Jamie Chadwick - First competitive female driver in F1?
Discussion
LukeBrown66 said:
It really is not rubbish at all, the best guy in Indycar would not be anywhere near the front in F1 even in a good team, the sheer fact that you can have guys racing there for over a decade whose careers fell way to get to F1 shows that. So please do not try and tell anyone with any nous that Indy car is a match or even better in terms of driver quality.
They are very different series, and require very different sorts of drivers, but I am not sure a mid pack guy in Indy would be anywhere other than at the back in f1, the top guys would find away, that is why they are top guys, but I cannot see ANY of the top guys in Indy getting anywhere near Max, Lewis, Russell et al, sorry.
I think it's not so clear cut as that, they are two very very different series. The F1 guys certainly seem to have an easier time in Indy but then you'd expect that given what you have to acheive to get into F1 where Indy is more F2.5 in terms of pace. They are very different series, and require very different sorts of drivers, but I am not sure a mid pack guy in Indy would be anywhere other than at the back in f1, the top guys would find away, that is why they are top guys, but I cannot see ANY of the top guys in Indy getting anywhere near Max, Lewis, Russell et al, sorry.
However Indy is more like a one make series and as such you can't get auto wins for having the best car, this makes consistantly wining in Indy harder than F1 which is one of the reasons why their championships are much closer. Also let's not forget that Alonso didn't excatly blow the whole feild away in his Indy 500 attempts and pretty much everyone says he's the best F1 driver on the grid at the moment.
LukeBrown66 said:
They are very different series, and require very different sorts of drivers, but I am not sure a mid pack guy in Indy would be anywhere other than at the back in f1, the top guys would find away, that is why they are top guys, but I cannot see ANY of the top guys in Indy getting anywhere near Max, Lewis, Russell et al, sorry.
The only people that I recall who have moved from Indycar to F1 and have done well are Montoya and Jacques Villeneuve.LukeBrown66 said:
It really is not rubbish at all, the best guy in Indycar would not be anywhere near the front in F1 even in a good team, the sheer fact that you can have guys racing there for over a decade whose careers fell way to get to F1 shows that. So please do not try and tell anyone with any nous that Indy car is a match or even better in terms of driver quality.
They are very different series, and require very different sorts of drivers, but I am not sure a mid pack guy in Indy would be anywhere other than at the back in f1, the top guys would find away, that is why they are top guys, but I cannot see ANY of the top guys in Indy getting anywhere near Max, Lewis, Russell et al, sorry.
Agreed. Too few top CART/Indycar drivers were able to translate their success across the Atlantic to/back to F1 such as Sebastien Bourdais, Christiano da Matta, Alex Zanardi.They are very different series, and require very different sorts of drivers, but I am not sure a mid pack guy in Indy would be anywhere other than at the back in f1, the top guys would find away, that is why they are top guys, but I cannot see ANY of the top guys in Indy getting anywhere near Max, Lewis, Russell et al, sorry.
Scott Dixon tested for Williams and BMW nothing further went with it, Gil De Ferran wasn't called back to drive Stewart.
Even Mike Hull of Chip Ganassi Racing has admitted CART/Indycar is a series that lends itself to F1/European educated rejects and refugees.
andburg said:
and shes signed for Andretti in Indy lights
Big pressure year for her, after 3 years of success shes back in it with the guys.
Just catching up on this after a few weeks away. Congratulations to her, and good luck next year with the move to the States. Big pressure year for her, after 3 years of success shes back in it with the guys.
A bit of a left turn (ha!), but there’s definitely a career to be had over there, in a way that’s not always posssible staying with the European or FIA series, with their huge costs mostly bourne by the drivers themselves.
Jamie Chadwick: W Series champion to stay in Williams driver development programme
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/64322318
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/64322318
Great, but do people not think it would be a great advert for women, Jamie and all the recent publicity to at least let her have a run in a car, she still has not done so which I find astonishing, this smacks of Williams, a team with a very poor reputation at the moment trying to clean up their image with an empty promise, what on earth is the damn point of this anyway, isn't she supposed to be racing in the USA, and will likely be based there? I am sure she does sim work etc, but would it be that hard to put a PR day on somewhere and let her have a crack in say a 2 year old car?
LukeBrown66 said:
Great, but do people not think it would be a great advert for women, Jamie and all the recent publicity to at least let her have a run in a car, she still has not done so which I find astonishing, this smacks of Williams, a team with a very poor reputation at the moment trying to clean up their image with an empty promise, what on earth is the damn point of this anyway, isn't she supposed to be racing in the USA, and will likely be based there? I am sure she does sim work etc, but would it be that hard to put a PR day on somewhere and let her have a crack in say a 2 year old car?
