6 May 2022
As drivers prepare to be back on-track for the start of the 2022 W Series season in Miami, for one driver the journey to today was a mark of determination and patience.
Relief was the word Abbie Eaton used to explain how she felt when she received a phone call from W Series Racing Director, Dave Ryan, saying she would be racing in the series in 2022. It had been six months since an accident in the first W Series race in Austin. After breaking her back when her car went over one of the circuit’s notorious sausage kerbs, for Abbie it has been a long and hard road back to full race fitness. “I had put in so much hard work since then and all I could think about was how I could get fit enough to race next season. There have been a lot of tough times, digging deep and putting myself through pain to get to the other side and having that reward just makes it all worth it. Yes, I felt relief and happiness,” she explained.
It had already been a tough weekend for Abbie. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong up to that point. A bad qualifying, stalling on the grid and then being behind slower cars. “It was a combination of being up behind the other cars and a snap oversteer on the way up to that last corner, and just turning in slightly off line. I was at a different angle to how I would usually be, it was probably a foot wider and that is all it took to drag me onto the kerbs.”
The danger in this corner was not lost on the F1 drivers and the following week she received an email from Sebastian Vettel saying he was sorry about what had happened. He didn’t want her to think the F1 drivers had ignored it as they were rallying to try and get them removed. At the next race, Fernando Alonso also spoke out about the dangers of the kerbs so she felt she was being supported.
Once she returned to the UK, she had to face up to what she could and couldn’t do, and for the first four to six weeks it was nothing. She admitted how tough this was: “This…
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