A Brief History
On May 4, 2019, the W Series conducted their first and inaugural motor race at Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg, Germany, an all-Female auto racing event.
Digging Deeper
That initial race was won by Jamie Chadwick, a British race car driver, who went on to win that first season W Series Championship. Chadwick still drives competitively in the Indy NXT series for the Andretti Autosport team and is a major female example of top-notch drivers such as Danica Patrick, Shirley Muldowney, Janet Guthrie, Simona de Silvestro, Michèle Mouton, and Maria Teresa de Filippis. Apologies to the many great female drivers not named!
The W Series, the first all-Female single seat auto racing series, was replaced in 2023 by a new all-Female racing series called the F1 Academy utilizing the Tatuus F4-T421 chassis powered by Autotecnica provided engines. These women are in a hurry, so get out of their way!
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Savage, Jeff. Danica Patrick. Lerner Classroom, 2010.
Talty, Stephan. Speed Girl: Janet Guthrie and the Race That Changed Sports Forever. Amazon Publishing, 2017.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Jen_ross83 of 2019 W Series Brands Hatch round, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