They only have (I think...) Two PR days a year don't they? Surely much more likely to put in a driver that they think has the potential to actually drive for the team one day - give them a run.I really like Jamie, she's a very down to earth woman and obviously a driving talent - but I can't see her ever breaking F1 if she can't conquer W series so... I can't see the justification of seat time, which is of course very limited and valuable.
Other than using a PR day for actual PR, but that's not generally what they're used for!
So in reality it is an utterly pointless gesture, a box ticking exercise to say we back her but we are never going to let her anywhere near an F1 car, maybe let he do something at Goodwood in a car 40 years old as looks great next to an old car.
She must be getting something out of it as I am sure she would have decided against doing it, but it does seem utterly pointless without an end product of a kind, for either party actually.
She must be getting something out of it as I am sure she would have decided against doing it, but it does seem utterly pointless without an end product of a kind, for either party actually.
TheDeuce said:
I really like Jamie, she's a very down to earth woman and obviously a driving talent - but I can't see her ever breaking F1 if she can't conquer W series so... I can't see the justification of seat time, which is of course very limited and valuable.
Not sure what you mean about the W series. If winning it three times isn't conquering it I don't know what it is.She's not good enough for F1 IMO but with the way that the media world of motorsport is 90% skewed to F1 it won't do her any harm at all to have connections with a team. If she won a race in the NXT series there would probably be less column inches written about that than her doing a test for Williams.
LukeBrown66 said:
So in reality it is an utterly pointless gesture, a box ticking exercise to say we back her but we are never going to let her anywhere near an F1 car, maybe let he do something at Goodwood in a car 40 years old as looks great next to an old car.
She must be getting something out of it as I am sure she would have decided against doing it, but it does seem utterly pointless without an end product of a kind, for either party actually.
She’ll be paying Williams handsomely for the privilege, so there must be something in it for her to want to stay involved with the team. Perhaps she’s doing sim evaluations against the race drivers there. She must be getting something out of it as I am sure she would have decided against doing it, but it does seem utterly pointless without an end product of a kind, for either party actually.
Unless of course the new Williams management see enough in Jamie, to want to reverse the existing financial arrangement, which I very much doubt.
andburg said:
i cant imagine she pays Williams, they'll pay her a token value or contribute towards her racing costs elsewhere while rolling her out to show their support for female drivers.
She gets access to the latest F1 tech and people who can advise/support her and paddock access.
Luke makes a valid point though, what good is paddock access, advice and sim time if it never results in track time? She doesn’t need people who can advise/support her, she has got as far as she can with advice and support, she needs track time. Another year in W-Series is pointless and there are Williams academy drivers in F2/3 so why not Chadwick who gets punted out to IndyLights?She gets access to the latest F1 tech and people who can advise/support her and paddock access.
Article on the BBC site today talking about this subject.
Oddly released now when the main tope of conversation is Michelle Gatting winning an ELMS race in her class at Portimao at the eod of last year, and the "battles" she went through in lower levels of racing that are exactly the same as the battles any driver goes through to climb the ladder.
THe journo does make a good point though, why no females in FE, surely the seires made for this type of thing in terms of PR and marketing and the profile of the series, are they just as blind, or is it as we think, female drivers available are maybe not quite good enough as the talent in FE is pretty high level.
Oddly released now when the main tope of conversation is Michelle Gatting winning an ELMS race in her class at Portimao at the eod of last year, and the "battles" she went through in lower levels of racing that are exactly the same as the battles any driver goes through to climb the ladder.
THe journo does make a good point though, why no females in FE, surely the seires made for this type of thing in terms of PR and marketing and the profile of the series, are they just as blind, or is it as we think, female drivers available are maybe not quite good enough as the talent in FE is pretty high level.
pablo said:
andburg said:
i cant imagine she pays Williams, they'll pay her a token value or contribute towards her racing costs elsewhere while rolling her out to show their support for female drivers.
She gets access to the latest F1 tech and people who can advise/support her and paddock access.
Luke makes a valid point though, what good is paddock access, advice and sim time if it never results in track time? She doesn’t need people who can advise/support her, she has got as far as she can with advice and support, she needs track time. Another year in W-Series is pointless and there are Williams academy drivers in F2/3 so why not Chadwick who gets punted out to IndyLights?She gets access to the latest F1 tech and people who can advise/support her and paddock access.
edit:
Look at it like football academies, very few plays in them will ever make it into the first team at that club but you need depths in there to benchmark people against. Footballs teams dont kick out all the academy players they know will never make their first team and nor should F1 teams.
Edited by andburg on Friday 20th January 12:01
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