Jamie Chadwick Wins First W Series Championship
Here’s to the women who race and to the latest female champion!
As all our readers know, RacingJunk covers numerous forms of motorsports, and it is our goal to continually increase this coverage to include the newest racing series. One such series is the all-new W Series, which wrapped up its first inaugural season this weekend in southeastern England, with 21-year-old open wheel driver Jamie Chadwick leading the way.
After starting on the pole in the final race of the newest all-female open wheel season, at the legendary Brands Hatch circuit in Kent, UK, Chadwick took the lead ahead of fellow UK driver Alice Powell, who qualified alongside Chadwick on the front row.
While the two drivers remained up front, in close formation throughout the testing twists, turns and undulations of the famous Kentish racetrack, Chadwick began to lose her stride after second-place driver Powell hurled her car inside Chadwick’s No. 55 on the entry to Paddock Hill. With this, Chadwick fell back in the field to third.
Despite this setback, Chadwick and her team never gave up on earning their first ever W Series championship. With 10 minutes left in the race, British-born driver Chadwick had another chance to take back her start of race lead after the caution flag flew thanks to a spin by Miki Koyama, who was having a somewhat chaotic race and wound up falling flat in her final race of the inaugural season. Despite the Japanese driver’s misfortune, this caution caused the field to bunch up and gave Chadwick a chance to once more approach the leaders. Powell led the field to the restart of this race ahead of now second-place Emma Kimilainen.
Although Kimilainen put up one heck of a fight, Powell nailed it in the first straightaway and left the rest of the field of the field in the proverbial dust. This included series point leader Chadwick, who would ultimately fall to fourth in the field.
Despite this first-time champion failing to earn a podium finish at her home track this weekend, a top-5 finish is all it took for the only two race season winner to earn her first ever W Series racing championship.
“To be the inaugural W Series champion is simply unbelievable,” said Chadwick. “It will sink in soon I’m sure, but it hasn’t yet.
“Racing in the all-new W Series has just been incredible. At the beginning of the year I thought it just might be a great season, as I suspected that W Series had the potential to be something big, but I never expected it to be this big. Obviously each race has got bigger and better, but coming here to Brands Hatch, my home circuit – well, I’ve simply never experienced anything like it and I have never felt attention from the spectators as much as I did this weekend at this track, and that really is a credit to W Series. It’s been an incredible opportunity for all of us, and the things I’ve been able to go on to do alongside W Series have made it by far the best year of my racing career so far.”
Thanks to earning her first championship, both Chadwick and the W Series’ other top-12 drivers are guaranteed participation in next year’s W Series.
“I want to thank all the drivers and all the staff, as well as our friends and partners at DTM, Hitech, Tatuus, Autotecnica Motori, Hankook, ATS, Puma, Hintsa and the BRSCC,” said W Series Chief Executive Officer Catherine Bond Muir. “After a successful first season, we look forward to seeing just how much this series and its drivers can succeed far into the future.”
Stay tuned to RacingJunk.com for news about this and all the newest racing series far into the future.