Formula E continued its campaign to provide female racing drivers the opportunity to develop their skills in its actual race cars with a second women’s test at Valencia on Friday.
This year Formula E expanded the test to give more track time, and the session was competitive, with less than a second covering the top six of Chloe Chambers, Abbi Pulling, Bianca Bustamante, Alice Powell, Ella Lloyd and Jamie Chadwick.
Indeed, nine of the drivers on Friday posted times that were within just tenths of a second in each sector compared to the official drivers after the first day of testing last Monday. This clearly proved how valuable track time is in developing confidence in perhaps the world’s quirkiest and most nuanced single-seater race car.
Pacesetter Chambers' day explained
Chambers, currently sitting in fourth place in the 2025 F1 Academy series topped both women’s sessions on Friday for Mahindra.
Chambers stopped the clocks with a 1m23.584s lap in the morning session before improving by almost 1.2s in the afternoon running on a best of 1m22.767s, 0.064s ahead of Pulling’s Nissan.
That peak lap of the day was just 0.4s off the 1m22.318s set by Joel Eriksson’s Envision Jaguar, the slowest of the regular test laps from earlier in the week. The overall pace of the women at Valencia was much closer compared to last season’s Jarama test where Pulling’s time then was 3.4 seconds off the men’s pace.
Chambers was delighted with how her test went, and with the help she’d received from Mahindra regular and 2021 world champion Nyck De Vries.
“The team and I have worked really well together, both in the sim and also here in Valencia,” Chambers told The Race.
“Nyck helped and that was really nice to have. He definitely gave me some good tips, so to be immediately one of the quickest in the morning already from the start, it’s definitely a good sign.”
Like all the teams, Mahindra didn’t treat Chambers' test as a marketing or filming-heavy initiative. With the Formula E race cars being freighted to Sao Paulo next week it was a final chance to accrue some data and there were some crucial elements to exploring more on software upgrades and also getting valuable extra tyre and vehicle dynamics data too.
“We did a lot of performance running and did some race starts as well, which was very fun,” said Chambers.
“And then it was just about maximising my time in the car and maximising our one-lap race.
“I did quite a few laps in the 350kW mark running, so I was really surprised at just how much you could push everything, to be honest. I was really surprised at how the four-wheel drive reacted to the throttle inputs.”
Noda and Lloyd impress
Super Formula driver Juju Noda was drafted into the Jaguar team alongside Chadwick, who is now relatively experienced in FE test terms.
Noda spent all week prior to the test with the team, embedding within the regular drivers’ sessions. She appeared to revel in the technical debrief elements and spent a lot of time observing how the team worked.
On track Noda was within 0.8s of Chadwick which was a very strong effort indeed considering her lack of simulator time at Jaguar’s base.
Driving Mitch Evans’ race car, Noda had a clean two sessions and found 1.3s from morning to afternoon. As expected there were mistakes and a few lairy moments but nothing that impacted on her programme significantly.
“When I drove in the simulator, I knew the traction of the car was amazing, and especially when you use 350kW,” Noda told The Race after her runs.
“It has traction like nothing else I’ve driven before. I think the acceleration is so quick that you could overtake the entire Super Formula grid!
“It made me realise how amazing electric cars are. The top speed of the car is slower than Super Formula, but the acceleration is faster, so I was trying to adjust my driving on the fly to be able to take full advantage of that, which was another good experience.”
Ella Lloyd took fifth fastest time for Envision and was within a second of Chambers’ best, both having hot-footed it from the Bahrain F1 Academy test earlier in the week.
Joining long-time development driver Alice Powell in the Jaguar powered car, Lloyd had several push laps in the afternoon and improved incrementally.
“A lot of the morning was adapting to the car because compared to what I've driven it's a lot different,” Lloyd told The Race.
“Also, I was with McLaren for the first two tests that I've done in the car so adapting to this car was a big challenge this morning and just kind of building up to it a bit more.
“I've been really happy with the progress that I've made and the things that I’ve adapted to be able to put quicker times in and be more consistent. So, I'm happy with that.”
Brewer's leap of faith
Perhaps the driver with the steepest learning curve was current Lamborghini Super Trofeo US racer Lindsay Brewer, who drove for DS Penske along with Jessica Edgar.
Brewer’s last experience in a single-seater came last season in Indy NXT and her programme was always going to be about getting comfortable with the quirks of the Gen3 Evo car.
After a sim session with DS in Satory last month, Brewer began to build during the day and eventually completed 36 laps and improved in the afternoon session.
When asked by The Race what had surprised her about the Formula E Gen3 Evo, Brewer replied “literally how heavy it is. I was talking to Jamie Chadwick, and we were saying it's heavier than the Indy NXT car, which is super surprising because in the simulator it wasn't so bad.
“Jess [Edgar] said it wasn't as bad as this last year in Madrid. I think this track with the tarmac was just very physical.
“That's why they're switching to power steering [for Gen4]. That's what I would say is the most surprising thing. But I'm surprised as well in a good way how much power there really is in this car.
“It's been such an incredible experience to drive. I got to do the pit launches and got the full experience of the power. So, it's such an incredible car and the technology behind it has been great, especially learning all the systems.”
The bigger picture
Formula E’s insistence in pushing female talent by giving an entire day of track running has to be lauded. But more than that, the preparation, sim testing and integration into the teams is starting to have a real structural impact in ensuring good female racers start to get proper opportunities in the Formula E orbit.
That has already happened to a degree with the development and test roles for Powell at Envision and Pulling at Nissan, as well as Chadwick having an informal role at Jaguar.
And the progress was notable in the field being much closer to the regular grid’s pace at Valencia than it was at Jarama last November. Why was that? More track time, more prep time, no last minute track switch and yes the rubber was laid down more a little but overall, the top six in particular were showing competitive pace.
Jeff Dodds, CEO of Formula E, was rightly “very proud that we’ve been able to continue giving women drivers track time and the chance to develop their skills in equal machinery as our official drivers.
“This time, we have been able to give the drivers a whole day on track - double the track time compared to last year - totalling six hours split across two sessions. During this time, we’ve not only seen impressive consistency but also rapid development, with lap times falling quickly as the drivers got to grips with the complexities of the Gen3 Evo.
"This test has been an important milestone in our goal to provide more opportunities for women drivers, and an important first step towards greater equality at the top level of motorsport. This is only the beginning of our plans, and I’m excited for what the future holds.”
With Gen4 around the corner a big debate has been around the physical aspect of driving the cars. The next Formula E car is bigger dimensionally and heavier but crucially it will have power steering.
“The steering weight is heavy, but I'm used to driving cars with no power steering,” Chambers told The Race.
“I think maybe for some of the other drivers, who come more from a sportscar background, they probably struggled a bit more than I did.
“But I've been training for heavy steering weight anyway, so this shows me kind of the level that I need to be at in terms of physical performance.”
These constraints are not a major factor for professional female drivers that have the right conditioning and experience. Any constraints that do exist now appear to be simply the right talent getting the right opportunity so they can emulate Simona de Silvestro, Katherine Legge and Michaela Cerruti and race in Formula E, something that feels very much achievable in the very near future.
A tiered support series for Formula E with a female focus would be a great step in that direction.
