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The W Series was launched in October 2018 and aimed to offer a platform for talented female drivers in response to the lack of female talent progressing through to F1. This year, W-Series will support 8 of the F1 Grand Prix, the first of which will be in Austria this weekend. This is the second article in a series looking at the careers of the 2021 driver lineup.
Fabienne Wohlwend
Wohlwend is statistically Liechtenstein’s most successful racing driver in history, she is one of only 3 professional racers to come from Liechtenstein. She was successful in her junior karting career and progressed into F4 in 2016. She did not get any points from this series and her best finish was 11th place but as the only female driver, she won the Women’s Trophy class.
Following this, she raced in the Audi Sport TT Cup and she also completed a partial campaign in the Ferrari Challenge European Championship. She continued in the Ferrari Challenge but made the step up to the Pro-Am class, despite only taking 3 out of a possible 14 wins she finished second in the championship.
Following a successful stint in the Trofeo Pirelli division of Ferrari Challenge as a pro driver, she returned to open-wheel racing in the W Series. This campaign was inconsistent with varying finishing positions from 3rd – 15th despite this Wohlwned finished the inaugural W Series season in 6th place.
Miki Koyama
As a 23-year-old Japanese driver with a rather limited career history, we don’t have much to say about Koyoma other than watch this space. She competed in the Japanese F4 for 5 seasons managing the best finishing position of 15th in the 2018 championship standing. Miki then progressed in W Series where she finished 7th. She also dabbled in Japanese F3 where she finished 15th after a team change midway through the season. Koyama still has quite a lot to prove I believe so hopefully we will see some exciting racing from her this season.
Sarah Moore
Moore drove for Tockwith Motorsports, ran by her father, in the Ginetta Junior Championship. In the 2008 season, she finished 17th place, with her best finish being 6th at Silverstone, she also entered the winter Ginetta Junior Championship where she was runner up to Josh Hill (Damon Hill’s son). After a promising season, Moore returned in 2009 and went on to win the title having taken 5 wins. She continued to run in the Ginettas but was unable to recreate her championship win.
In 2017 she moved into the reformed Britcar Endurance Championship, she drove in the last 3 rounds of the championship alongside teammate Rob Baker, they finished 4th overall in the sprint category and 1st in class. In the 2019 W Series, Moore sat consistently mid-table with the exception of Nuremberg where she retired due to suspension failure after a spin in lap 4 but managed to finished 8th.
Alongside all of this racing, Moore is a Driver Ambassador for Racing pride an LGBT+ rights charity working to promote inclusivity in the motorsport industry.
Image Credit: @smooreracing Instagram
Vicky Piria
Piria began karting in 2003 and stayed in Italy for this portion of her career when she eventually graduated to single-seaters in 2009 she didn’t compete consistently, participating in only 8 races across both the Italian Formula 2000 Light and Formula Renault 2.0. In 2014 she raced for JDC MotorSports in the Pro Mazda Championship as one of 3 female drivers. She only attended 4 races and only started 3, finishing 26th overall with 17 points. Piria’s best finish in the 2019 W Series was 5th at Misano and she finished 9th overall with 24 points.
Tasmin Pepper
Tasmin is a South African driver who is the daughter of South African Touring Car driver Iain Pepper. She has had a long career racing mainly VW’s. Pepper came 2nd in the 2010 Formula VW South Africa and then in 2016 came second in the VW Polo Cup South Africa. She had a good start to the 2019 W Series finishing 8th in the opening round and Hockenheim, she continued this for the next 3 races, securing 6th, 7th, and another 8th place finish. However at Assen, a bottleneck at turn one caused Pepper to lose the rear end and spin causing Koyama to crash into her resulting in both drivers retiring. She then finished 12th at the season finale at Brands Hatch, despite these 2 incidents she still finished 10th overall.
Jessica Hawkins
Our next driver is Jessica Hawkins who made her professional debut in British Formula Ford at Silverstone at a one-off event where she finished in the top 10 on two occasions. In 2017 Hawkins moved into the Mini Challenge where she had 6 class wins and finished 2nd in the Pro division. She also raced in the VW Cup in 2016 and 2018 but in 2018 was spending most of her time as a stunt driver on Fast and Furious Live. In 2019 she made an appearance in the W series finishing in the points in the last 2 rounds putting her 11th overall.
She also made her touring car debut in 2020 at Snetterton where she qualified 22nd, she stayed there in the first race and then climbed one place in each of the next races. She also worked as a stunt driver on the set of the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die. Eagle-eyed fans will have also spotted her at Baku celebrating Vettel’s podium finish.
Image Credit: @astonamrtinf1 Instagram
Sabré Cook
Cook is an American racing driver who started her professional career as an invitational to the 2017 SCCA National Championship Runoffs event at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, finishing 9th in the Formula Enterprise Class. In 2018 she progressed to USF2000 and USF4 running partial campaigns at both events with her best finishes being 14th and 15th respectively. She then qualified as one of the 18 drivers in the 2019 W Series. She finished 12th taking the final automatic qualification place for 2020.
This concludes the second in an article series discussing the careers of the driver line up for this year’s W Series starting this weekend in Austria. Keep your eyes peeled for the final article looking at the remaining 6 drivers.
Headline Image Credit: @WSeriesracing Instagram