Chadwick encouraged by female participation in motorsport before Le Mans debut

Yahoo

2 days ago

'Walk into any paddock now and you see the amount of female mechanics, engineers, drivers,' said Jamie Chadwick before her Le Mans 24 Hours debut.
'Walk into any paddock now and you see the amount of female mechanics, engineers, drivers,' said Jamie Chadwick before her Le Mans 24 Hours debut. Photograph: James Moy/Getty
Jamie Chadwick believes motor racing is undergoing a fundamental change in female participation, a transition the British driver has played a central role in. Chadwick is committed to taking it even further as she prepares to compete for the first time in the endurance classic, the Le Mans 24 Hours, this weekend.
The 27-year-old has long been an advocate of promoting women in motorsport, including founding her own female karting championship, and is convinced the motor racing landscape is finally beginning to change.
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She will make her debut at the Circuit de la Sarthe driving for the French IDEC team, alongside Mathys Jaubert and the Le Mans veteran Andre Lotterer, a three-time winner of the world's greatest sports car race.
'I'm really encouraged by everything that we're doing now for women in the sport. If you look where we were six or seven years ago, it's a huge transition,' Chadwick says. 'Walk into any paddock now and you see the amount of female mechanics, engineers, drivers. It's changing so quickly and that's only going to go from strength to strength. I think in the next decade we'll see a huge transition, which is encouraging.
'Maybe to some people it seems forced, too much in one favour but it's important for that and in the short term it will make some difference but in the long term it's going to make a massive difference.'
She goes into the 93rd edition of the meeting, that starts at 5pm BST on Saturday, very much on a roll. In the opening two rounds of the European Le Mans Series, she has gained a class win and an overall victory and her car must be considered a contender for a class win at Le Mans, a feat not achieved by a woman since 1975.
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She will compete in the LMP2 class, a fiercely competitive field that sits immediately beneath the top hypercar category in a three-class, 62-car field. This season Aston Martin have returned to the top class, with Ferrari vying to take a third consecutive victory since the Scuderia came back in 2023.
Chadwick, who enjoyed great success in sports cars at the beginning of her career, including a victory at the Silverstone 24 Hours in 2015, went on to blaze a trail in single seaters, taking three consecutive titles in the all-female W Series. She then competed for two years in the IndyCar feeder series, Indy Nxt, for Andretti racing, with a pole-to-flag win in 2024.
She is still an ambassador for the Williams F1 team and works with their F1 Academy team but remains ambitious, with a desire to move up to the hypercar category. She says she can contribute, alongside the racing, to further promote change for women in the sport but for the moment is revelling in her chance to take on Le Mans.
'It's such a tough test, it's tough on the teams, tough on the drivers but it's something that for every driver, it's a dream to win one day,' she says. 'It's so pure, it feels very raw.
'You can be a fan of motorsport or not but you can really appreciate it's very special. Three-hundred thousand people come to this and it's a festival, a celebration of motorsport. It's very cool to be a part of it.'