W Series will decide next week whether it can finish its 2022 season after encountering a “slow train crash” of financial difficulties in recent weeks and months.
The all-female racing championship is supporting F1 in Singapore this weekend and was due to do so again at the U.S. and Mexico races next month, but those final events are now in serious doubt.
The collapse of a significant deal has left W Series founder Catherine Bond Muir desperately searching for new backers.
“We are speaking to a huge number of people, which is why I’m not sleeping very much, to get more money in,” Bond Muir said on Friday. “I am reasonably confident that that will happen. I hope that the last few races will go ahead.”
Bond Muir said W Series must find a solution by next week as that is when freight will need to be sent away for the North American leg of races.
Asked if she would turn her attention to the 2023 season if money did not arrive by next week, she said: “Definitely”.
“I am touched by people’s reaction. You may pummel me tomorrow [in the media], but you could have been harsher if you had chosen to. I think everyone has been pragmatic because you don’t want to see us go down.”
Bond Muir believes W Series’ financial woes are a signal of the struggles faced generally be women in across the sporting landscape.
“The main thing I sort of want to get across is that this isn’t the most unusual circumstance I’ve found myself in. We’ve struggled from the word go.
“You all know the stories about women sport. The female rugby players go in economy, the men go in first class. There’s only equality and parity in tennis because Billie Jean King’s been fighting for 50 years for it. So I have no doubt that in the future, it will be a lot easier for us.
“But I think it’s notjust a motorsport issue, I think it’s a female in sport issue. The reason why it just came to a head is that I was in San Francisco at the weekend and money that had been contracted to come in, didn’t come in. So that’s why it’s become a bit stressful.”
She added: “These things tend to be like a bit of a slow train crash. There’s a day in which you’re supposed to receive money and then it doesn’t arrive and then you chase it for a bit and then you go over and sit in front of them and say where’s the money.”