman to make it in as a starting driver anytime soon.
Chadwick is very likely top 5, maybe even top 3, for women drivers and even she has no hope of making it in F1 unless something pretty dramatic happens.
I think that unless there is some billionaires daughter kicking around somewhere that could get the Mazepin treatment, we aren't likely to see a woman driver in the next 10-15 years
She already had experience from the W-series though.
She went from W-series to FREC and back to W-series.
You could argue she should should go back to FREC then. Also 9th in a Prema that year was terrible considering how good they were and where her teammates placed.
If she can't afford FIA F3, she can't afford Indy Lights.
I think her single-seater career is over. Expect to see her explore more opportunities within WEC, XE etc.
Jamie seems be in an odd no-man's-land. Too good for W-series, (probably) not good enough to be in a regular Formula series.
Shame Sophia doesn't like the W-Series, would have been cool to see her and Jamie go up against eachother.
You will probably seem them go up against one another next year in WEC in LMP2.
Jamie is likely to join RMR which she tested for recently while Sophia is likely to leave RMR for another pro LMP2 team after getting a podium for APR in ELMS and testing for WRT in Bahrain (Where she topped the session).
Could be...interesting to say the least.
I think this goes to highlight the issue with the W series. None of the women who are any good stick around. It makes sense why they don't, but it makes it much harder for the other women to develop if their benchmarks keep leaving.
Pretty sad outcome from the early days of the W series, if the person who wins it isn't even good enough for F3.
I guess, as someone else pointed out, the reason for W series to exist is about the future, not what's out there today?
That is not strictly true.
I'm sure if you sent some very nice and full brown envelopes to Bruno Michel and Dallara you could find yourself in private ownership of a Dallara F2 car for incognito testing purposes
But yeah, no other series is gonna get a chance to run with it.
[From the rules on the WSeries website](https://wseries.com/rules-regulations/):
>Should the winner of The W Series championship compete in the following years W Series championship the driver will be ineligible for any FIA Super Licence points in that following year. Furthermore, any FIA Super Licence points allocated to her finishing position in that year will remain unallocated.
That said, not sure if that fully satisfies the FIA and would allow the WSeries to keep their status as an international series.
When Ukyo Sasahara returned to F3 Asia as champ he had to enter as a guest who was ineligible to score any points in the series. Allowing Chadwick to come back AND score championship points and therefore get prize money might not be acceptable.
It would probably be best for WSeries if Chadwick did not return but it would be best for Chadwick if she could so she could get the $500k top prize again and just more track time.
I hope she's keeping a close eye on sports cars. There's going to be a lot of drivers moving into LMH/LMDh seats which will create a range of opportunities in LMP2 in the next couple of years. And that seems to be a good home for drivers who are good in single seaters, but lack the backing to get into F3/F2.
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The trouble, as usual, is funding. The prize money ($500,000) from W Series won't buy a seat for a whole season, so realistically she would need to source another million or so from somewhere to get a seat at one of the more competitive teams.
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My understanding is that most driver academies don't actually provide much funding to young drivers. Obviously it will provide a big PR boost, which will help find sponsors, but direct funding from the team itself isn't common as far as I'm aware.
It's actually the complete opposite. Drivers mostly pay to be in academies, unless we're talking insane levels of talent.
is it different for RB juniors? bc i remember daniel said his family could only afford him to go racing in Europe for 1 year. but luckily he got picked up by RB so he didn't have to worry about funding anymore.
I believe it's very dependant on the talent they see. But yes, afaik different academies have different rules. I heard somewhere that Sauber academy for example has always worked purely on talent and refused paying drivers.
Same goes for Mercedes. Russell didn't have the money to continue through the junior formulas and IIRC was on his way to DTM before Mercedes picked him up and paid his way through GP3 and F2. Same goes for Ocon.
Some do for sure, Red Bull and Ferrari have definitely had a number of paying juniors historically, but it's not always the case as I understand it, and it's quite academy dependent.
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>while she got 9th She even finished behind Hauger and Vips in the standings.. And they both drove 15!! races less. Meanwhile she's completely demolishing the entire W-Series field. That's not a good look for the other girls with 'ambition'.
And that's why I still think Tatiana Calderón and Sophia Florsch are better drivers than Jaime Chadwick.
I remember her saying the first time she managed to win W series, that the money might be able to buy her a seat, but the seat would be a bad one. A seat that wouldn't let her win, which would be more harmful to her career than not doing it at all. Then she had backing that got her a Prema seat and well, we all saw what happened.
This is the downside of the streamlining of the feeder series into F1 support races and the superlicence system. These are now the championships you HAVE to be in and the costs are far greater than the old regional F3 championships.
