We got confirmation last week that the W Series, as had been rumoured, has run out of money and will cancel the final three races of the season, one at COTA this weekend and the season ending double-header in Mexico next weekend, while crowning Jamie Chadwick champion for the third time in as many seasons.

And while nothing has been confirmed, and I certainly could be wrong, I think the W Series is dead and buried, and Chadwick will be the series first, last and only champion.

From the beginning the W Series was doomed to fail, it was a flawed concept from the start. If the series' raison d'etre was to develop the next female F1 driver, and yet no driver could even move up to F3, including their 2 time champion, then the series was failing almost from the beginning.

Young drivers, from sixteen to twenty two or twenty three, need to compete against the best and strongest competition possible and the W Series did not provide that. In fact, by limiting the series to women only, it could never provide that.

And while the concept may have been flawed from the outset, the W Series did itself no favours in the way it operated over 4 years, and began burying itself almost from the outset.

The first nail in the W Series coffin was the complete cancellation of the 2020 season, to the best of my recollection the only "major" series to do so. Not a good look for sponsors, investors or potential young drivers to see the series not even attempting to run a few races, while virtually all other series managed at least a partial schedule.

The second nail also came in 2020, and that was 2019 Series champion Jamie Chadwick getting thrashed in the 2020 Formula Regional European Championship (a regional F3 series with cars almost identical to the W Series), while her 3 Prema team mates dominated the series, finishing first, second and third in the championship while winning 16 of 23 races between them. The best Chadwick could manage was a third place finish in the season opener, while finishing 9th in points, behind 2 drivers that each did less than half the season. Rightly or wrongly, for better or worse, this set the bar for the W Series, and it wasn't very high.

The third nail in the W Series coffin was Chadwick winning the series again in 2021. If the 2019 & 2021 series champ can't do better than ninth in a regional F3 series while driving for the championship winning team, F3 team owners have to ask themselves, what does that say about the rest of the W Series field? Again, rightly or wrongly, fair or not, these are the questions FIA F3 teams are going to ask when considering their driver line ups.

F3 teams are very much a business and they need funded drivers to come to their team. In order to attract funded drivers, their advertising is podiums, race wins and championships. Not many drivers want to sign up for teams that finish 5th and 6th all the time, so signing championship caliber drivers is essential for all teams. They aren’t in existence to charitably hand out seats to mid-pack drivers to make us all feel good.

The fourth nail in the W Series coffin was the decision to fly away to several venues as F1 support races this year. Even Formula Two sticks to Europe and the Middle East, never setting foot in North America or the far east. To spend all that money and effort to run single 30 minute races is one of the dumbest things I’ve seen a development series do. Utterly insane. To me, this says, despite claims to the contrary, the W Series really see themselves as an end and not a means to an end. They want to be a WTA or an LPGA, not an FIA Formula 3.

As an example, this season's FIA F3 Championship had 9 Rounds compared to the W Series original schedule of 8. The difference, however, is that the FIA F3 series has 18 races in total, compared to the W Series, which would only do a total of only 10, 8 fewer races than F3. The European Formula Regional Series has 10 rounds and 20 races. I’m really not sure how anyone associated with the W Series ever thought that so few races in a development series was going to produce an F1 driver.

To my mind, the series administration decided they would rather hang around with the beautiful people in Miami and Singapore, than freeze in a deserted Oulton Park or Thruxton and actually develop race car drivers. There is a reason all developmental series have limited travel and race up to 3 times per weekend. Apparently the lessons of dozens of developmental series all around the world somehow don’t apply to the W Series.

I can tell you from experience, there is nothing glamorous about running or participating in development series, but that work has to be put in for young drivers to grow and develop. There is no shortcut.

This year’s grid & schedule in particular proved, at least to me, that the W Series was not interested in being a development series, but wanted to be something bigger.

While the fly away schedule was bad enough, this year’s grid hardly looked like a training ground for up and coming drivers, and more so an end-of-career path for drivers not going any further.

Let's take a look at driver selection. Our own Megan Gilkes, who participated in the first season of the W Series, winning a non-points round, participated in the pre season test in Spain, where she told me she turned top 10 lap times. Megan is 21 years old and should be the kind of driver the W Series is looking for. But Gilkes wasn’t invited to take part in this year's series, and instead competed in the GB4 series, where she scored two wins, with one round still to run at the time of writing. (Personal thought, Megan’s career was much better off running in GB4 than the W Series, so hopefully she can take a positive away from all of this).

Of the 19 drivers listed on the W Series website, 8 are 25 years of age or older.

So why does a series that claims to be creating the next female Formula One driver have a 30 year old driver who has never finished better than 6th, while turning away a 21 year old with a win in the series?

A lot of poor decision making by a group of people who, you would think, should have known better.

If there is a W Series in the future, there needs to be great change in the way it operates.

First, they need to create a schedule that is at least 10 rounds, plus regular testing, and all of them should all be local in the UK, with maybe two or three on the continent. Each weekend needs to have at least 2 races, and probably should have 3. Young drivers need to race, not lounge around F1 hospitality suites in exotic locales. Again, developing Formula One drivers is not glamorous work.

I think they also need to have a couple of “guest” cars to be driven by outsiders, so the top runners in the series have a better benchmark to compare themselves with. They should invite top drivers from FIA F3 and FREC to compete each round to create greater competition at the sharp end of the grid. They may not need to be at every race, but at least 2 or 3 rounds each season. If they insist on keeping it women only, then get Christina Neilson or Sophia Flörsch or Taylor Hagler or Samantha Tan into the guest cars.

And for no other reason other than to reiterate just how dumb it was, I’ll say it again, flying off to do a single 30 minute race overseas just so you can say you’re part of the F1 show is probably the dumbest thing I have ever seen a racing series do.

The current driver selection process is also flawed, as evidenced by this year’s driver line up. The top 5 or 6 finishing drivers should have the option of returning for a second season (but only 2 seasons, max, the W Series shouldn’t be a career for any driver). I think having a few experienced drivers in the field each season will create greater competition amongst the top drivers, and only allowing a second season, maximum, will not plug up the advancement process for the younger drivers.

The rest of the places on the grid should be filled by top finishing drivers from select karting or F1600 championships across Europe, North America and Asia. No favoritism, no feeling sorry for drivers, just the fastest young women that are ready to make the move from karts to cars. 

The only other serious option for the W Series is scrapping the current concept altogether and creating an Iron Dames type of team. Regardless, if it is to continue, the W Series needs to make massive changes, what we’ve seen so far has been a sporting and commercial failure.

As for the only champion in W Series history, I think Chadwick is a good driver whose career was badly stunted by the W Series. She faced next to no competition and as a result hasn’t progressed to where she should be at this point in her career. 

Chadwick has had at least one, and maybe two Indy Lights tests with Andretti (as of writing one test has been completed and a second test is rumoured). I think this is the best route for her to go. It’s incredibly difficult to find the absolute edge of performance again when you’ve gotten used to only needing 8 or 9 tenths to win races. I’d love to see her with Andretti in a 2 season deal for Lights, as season one will be spent learning the cars and the tracks, with season two giving us a much better idea of how competitive she can be. 

Only time will tell what the future holds for the W Series.