The leading exclusively female racing championship W Series has entered administration after the 2022 season was curtailed due to financial pressures.

Many have branded this business failure as a failure for women’s motorsport as W Series was a pioneer of female representation and therefore some followed the logic that women’s racing would also die a death.

Although that isn’t exactly true, F1 Academy has taken the baton off W Series to nurture female talent and the championship is gathering momentum with many people interested in the series and hoping for its success.

Admittedly that isn’t guaranteed as it is a rather low-key affair which many people aren’t engaging in and it is more expensive for the driver however that could be F1 Academy wanting to continue only the positive parts of W Series’ legacy and not relive its fiscal failings.

W Series’ expenses were astronomical as the series was fully-funded for the drivers, offered prize money and was an international F1 support series which seriously increased costs.

High costs are fine as long as the business has enough revenue to cover them however that doesn’t seem to be happening. We don’t have an income statement from W Series but their balance sheet doesn’t paint a very rosy picture.

W Series had a current ratio of 0.66:1 – this means that for every £1 in short-term debts they only have £0.66 in assets leaving them without a hope in hell of paying their short-term debts let alone any long term borrowings they might have (spoiler alert: they do).

This lack of financial stability led to liquidity problems in late 2023 as the bills W Series needed to pay were mounting and they had no means to pay them, at this point, the racing stopped as the management frantically tried to find funding to keep the business going but we can safely assume that failed.

By the end of 2021, the business W Series Racing Ltd was worth -£7,572,802 million and had a gearing ratio of -69.53% with every £1 of assets being matched with £2.36 in liabilities. Anyone wanting to invest in W Series was basically buying debts of a business that had no means to become profitable as there just isn’t money in glorified women’s F3 so nobody did.

So was W Series a failure? In a business sense it certainly was, it had grand plans but with no real means to finance them leaving to mounting debts that surely someone should’ve seen the red flags about sooner (if I predicted this then their accountants should have) however as a sport probably not.

Many young female drivers such as Jamie Chadwick, Abbi Pulling, Marta Garcia and Jessica Hawkins (to name a few) have made their name in W Series and have been able to move into different things off the back of their racing in the championship. It did ‘rethink’ women’s racing and made some progress on how we view women’s motorsport (some of the races were great) yet ultimately didn’t end well but not as a result of the action.

Do comment your thoughts below.