fell into this late and kind of by accident,” explains
newly crowned W Series champion Jamie Chadwick of
her introduction to motorsport. “I’m not from a motor
racing background and I followed my brother into it
initially – I wouldn’t have been exposed to it otherwise.”
Six years on from the beginning of her car racing career, at the age of
14 in the Ginetta Junior Championship, you’d say that nothing that
has happened to Chadwick in the past 12 months can be considered
‘accidental’. In the space of that one year, she has gone from midfield
British Formula 3 contender to the new shining hope to become
the first female to start a Formula 1 World Championship race in
more than four decades.
She has already won two titles in 2019: first the Indian-run MRF
Challenge trophy at the beginning of the year – in which yes, she
headed a field of predominantly men – and now the inaugural
W Series crown, wrapped up this month at Brands Hatch, and
in which she beat ex-Formula Renault 3.5 racer Beitske Visser
to the $500,000 prize fund. In June, there was a class win at the
Nurburgring 24 Hours with Aston Martin, while there have also
been a couple of Formula E tests in Ad-Diriyah and Marrakech.
“It really has been a crazy year actually, a lot better than expected
and a lot more going on,” says Chadwick. “The MRF Challenge was
a really big turning point for me. I couldn’t do another year of British
F3 or the next level of single-seaters because the step up financially was
just huge and I couldn’t really justify it with what I’d done in British F3.
What a lot of people don’t see is just how much goes into F3, and a lot of
people were doing a lot more than I was doing. I realised I needed to stack
the odds in my favour a little bit more. I went out there and it felt like
I stepped up a level, so when I came back and straight into W Series
I was able to hit the ground running after a really good winter.”
After finishing in the top five in a one-off in the Asian F3 opener at
Sepang (using the same Tatuus chassis and Alfa Romeo turbo engine that
features in W Series), Chadwick definitely did hit the ground running
when it came to the start of the W Series season with a dominant display
at the Hockenheim opening round – she topped every session, claimed
pole and then scored an emphatic victory. She was never off the podium
at each of the four following rounds, and only missed out in the title
decider at Brands Hatch, where she took a fourth place that she described
as “awful” despite it still being enough to secure the championship.
Her breakout year has not gone unnoticed, not least because Williams
F1 team boss Claire Williams was in attendance for that Hockenheim
masterclass, with a coveted F1 role arriving with the team in time for
Chadwick’s 21st birthday shortly afterwards. “It’s a huge honour to be
a part of the team and I’m really proud of my involvement with them,”
she says. “I’ve known Claire for a while now and she’s always kept up
to date with my career, so the contact had been there for a long time.
“Just prior to Hockenheim, the conversation opened about
potentially doing something with them and I obviously showed
a lot of enthusiasm towards that, so they said that they would come
out to Hockenheim. I don’t know how much pressure was on that
race, but it was nice for Claire to come and see the first race and she
was converted – she had her reservations about W Series to begin
with, but actually she absolutely loved it.
“In terms of what I do in a development role, it’s a lot of factory-based
simulator work, which I’m finding so useful at the moment. But also I’m
immersed with them on race weekends so it’s about learning as much as
I can in and around an F1 team. There’s a lot I do on the simulator that
goes on to correlate closely with what the drivers do at the track, so I can
actually see what they’re doing and know what they’re doing because
“I’m immersed with them on race weekends,
so it’s about learning as much as I can
in and around a Formula 1 team”
“I
TRIENITZS^ BLOXHAM16 AUTOSPORT.COM 22 AUGUST 2019
JAMIE CHADWICK