Chloe Chambers entered the Zandvoort F1 Academy weekend tied for second with Doriane Pin but left the round 30 points behind her. As the all-female F4 series heads into its last three rounds, beginning with Singapore this weekend, Chambers is aiming to maintain her place in the top three. 

By Calla Kra-Caskey

Campos Racing’s Chambers had her worst results of the season in the Netherlands, where she struggled during the wet qualifying session and finished sixth and 12th in the dry races. Rivals Maya Weug and Nerea Martí managed two and one podiums respectively, and only five points separate the trio entering round five in Singapore this weekend. 

“I’m entering Singapore in a battle for third in the championship, but I think top three for the rest of the year is definitely doable,” Chambers said at a pre-event media session. “Getting a few more podiums, a few more wins, that would be ideal for me.” 

A podium or win could be on the cards this weekend for Chambers, one of five drivers with W Series experience at the street circuit. Chambers said that even with the omission of four turns from the layout last year, her previous visit here would give her a boost.

“Any time on track prior to the weekend helps,” she told Feeder Series. “Now we’re here [with a] different series, slightly modified layout, and different car, different tyres. So the driving aspect of it will be different, but the track knowledge is there, so I’ll be able to go into practice with a little extra knowledge.”

The Haas-backed driver’s first podium this season came in Miami, where, as in Singapore, W Series competed in 2022.

All five former W Series drivers on the F1 Academy grid finished in the top seven during the first practice session in Miami. Four of them ended the weekend with a top-five finish and three took home a trophy, including McLaren-backed Bianca Bustamante, who achieved her sole podium of the season so far in race two. 

While F1 Academy drivers had two 40-minute practice sessions in Miami, they will have only one 30-minute practice session in Singapore. Though Chambers said that “by qualifying time, everyone will be kind of at an even point,” having less track time will likely still disadvantage first-time visitors.

Without any testing time, drivers have been using their teams’ simulators to get familiar with the 4.94-kilometre, 19-turn circuit. Still, especially when racing on roads altered by foot and automobile traffic throughout the year, there’s no match for the real thing. 

“This is a pretty difficult track to learn,” Chambers said. “I found that out in W Series pretty quickly. There’s a lot of corners, a lot of characteristics of this track that are different from other tracks, so you really have to learn everything just in that one practice session.” 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency