W Series management has made the decision to abandon the 2020 season due to the current global health situation. The season was supposed to have started May 30 and concluded October 31 after eight races, two of which would have been held alongside Formula One.
The W Series will still be holding their eSports series, which starts on June 11 and is expected to feature all 18 of the drivers that qualified for the 2020 season. Other female drivers may also take part in the events on an invitational basis. The series will be held on the popular online racing simulator iRacing at ten tracks using the Tatuus Formula Renault 2.0 cars. Races will be broadcast from the official W Series Twitter, YouTube and Twitch accounts.
This announcement comes as some other racing series are already planning to return to the track. DTM and Formula One both plan to kick off the start to the 2020 season in early July.
“After the resounding success of W Series’ debut season in 2019, our decision not to stage on-track races until 2021 is not one that has been taken lightly,” W Series CEO, Catherine Bond Muir, explained in a statement to the press. “Delivering an international calendar of the kind that W Series requires, so as to take W Series’ diversity and inclusion message to girls and women globally, while prioritising during a global pandemic the health and safety of our drivers, our staff and the many other people who make W Series events such a success, requires resource at a level beyond the scope of a brave new start-up such as W Series.”
With the 2020 season now officially axed, the W Series management can now shift their focus to the upcoming 2021 season, which according to Muir will be “bigger and better than ever before”.
“We are already working on an exciting new W Series race calendar for 2021, and we are delighted to be able to confirm that W Series races will feature on the support cards of a number of Formula 1 Grands Prix next year, including the 2021 United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas and the 2021 Mexican Grand Prix at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.”
