The reigning champion of WSeries Jamie Chadwick has taken pole position for the third race of the season, on the day of her 24th birthday.
The Jenner Racing driver is still on great form in Barcelona, following her victory in both races at Miami two weeks ago. She goes into tomorrow’s race with a 27-point lead at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya after securing the ninth pole position of her W Series career, and is looking to make it three race wins in a row.
A lap time of 1.44.951 kept her at the top of the table, fending off a strong challenge from 2021 W Series runner-up Alice Powell by three tenths of a second. Abbi Pulling was a further two tenths back to make it an all-British top three. Beitske Visser – runner-up to Jamie in W Series’ inaugural season in 2019 – was fourth and the only other driver to get within half a second of Jamie’s pole position time.
Emma Kimiläinen overcame a pressure sensor issue from earlier in the day to be fifth, and she will line up alongside Belen Garcia. Marta finished in seventh, as Sarah Moore, Jessica Hawkins and Fabienne Wohlwend completed the top 10. Nerea Martí – who is second in the championship – will start her home race from 11th on the grid.
With a track temperature of 45 degrees Celsius throughout Qualifying, tyres degraded quickly as the drivers pushed the cars to their limits over the 30-minute session. Chadwick topped the timing screens after all the drivers had completed one flying lap, but she couldn’t improve on her second run, and it was Abbi Pulling who held top spot with a third of the session gone.
Belen Garcia was the first driver to come in for new tyres with 19 minutes remaining, with many others following suit around the halfway stage when the top five of Abbi, Alice, Jamie, Belen, and Jessica were separated by less than two tenths of a second.
As the session entered its final 10 minutes, Sarah Moore shot into P1 by six tenths of a second despite running into traffic in the final sector. Alice Powell then went quicker by two tenths, but just down the road her team-mate Hawkins set two purple sectors at the start of her lap to improve by another two tenths.
Alice responded with five minutes remaining by knocking three more tenths off the benchmark, only for Jamie to beat that by four one-hundredths of a second on her first run with fresh tyres. Alice briefly regained the top spot, but Chadwick soon returned to the head of the field for the final time with less than three minutes left – she is the first and only WSeries driver today to post a time under 1min 45secs.
Jamie Chadwick of Jenner Racing is very happy with her performance;
“I’m really happy. That’s what I wished for when the W Series staff presented me with my birthday cake earlier! I couldn’t blow out the candle, but I wished for pole position, and I got it. It was quite a tricky session. I went on old tyres initially and it was a massive step from the old to the new tyres, and I knew if I didn’t make a mistake, it would be okay. But it’s quite hard not to make a mistake! On the new tyres I just had loads more confidence. Tomorrow will be all about tyre management, but I’m happy that on the new tyres we can get there.”
Alice Powell of Click2Drive Bristol Street Motors Racing W Series Team is less satisfied with today’s Quali:
“It’s frustrating really. I was struggling with a long brake pedal for most of that session, so I kept locking up and I had to keep adjusting the bias. But in some corners, especially out of 13 and 14 – where I just couldn’t tap the pedal – and when I got to the chicane, it was quite long. I kept struggling with oversteer a lot as well. Then we had one more push lap and Bianca [Bustamante] was on the racing line going slowly. It’s frustrating but we improved from practice and hopefully we will move forward again tomorrow.”
Abbi Pulling of Racing X overcame some problems to post a good lap time:
“It was a really good session and I’m happy. I started off great as on the first set of tyres I was on pole. Then my headphones came out and unplugged, so I had no communications from my engineer. I didn’t see the pit board and I pitted a lap too late, but I thought this was about the time we needed to pit. I came in and luckily only lost one lap, but it wasn’t ideal. There are still some things for me to look at because I want my tyres to last for the whole race, so we will see how that goes. I’m obviously over the moon compared to what happened in Miami, so hopefully we can convert this into some good points.”
Provisional qualifying results for the third race of the 2022 W Series season are below. For full W Series results and session timings from the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Spain, visit https://wseries.com/races/2022/barcelona/.
W Series’ schedule for this weekend continues tomorrow (Saturday 21 May) when the race of 30 minutes plus one lap will start at 14.40 (local time, CEST) on Saturday 21 May.
British fans can watch the third race of the 2022 W Series season live from the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Sky Sports F1 and Sky Sports Mix from 13.20 BST on Saturday 21 May. Highlights of the race will be on Channel 4 at 09.00 BST on Sunday 22 May. The action can also be seen across W Series’ digital and social channels, as well as being broadcast in more than 175 territories with a full list available at https://wseries.com/where-to-watch/.