Briton Jamie Chadwick got her first taste of driving a Formula One car when she tested last year’s Williams at Portugal’s Portimao circuit earlier this week, the team said on Thursday. The 28-year-old, a three-times winner of the now-defunct all-female W-Series and an ambassador for the Grove-based squad, completed 32 laps of the southern Algarve circuit behind the wheel of the FW47 on Monday, Williams said in a statement. The run made her only the second woman to test drive a Williams Formula One car after Susie Wolff, managing director of the all-female F1 Academy series, former racer and wife of Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, in 2015.
Chadwick’s test at Portimao comes only months after French racer Doriane Pin, who won the F1 Academy series last year, became the first woman to drive a Mercedes Formula One car. Formula One has not had a female racer start a grand prix in 50 years. Chadwick, who serves as an adviser to F1 Academy, currently competes in the LMP2 category of the European Le Mans Series and has also raced single-seaters in North America.
This year, she became the first woman to lap the 24 Hours of Le Mans’ Circuit de la Sarthe in a Hypercar in her role as reserve for Hyundai’s Genesis Magma team and said she saw her future in sportscar racing.
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