And I am aware, acutely so, that I run a risk even in writing what follows, because regulars will probably have spotted by now that I am a bloke, and when a man chooses to write about subjects concerning women, he exposes himself to charges of mansplaining and worse. I don’t think anything hereafter will offend, and it is certainly not my intention to cause any, but I am the person who said Auto Express would not last six months, predicted the imminent demise of the SUV 30 years ago and that no one would ever build a faster car than the McLaren F1. So a fat lot I know.
Even so, I’m not going to delve into the reasons for the W Series demise, other than to state the obvious which is that it ran out of money, largely because I am far from an authority on the subject. But I will say I was in two minds about the series when it was born at the start of the 2019 season. How could women show that they could cut it among the men if the racing they did was specifically designed to separate them? Was it not adding weight to the argument of those who said that, for whatever reason, women simply couldn’t drive as fast as men so needed to compete away from them? They’d then point to the fact that in the 72-year history of the F1 World Championship just five women have entered grands prix, of whom just two had actually taken a start of whom just one had scored points. Well, a point or, more accurately, the half point earned by Lella Lombardi at the abbreviated 1975 Spanish Grand Prix.