Jamie Chadwick has won consecutive open-wheel racing championships. Yet the 23-year-old British driver has a difficult road to maneuver her way to the pinnacle of her sport, Formula One racing.
A woman hasn’t started a Formula One race in 46 years, since Italy’s Lella Lombardi competed in the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix, and there’s no sign of that changing soon.
With only 20 drivers on the grid and 10 teams, a seat in F1 is scarce, and the likelihood of drivers making it through the echelons of feeder series Formula Three and Formula Two is narrow, requiring not just talent but millions of dollars in funding.
Susie Wolff, current CEO of Formula E team Venturi and wife of Mercedes team principal and CEO Toto Wolff, was a test driver for the Williams Formula One team for the 2015 season, and remains the last woman to be close to driving in F1.
More recently, Colombia’s Tatiana Calderon made it as far as F2 — the only woman to do so — driving for Arden, and spent the 2019 season as a test driver for Alfa Romeo. She has since switched to IndyCar, where she is a part-time driver with A.J. Foyt Enterprises, after she could not secure an F2 seat for the following season and struggled to score points, finishing 21st in the championship.
Could Chadwick get there? Right now, she’s focused on what’s in front of her.
“From a sporting side, I definitely want to win that third title,” she told ESPN. “But also from a wider picture, I want to prepare as best as possible for whatever the future might be. [It’s] still going to be a tough ask to try to win the third title, I’m under no illusion of how competitive that will be but I think a little bit more forward-thinking this year and plan ahead more.”
Chadwick, the two-time W Series defending champion, is believed to be the next hope for a woman driving in F1, with her role as development driver for Williams and her success in other series, but has yet to secure an opportunity in F3.
“The reality is Jamie is still behind the…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at www.espn.com – RPM…