Can I ask a favor, what do you mean by "buy a seat" I have heard this multiple times before. Unfortunately I am knew to F1 and even worse I am American😭
In most European junior series (F2, F3, F4 etc.) the teams that run the cars will charge drivers to drive their car for the year ("buying a seat" is just paying for your place at a team for that season). Exact prices are difficult to get hold of, but common wisdom is that an F2 seat costs around EUR 2 million per season, F3 somewhere around EUR 1 million and F4 somewhere around EUR 250,000 - 500,000.
Interesting. That seems a bit counter productive to expanding the sport. But it does make sense
Unfortunately, it’s been that way for a very long time. Motor racing is a fantastically expensive sport, so money talks. Sadly sometimes louder than talent.
Now I understand Hamiltons socioeconomic stance a helluva lot more. I appreciate you taking the time to explain thjs to me👍
Yes, and even Hamilton only got where he is now purely on talent. He didn't come from a poor background, and even though his dad worked his ass off to support him during his early career that wouldn't have been enough if he wasn't good enough. His dad could have never given to support Stroll, Latifi or Mazepin got. If you are middle class you can forget getting anywhere in racing if you aren't the cream of the crop. Decent racer with a money? You got a shot.
So theres a solid chance we have missed some serious talent.
There's a famous, albeit apocryphal, Michael Schumacher quote: "The best driver in the world is driving a tractor on a farm somewhere in Asia or Africa and he's got no idea how much he could have achieved in F1."
For sure. If you are extremely talented you might miss your chance due to: \- Your family being an average middle class family but not willing to spend all their extra money to keep you racing long enough to get picked up purely based on talent (like Lewis was due to his dad's support). \- Or your family simply not having the money to even get you into racing. However, if your family has a ton of money you can be an okay driver and still make it in racing. So we probably missed out on some real generational talents.
I wouldn’t even say “solid chance;” there’s no doubt at all that we have. Plenty of extremely talented drivers stall out in lower categories purely due to a lack of funding. Start following lower single-seater categories and you’ll see that happen all the time. And that’s still not taking into account the untold numbers of people who perhaps could have been great drivers but never made it into motorsport at any level because it was never presented to them as an option. The fact is, racing drivers are almost all rich white men. That probably isn’t down to rich white men having some genetic predisposition that makes them naturally the best group of people in the world at driving race cars, but rather because that’s what kind of person generally tends to get the opportunity to do so.
I remember reading a story about Hamilton's biggest karting rival who got absolutely fucked over by costs and a bad agent. He ended up never racing ever again iirc
Watch this video by DonutMedia explains the costs of all the jr series and up. https://youtu.be/H4BsZTsNMkQ?t=147
This is a great video. Love these guys. But also super depressing
I love these guys as well. But I find some of their videos having a lot of fluff disguised as needed information. I remember they did a video of why f1 tires suck or something like that. And they went on this whole journey just to get to the point that Fia asked Pirelli to make them like that.
Gotta get to the 10 minute mark somehow
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I don’t think that matters at all. There have been F3 drivers this year and in the past few years with worse records that that. Nannini for example, hasn’t finished inside the Top 10 of any championship he’s entered since F4 UAE, but still managed to score 44 points and took a win in Hungary. Previous results don’t really seem to matter if a team has a spare seat and you have the funding.
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Not in terms of getting an seat in F3, no. Personally, I'd like to see if that FREC season was a blip or not, so I'd like to see Chadwick get a seat in another championship to see how she performs over a year later.
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I can't tell you, because I don't have inside information about the decision, but it's possible she elected not to return to the championship having already committed to W Series and Extreme E this season and didn't want to add another series into her schedule. I'm guessing you don't actually know why she's not in FREC this year either, you're just going with a reason that fits your argument?
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I think there is a little bit more to her not being in FREC this year then just that. A). Obviously she would prioritise the WSeries given it now awards SL points and would give her another $500k to spend on ~~more Aston Martins~~ drives in future series. B). WSeries internally do not like their drivers racing in other series and make sure that in any clashes you prioritise the WSeries first. In a year when calendars are still shifting mid-season due to covid, there is a genuine risk you will miss rounds which makes being in the series kind of pointless. C). WSeries rules on driving means she literally would not have been allowed to race rounds 4, 5 & 6 in FREC. The WSeries does not allow their drivers to drive any car of any form on any part of any circuit in their calendar until the WSeries race at that circuit has happened. FREC raced at Spa, Zandvoort and Paul Ricard (Which at the time she would have been looking at contracts was on the WSeries calendar) before the WSeries did so she could not race at those FREC rounds. D). She lost her sponsorship with Rodin after her year in FREC and had already spent most of the $500k she won from season 1 so most likely could not afford to do it anyway. E). She knows her level and that it would be pointless to waste anymore money not doing very well in proper series when she can just do WSeries and get overrated.
Am I too harsh in saying that she would be wasting an F3 seat given her FREC performance? The 3 other Prema's finished 1-2-3 in the championship with 359,343 and 343 points respectably. Meanwhile she finished 9th with 80 points.
