More from W Series:
"To be clear, and to clarify some media speculation on the subject, I’m not now referring to Katherine Legge or Michelle Gatting. A very experienced driver, Katherine performed extremely well at Almeria, as you’d expect, but, despite being favourably impressed by the quality of the W Series operation, she decided to remain focused on her USA-based racing programme in 2020 and as such hasn’t put her name forward to race with us next year. Michelle performed extremely well at Almeria too, but also elected not to race with us next year but instead to concentrate on other series."


They've also clarified that from next year the Champ won't be allowed to stay on defend their title due to them now having Super License point eligibility.

The drives are fully funded by the series, so wonder what Chadders is going to do with her half a million quid!

Okay, best case scenario for Chadwick; she wins again and has enough money for a full F3 seat for a season at Prema. There are two possible outcomes from that:
1. She gets the drive and at best spends a season fighting over minor points whilst her teammates battle for the title.
2. They decide they’d prefer someone more competitive and she doesn’t get the drive, so a year of her career gets wasted in WSeries.

The whole concept is a bit ‘emperor’s new clothes’ to me. Plenty of people saying how wonderful it all is but nobody can say what the actual specific purpose is. If it’s supposed to get more women interested in watching, that’s not happening. If it’s to give women an artificial boost up the ladder, all they’re going to do is end up like Calderon; going from middle-bottom half every race to almost invariably last.

Okay, best case scenario for Chadwick; she wins again and has enough money for a full F3 seat for a season at Prema. There are two possible outcomes from that:
1. She gets the drive and at best spends a season fighting over minor points whilst her teammates battle for the title.
2. They decide they’d prefer someone more competitive and she doesn’t get the drive, so a year of her career gets wasted in WSeries.

I mean, there is a third possibility where she's quicker than you expect and actually wins a race or two. I don't think it's quite as cut-and-dried as you make it out to be.

I mean, there is a third possibility where she's quicker than you expect and actually wins a race or two. I don't think it's quite as cut-and-dried as you make it out to be.

Highly unlikely given how she couldn't win a race in the W series in the second half of the season and barely beat Visser, a driver who got dropped from the Red Bull program after 3 seasons in FR3.5 were in her best season she finished second from last of the regular runners.

image source = soymotor.com

We'll have a better idea of the truth behind the hype regarding 13 year old Juju Noda (daughter of very occasional F1 driver Hideki) in 2020.

She has entered the 2020 Danish F4 championship as the minimum age requirement in Denmark is 14 (her birthday is in February). The holder of the Okayama F4 lap record (set when she was 12), her domestic Karting resume is good and she created a strong impression on WSC drivers when testing an F3 car in 2019.

She cannot get a Japanese racing license until she's 16, that's why she's coming to Europe, as the Danish F4 series uses the same chassis (Mygale) as the UK series there should be some correlation.

Link to article

Interesting, thanks for that. Can't help but think it's a bit too soon but if she's over the min age then that's all that matters. I didn't buy into the hype as such but certainly should be interesting to watch how she copes.

Nice web site too - will take a good look at that later , thanks,

Agreed DOLOMITE, but at least it seems THIS girl has something to her and isn't just the right gender for media hype. Hopefully she proves to be a top contender and can progress through the ranks and make it to F1, but to do so she's going to face a plethora of top talent which will help to better evaluate her abilities.

This is a bit unfair.

She has been in the news for a while and a quick Google search will show you her name plenty. Red Bull ran this last April when she was 12:

https://www.redbull.com/int-en/fastest- ... otorsports

I think that's what F1 Mercenary meant, that she actually seems to have a bit of talent rather than just being a girl that drives a bit......

I think that's what F1 Mercenary meant, that she actually seems to have a bit of talent rather than just being a girl that drives a bit......

She has been in the news for a while and a quick Google search will show you her name plenty...

In other news Calderon is joining Super Formula for '20. The first female driver the series has had.
Unsurprisingly her 2019 F2 results didn't seem to put her on any of teams shopping lists for this year.

She's presently racing in the F3 Asian Winter series and yet again is the slowest driver in the field if we ignore the two rich amateur drivers.

There are some decent drivers in the field but I would say perhaps half are unknowns yet Calderon is still the slowest, also in the series is Chadwick, to her credit she's getting among the male drivers but still very much in the midfield.

Interestngly though she has a 4th place and has finished ahead of Chadwick twice... just getting that from Wiki though, I've not seen the races to know how significant that is.

The race were Calderon beat Chadwick was in the wet, Chadwick was leading until she spun, however it has to be said that Chadwick's speed in the wet was somewhat dire.

Serious question, not joking: Why was she leading, then? Did she make the right tyre gamble and stay out?

Serious question, not joking: Why was she leading, then? Did she make the right tyre gamble and stay out?

No just leading Calderon, she was about 4/5 seconds off the pace of the leader.

Chadwick, having secured pole position in race 8 by recording the fastest lap in race 7, led from re-start (after Calderon took out Smith further back) to finish only to be given a post race penalty for jumping the original start...

She was classified 8th after the 20 second penalty was applied.

Race 9 was won by Sebastian Fernandez

It's quite impressive the way Chadwick has been able to get among the male drivers, I'm going to avoid trying to find the out the full results before I watch the races on youtube.

It's quite impressive the way Chadwick has been able to get among the male drivers, I'm going to avoid trying to find the out the full results before I watch the races on youtube.

It appears that she also recorded fastest lap in race 8

How many times has Calderón, or any other woman come to that, recorded fastest lap in an F3 race?

Also, Floersch on W Series getting Super license points:


"These few superlicense points won‘t be enough when you are to slow to get more points in FIA F3 or F2👉🏻F1 is not a picnic🙋‍♀️Welcome in reality💪🏻 #sophia #rethink #nosegregation #changeagent"

She has a point,but......ouch!

Yahoo! Sports: You started racing at the age of three when you won your first race car. How do you rate those years to the present?

Juju Noda : It is difficult to assess what I did in life. I enjoyed the time spent with my family in motorsport and I really enjoyed the competition. I like the challenge of people believing that it is a sport dominated by men.

Yahoo! Sports: What are the difficulties of being a young teenager in a mostly male sport?

Juju Noda : Simply physical strength that differs between them and me. If you want to have the same strength as a man, you need to train much more than they do. On top of that, the woman's weight is usually lighter, but you have to load the ballast in the car (heavy material placed on the bottom of the vehicle) that has the same weight as the male competitors. But a woman cannot match up in muscle. So, at the end of the day, regulation calls for women to try harder than men in racing.

JuJu Noda is currently testing an F4 car at Aragon (MotoGp track) in Spain. She was interviewed by Yahoo, here's a link to the article (in Spanish).

For a 14 year old she does seem to have a mature attitude:-

It's interesting that she brings forward the physical aspect of driving a race car were before it's been said on places such as this that such a thing is not a problem for women.

Perhaps a difference between a woman and a 14 year old girl?

Maybe but she was clearly generalising for all women.