"It Would Be A Shame If We Lose The W Series."

“It would be a shame if we lost the W Series,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said after reports the all-women series could be scrapped.

News of the centrally-run championship’s financial woes emerged ahead of the Singapore tournament last weekend. The W Series was operating with a reduced crew on its first visit to Asia in support of Formula 1.

The company’s chief executive, Catherine Bond Muir, admitted that the series was short of funds after a promised return from an investor failed to materialise. She stated that the championship will know the final rounds next weekend at the Sector of the Americas and at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico.

Horner says the championship, which will compete on F1’s support bill for the second time this year, has played a big role in getting more women involved in motorsport.

“It would be a shame if we lost the W Series,” he said. “I think it’s great to have girls racing and a championship that speaks to women. So it would be very sad if it was lost.

“Hopefully this will not happen. I think there is a lot of demand for more diversity in motorsport, not just in F1. And I think the W series was a really positive advocate of that.

“So we hope that a sensible solution will be found in the future and it is something that we will continue to pursue with great interest.”

McLaren’s Andreas Siedl said he had only seen “rumours in the media” about the W Series’ problems. “[But] “Certainly F1, all of us as an F1 community, have an obligation to ensure that we support the emerging categories,” he said.

The W Series began as a Europe-based championship in 2019, but when it returned to action last year it added a flight to the US circuit’s F1 support bill.

In the year With one round outside Europe in 2021, half of the W Series’ eight race dates this year are ‘fly-in’, adding to their freight costs. The season opened in May in Miami. First up is Yvette before switching to Singapore to support this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix.

If the season does not continue, Jamie Chadwick will win the championship for the third time. She has a 50-point lead over her closest rival, Beitske Vistor.

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