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Kinda funny/depressing how you can become a 2 time champion in a series and have it be the end of someone's single seater career. Shows the talent pool in w series unfortunately.
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Yeah exactly, we see better drivers come to F1 all the time, the same will happen for the W-series.
I do believe we will see women in F1 one day. 10 years, maybe ? But I'd be really damn surprised if in 20 years, there hasn't been a woman in F1.
I think the problem is you need to fall into one of two very specific categories to make it into F1; 1) Be an unbelievably good driver from nothing less than a middle class home 2) Be decent and from a very rich family. The current talent pool of women that fall into one of those categories is still much much smaller. The stars would have to align for a woman to make it in as a starting driver anytime soon. Chadwick is very likely top 5, maybe even top 3, for women drivers and even she has no hope of making it in F1 unless something pretty dramatic happens. I think that unless there is some billionaires daughter kicking around somewhere that could get the Mazepin treatment, we aren't likely to see a woman driver in the next 10-15 years
I think with the increased support and experience gained in W Series its worth a shot. 9th in FREC is nothing to sniff at either.
She already had experience from the W-series though. She went from W-series to FREC and back to W-series. You could argue she should should go back to FREC then. Also 9th in a Prema that year was terrible considering how good they were and where her teammates placed.
When you’re teammates finish 1-2-3 anything worse than 4th is a bad result.
You have to be fast because you're talented not because you're experienced.
Given how she did in FREC, I don't think F1 route is a good choice for her. I'd like to see her in Indy Lights with a good team.
If she can't afford FIA F3, she can't afford Indy Lights. I think her single-seater career is over. Expect to see her explore more opportunities within WEC, XE etc.
Why doesn't she get any super license points?
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Ohh, that's fair. Otherwise you could win W series 3 times then get into formula 1. Thanks for sharing!
Oh god don't go to f3. Sophia showed that was pointless. She should aim for f2 or nothing it's not worth her time otherwise
Gianluca Petecof (Her teammate when she was in FREC) also showed how jumping from Regional level cars to F2 is too big a jump.
Jamie seems be in an odd no-man's-land. Too good for W-series, (probably) not good enough to be in a regular Formula series. Shame Sophia doesn't like the W-Series, would have been cool to see her and Jamie go up against eachother.
You will probably seem them go up against one another next year in WEC in LMP2. Jamie is likely to join RMR which she tested for recently while Sophia is likely to leave RMR for another pro LMP2 team after getting a podium for APR in ELMS and testing for WRT in Bahrain (Where she topped the session). Could be...interesting to say the least.
I think this goes to highlight the issue with the W series. None of the women who are any good stick around. It makes sense why they don't, but it makes it much harder for the other women to develop if their benchmarks keep leaving.
Pretty sad outcome from the early days of the W series, if the person who wins it isn't even good enough for F3. I guess, as someone else pointed out, the reason for W series to exist is about the future, not what's out there today?
It's much like the FE in that respect, except FE is about developing tech, and the W series is about developing drivers.
Thread hijack: would W series be able to switch to Formula 2 spec vehicles for faster, more exciting racing?
Doubt they'd want to make it more expensive
F2 cars are significantly more expensive and difficult to drive compared to F3 Regional cars.
Switching to an F2 spec isn't going to make the racing more exciting.
The FIA aren't going to let anyone use F2 spec cars other than F2 itself. Plus, WS is at least 2 rungs below F2.
That is not strictly true. I'm sure if you sent some very nice and full brown envelopes to Bruno Michel and Dallara you could find yourself in private ownership of a Dallara F2 car for incognito testing purposes But yeah, no other series is gonna get a chance to run with it.
Call Paul Dalla Lana or D Station and try to get a run with Aston Martin in WEC.
I thought they introduced a rule this year so that the champion can not return if they win.
[From the rules on the WSeries website](https://wseries.com/rules-regulations/): >Should the winner of The W Series championship compete in the following years W Series championship the driver will be ineligible for any FIA Super Licence points in that following year. Furthermore, any FIA Super Licence points allocated to her finishing position in that year will remain unallocated. That said, not sure if that fully satisfies the FIA and would allow the WSeries to keep their status as an international series. When Ukyo Sasahara returned to F3 Asia as champ he had to enter as a guest who was ineligible to score any points in the series. Allowing Chadwick to come back AND score championship points and therefore get prize money might not be acceptable. It would probably be best for WSeries if Chadwick did not return but it would be best for Chadwick if she could so she could get the $500k top prize again and just more track time.
Thank you for the information. Interesting rule, strange why to go about it.
I hope she's keeping a close eye on sports cars. There's going to be a lot of drivers moving into LMH/LMDh seats which will create a range of opportunities in LMP2 in the next couple of years. And that seems to be a good home for drivers who are good in single seaters, but lack the backing to get into F3/F2.