21/10/2022
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton believes F1 and the FIA should have done more to help W Series, the all-women race series that has collapsed with liabilities of over £7m.
The series should have formed part of the support to this weekend's United States Grand Prix, but the plug was pulled late last month when the penultimate round, in Singapore, was cancelled.
In its three years the series has only ever had one champion, Jamie Chadwick, who, realistically speaking, is no nearer to an F1 drive than she was before. Indeed, from the outset, the concept was criticised by a number of women racers who claimed it segregated them from men at a time they wanted to be racing against them.
Asked at the Circuit of the Americas if he feels the sport should be doing more to assist support series, Hamilton singled out W Series.
"100 per cent I do," he said. "Particularly that. The W Series.
"There has not been enough focus on women in sport, the whole of Formula 1's life," he continued, "and there's not enough emphasis on it now. They're not magnifying enough the great work that is being done there.
"There is not enough representation across the board, within the industry," he added. "And there's not really a pathway for those young, amazing drivers to even get to Formula 1, and then you have some people who say we're never going to see a female F1 driver ever.
"That's not a good narrative to be putting out," he insisted. "I think we need to be doing more, and with the organisation, with Formula 1 and Liberty doing so well it's not a lot for them to be able to help out in that space.
"I think we need to be doing more to encourage... I mean, in the work I'm trying to do with Mercedes for example, we're trying to get like 8000 young girls into the sport - but every team should be doing that."
While the W Series might be missing this weekend, one area where women do appear to be making strides in the sport is the press room, where no less than five female journos were questioning Lewis, Carlos and Sergio at yesterday's press conference.
This at a time Liberty Media is claiming a 36 million fan-base in the USA and 40% of the sport's followers being women.