r/F1FeederSeries Oct 10 '22

Formula Regional W Series to curtail 2022 season to focus on fundraising for 2023

https://wseries.com/news/w-series-to-curtail-2022-season-to-focus-on-fundraising-for-2023/
182 Upvotes

45 comments sorted by

212

u/hubris-hub Oct 10 '22

Stick to European circuits next season (Imola, Monaco, Red Bull Ring, Silverstone, Zandvoort, Hungary, Spa, Monza) and save the series millions in shipping and logistics costs.

53

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '22

[deleted]

63

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '22

If the mission is to inspire women and girls around the world to get into karting and motorsports, giving themselves the biggest possible platform is the best way to accomplish that. Their ambitions should be grand, unfortunately it was too much too soon. They should probably refocus on a European schedule until they develop a sustainable business model.

27

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '22

[deleted]

12

u/Ayden1290 Zak O'Sullivan Oct 10 '22

Not being picky but Blancpain is now GT World Challenge.. But that's testament to how effective that sponsorship was

12

u/cjei21 None Selected Oct 11 '22

GT World Challenge..

Excuse me, it is FANATEC GT WORLD CHALLENGE POWERED BY AWS

Thank you very much.

2

u/Ayden1290 Zak O'Sullivan Oct 11 '22

If your being picky it's actually FANATEC GT WORLD CHALLENGE POWERED BY AWS SPONSORED BY PIRELLI EUROPE/AMERICA/ASIA/AUSTRALIA

3

u/DawidIzydor Oct 11 '22

Giving them platform would be great if one could watch the races live on F1 TV.

23

u/stagfury None Selected Oct 10 '22

No, they used to follow DTM around.

22

u/VitorGBarreto None Selected Oct 10 '22

There's no harm in following F1, but they should definitely focus on Europe until the series has enough funding to travel around the world.

6

u/StuBeck Sebastian Montoya Oct 10 '22

I think it helps tremendously. The whole point is to get these racers names out there, and racing on DTM weekends wasn’t doing much at all for attention. At least when it was on F1 weekends, people were seeing it on tv.

2

u/talesfromterrafirma :Raghunathan: Mahaveer Raghunathan Oct 11 '22

idk man, at least in the UK it’s actually become way harder to watch this season as it’s behind a Sky paywall with no meaningful catch-up, as opposed to free to air TV with catch-up whenever on All 4 or even Youtube.

If they want to get the best of both worlds, they’ll just follow F1 around Europe until they generate enough to actually make the overseas travel sensible.

1

u/StuBeck Sebastian Montoya Oct 11 '22

That’s unrelated to which series it’s attached to though. It’s actually easier in the us to watch it now as it’s on espn+.

It’s just a bad concept. Use the millions they spent on a winter tv series where they show them scouting and helping women drivers get to higher series and not segregate them to frec cars

106

u/Alpha_Jazz Franco Colapinto Oct 10 '22

Please help with my yearly budget my family is dying

Race cars: £10

Track rental: £15

Jamie Chadwick prize money: £500k

Intercontinental car transport: £100k

Catering: £2.50

26

u/TheAlexLion Oct 10 '22

Those Tatuus ain’t even worth 10 bucks mate

4

u/admiral_sinkenkwiken Lola Oct 11 '22

2.50 at most

11

u/Bizarblex Jack Doohan Oct 11 '22

Catering is 2 million quid now haven't you heard?

3

u/According-Switch-708 Gabriel Bortoleto Oct 11 '22

The RB special buffet.

64

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '22

[deleted]

26

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '22

Well also they realized and we’ve seen in many articles that it wasn’t useful as a tool to get girls in other series. It just didn’t go anywhere or connect anywhere.

24

u/kamaral None Selected Oct 10 '22

And we got to see the Noda hype go bust.

16

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '22

[deleted]

14

u/admiral_sinkenkwiken Lola Oct 11 '22

The Noda train was always doomed to derail.

In relative racing experience and self development she’s light years behind other drivers her age, she’s never competed in karting, run only very few races and got beaten by inferior F5 cars in both seasons she raced in Denmark.

There might be some talent there but her father’s abysmal management has stopped her being able to realise it.

6

u/stagfury None Selected Oct 11 '22

The Noda train has always been pure copium, mostly just bullshit marketing push from her dad. She's just not that good.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 11 '22

[deleted]

0

u/stagfury None Selected Oct 11 '22

The bubble was never real, it's purely bullshit manufactured by his father, just fake marketing.

3

u/WhenLemonsLemonade Oct 11 '22

I bought it, which says to me that instead of getting Noda a good race seat, they just need to get her Dad a job as Head of Marketing for an F1 team.

0

u/stagfury None Selected Oct 11 '22

Not sure his kind of bullshit works in anything that catches even remotely any amount of actual attention.

He mostly just rely on cherry picking info out of context to make his daughter look better than she is.

Not to mention the whole paddock rumors about her withdrawal from US F4.

2

u/WhenLemonsLemonade Oct 11 '22

I haven't heard those - what are the rumours?

0

u/admiral_sinkenkwiken Lola Oct 11 '22

It was already apparent there wasn’t much to the hype in Danish F4 where she was being beaten by F5 cars, couldn’t even pick up a race win last year and got smashed by a kid that only did half the season.

