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Eighteen of the world’s leading female race drivers will take to the track at Anglesey in north Wales tomorrow as the W Series 2021 pre-season test commences.
The test was originally planned to be held in Valencia last month but due to the current global situation, the test was moved to the United Kingdom. The all female single seater championship will support Formula One at eight races this year and their season commences at the French Grand Prix on the weekend of 25th, 26th and 27th June.
The inaugural season in 2019 was won by current Williams development driver Jamie Chadwick, while Dutchwoman Beitske Visser claimed the W Series Esports title last year.
Fellow British driver Abbie Eaton, who is one of the newest drivers to join W Series, told BBC Sport of her excitement to start testing the W Series car. “Anglesey is a circuit I really enjoy, it’s a beautiful circuit as all of us Brits know as well,” she said. “I think it’s going to be an exciting week and I know all the girls are raring to get in the car and get stuck in, so it can’t come soon enough.”
“It may be a little bit of a shock to some of the drivers from more exotic locations to come and stand on the side of a Welsh cliff,” she added.
With the global pandemic affecting on track action last year, W Series created their own Esports championship, in which Abbie finished 14th in the league out of 21 drivers. In partnership with Logitech G, Beyond Entertainment and iRacing, the league was run over 10 circuits.
“It was really good of W Series to kind of organise the Esports championship, so even though we weren’t able to physically race on the circuit we were all racing against each other virtually,” Abbie explained. “It was really good to keep sharp, but also just to have a little bit of camaraderie with the girls as well and just helped to lift morale a little bit.”
“I was lucky as I managed to get a little bit of driving in last year,” she continued. “But nothing kind of single-seater related and a lot of the other girls haven’t driven in anything for a year. So for probably the majority of us it’s going to be shaking off or blowing out the cobwebs, shaking off the race rustiness and just kind of getting back into the swing of things.”
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