Jamie Chadwick might have spent much of her career in sports and open-wheel cars, but she will be more than familiar with off-road terrain when she represents Team Great Britain at the Race of Champions in Sweden on 5/6 February. Joining her will be two-time ROC winner and fellow formula-savvy driver-turned-commentator David Coulthard.
Chadwick is the only driver to win a championship in W Series history, claiming the title in 2019 and 2021 (2020 was cancelled due to COVID-19). Driving for Veloce Racing, her 2021 campaign featured four wins including a sweep of the final races at Circuit of the Americas. She is also a member of Williams Racing‘s driver development programme.
While the 2022 ROC will be held on a snow/ice surface in Pite Havsbad, a far cry from Chadwick’s résumé dominated by asphalt, she is certainly no stranger to non-paved racing. She and Veloce also teamed up to contest the inaugural Extreme E Championship, running all but two rounds that she had to miss due to W Series obligations, alongside Stéphane Sarrazin and Lance Woolridge. She and Sarrazin scored a runner-up finish and the team’s lone podium of the year at the Ocean X-Prix.
“I’m super excited to make my Race Of Champions début in Sweden,” said Chadwick. “It’s an event I’ve always loved watching so I can’t wait to experience it for the first time. It’s going to be an honor to represent Great Britain with an icon like David Coulthard.”
Coulthard won thirteen races during his fifteen-year Formula One career before becoming an analyst for series like F1 and Formula E. He made his ROC début in 2004.
He won the Race of Champions’ individual knockout competition, which crowned him as “Champion of Champions”, in 2014 and 2018. However, the 2022 ROC deviates from those two editions, which were respectively held on a permanent circuit (2014 at Bushy Park Circuit in Barbados) and a winding stadium course (2018 at King Fahd International Stadium in Saudi Arabia), the latter of which was the norm for ROC from 2004 to 2019.
“Race of Champions is an event I always enjoy competing in, but racing on snow and ice this year will be a very different experience to the stadium tracks,” Coulthard commented. “I have done some ice driving with AMG Mercedes in Sweden in the past, but it will be a challenge to beat the Nordic drivers in their element.”
Besides their nationality, Chadwick and Coulthard also overlap in their interest in increasing a female presence in racing. Coulthard was a founding investor in the W Series, and he added it “makes sense that ROC should be a showcase for female racers. Motorsports is pivoting into real progress in areas of equality and sustainability.”
Fittingly, Coulthard’s team-mate at the 2014 ROC was Susie Wolff, the first woman to compete in the event; like Chadwick, Wolff was also a development driver for Williams. The duo, racing under the United Kingdom banner, finished second in the Nation’s Cup.
“ROC is designed to be a ‘level playing field,” stated ROC president Fredrik Johnsson. “I co-founded Race Of Champions with the world’s most successful female driver, Michele Mouton, who proved that women can win against men at the highest level. We look forward to seeing more women competing at the top-level of motorsports, as racing becomes more accessible.”