4

u/Fart_Leviathan Ligier Oct 11 '22 edited Oct 11 '22

I think that ship has sailed by her being soundly beaten in Danish F4 by similarly-aged Mads Hoe (yes, real name) who was driving an F5 car.

If not even earlier with her (dad's) extremely dubious claims of setting a "lap record" where race laps in damp conditions were faster than her supposed record.

7

u/admiral_sinkenkwiken Lola Oct 11 '22

Just to point out, Mads is 8 years older than Juju

4

u/Fart_Leviathan Ligier Oct 11 '22

Oh, thanks. Must have confused his age with one of the random Danes that also beat her. Edited it.

3

u/admiral_sinkenkwiken Lola Oct 11 '22

To be fair Noda also got beaten by a kid that only ran half the season

20

u/TheAlexLion Oct 10 '22

Who knew that a racing series that works like a charity wouldn’t work huh

8

u/StuBeck Sebastian Montoya Oct 10 '22

This is one of the biggest things people are missing. For the majority of drivers, they need to bring sponsors in. This includes F1…and even the top names. Having a racing series that was free is great in theory…but it also ensures the drivers have no expertise in gaining sponsorship for the next step. $500k is a lot, but its not getting a driver a drive in FIA F3. They should have at least required that the drivers get 50k or something in sponsors to be eligible to try out for the series.

3

u/DawidIzydor Oct 11 '22

create a series to promote women follow F1, the most expensive racing series in the world don't stream races live on F1 TV alongside other support series almost no-one watches it surprised pikatchu face

31

u/GGAllinPartridge None Selected Oct 10 '22

This was supposed to be a feeder series but it's become clear that there's no next step for the drivers. I'd love to see more women move up the ranks in motorsport, but this isn't making it happen. Maybe a female-focused F3 team would provide a better platform for these drivers to prove themselves.

20

u/OctopusRegulator Gianluca Petecof Oct 10 '22

Investors might as well just hand Chadwick 500k in cash and save themselves the hassle

6

u/siriuslywinchester Theo Pourchaire Oct 11 '22

Would it not be cheaper for them to just run teams in feeder series? Like become W Team instead and run in all the junior categories to help girls up the ladder?

1

u/bdone2012 None Selected Oct 11 '22

In I think freca the teams are allowed an extra driver if it’s a girl. That seems like a good idea. I don’t know a ton about it but it seems like they need more girls starting to drive in karting to take advantage of stuff like this. Most of the teams in freca didn’t run a girl even though they were allowed to. I assume it’s a combo of not enough interest and not enough money.

1

u/siriuslywinchester Theo Pourchaire Oct 11 '22

Yea, but presumably it's not a fully funded seat? Like the W Series is fully funded they could switch from funding a full series to fully funding seats for girls in the feeder series and then they'd fill them. I would assume the funding seats would be cheaper than funding an entire series but not sure?

1

u/bdone2012 None Selected Oct 11 '22

Yeah I don’t think the seats were funded and yeah funding those would be cheaper. It’s probably a good idea to fund those seats but I don’t think it fixes the whole problem.

The W series seemed like a pretty good idea to get young girls interested in doing karting. I wonder if too many people are really gonna watch freca so therefore wouldn’t get that many girls interested.

Also there was a crossover or two from w series in freca last year and they were pretty decent in w series but not great in freca. Meaning the popularity has to rise for girls in karting so the girls have more experience. Doing a marketing campaigns to get parents interested in taking their young girls to karting could be the most important. Because really at that age it’s the parents decision if the kids will drive.

1

u/siriuslywinchester Theo Pourchaire Oct 11 '22

Yea, I 100% agree. I think W Series would be better for like "grass roots" and trying to help girls work their way up to the same level as the guys already in those series personally. Coz for the majority of the W Series women many of them are already of at the age where they'd need to be competitive in the existing series already to get to F1.

I think in general W Series is a good idea, but I think it needs to be implemented at an earlier age. Maybe a Karting series, something like a ginetta jnr series to work on race craft on bigger tracks, then the regular W Series becoming like F4/F3ish and the girls work their way up. That case though they'd maybe be better off just sponsoring girls in series already existing, hence my "team" instead of "series" thoughts.

Being on the F1 package probably did help them get more fans watching and potentially got younger girls thinking "I wanna do that" but clearly it's not inspired enough to bring in the sponsors it needs and has essentially ended up ruining the season for the girls who loose out on the last races as chances to move up the championship order which is a massive shame for them.

10

u/EgenulfVonHohenberg Prema Racing Oct 10 '22

That's probably something around 15-20 million (of whatever your preferred currency at the moment is) wasted. Three seasons and absolutely no progress towards getting a female driver into F1.

I really wanted W Series to succeed, I really did. But it's proven in a very convincing fashion that this was nothing other than a very expensive publicity stunt.

The money wasted on this shit-show could have gone towards funding competitive full-season drives in F4, FRECA and F3 for talented female drivers instead.

-5

u/razzhasse Arvid Lindblad Oct 10 '22

Oh no! Anyway

-7

u/Turd_Fergusson_77 Oct 10 '22

I don't remember asking

1

u/[deleted] Oct 11 '22

if its going away then at least jamie chadwick got a lot of money to handle for the future