The next mountain W Series must climb

If the follow-up album is the hardest for a new band that's made an impact with its debut, then the same logic can be applied to the second season of an all-new single-seater racing championship - and this is exactly the challenge facing W Series as its inaugural season draws to a close at Brands Hatch next weekend.

Via the controversy over its single-gender concept when it was launched, its big-name backers in David Coulthard and Channel 4, and its lofty mission statement to 'change the face of racing': from the get-go, W Series has been able to capitalise on heightened publicity and attention that is otherwise not afforded to other junior single-seater championships at a similar Formula 3 level.

And with five races done and a championship battle between Jamie Chadwick and Beitske Visser - who were arguably the most notable drivers in the 20-car field heading into the season - set to go down to the wire in a perfect-for-television finale, W Series can celebrate what has been, on the whole, a very successful debut year.

Chadwick has become a development driver for the Williams Formula 1 team, slotting neatly into the position formerly occupied by the last female F1 hope in Susie Wolff. Television audiences and social media engagements are strong - with the Twitter naysayers who were teeming at the time of the series launch seemingly diminished - and we have been introduced to new names such as Marta Garcia and Fabienne Wohlwend, both of who have become break-out stars in their home countries.

But the success that its first season has bought means that W Series has ridden the wave of initial controversy as far as it can go for now and, moving forward, needs to keep building on the solid foundations and precedent it has set this year, in what has been something of a baptism of fire subjected to an almost microscopic level of scrutiny.

"When we announced the Channel 4 deal, it was like we'd reached the top of the mountain, but now we're at the top, there's another mountain range to climb," says W Series CEO Catherine Bond Muir.

"The second season is something we need to work really hard on. We need to build on the audiences we have. We've spent a lot of the first year explaining what we are and why we're needed and I think we can spend a lot more time next year introducing the world to the characters of the drivers.

"We would never be so arrogant as to compare ourselves to Formula 1 - but what we do want to do, and something that Formula E has been successful at, is finding a different audience" Catherine Bond Muir

"They are the people who are in the best place to sell this and engage the audience by telling their stories.

"We are new and innovative, and this summer has demonstrated that people are happy to watch women's sport.

"When I started to plan this three years ago, people told me I was completely nuts because people don't want to watch women's sport. Actually, that was true three years ago. Maybe it's luck, but people's viewing habits are changing."

W Series' willingness and openness to experimentation and change is something that will help it navigate the further unknown waters ahead as it looks to expand into 2020 and beyond.

At the season opener at Hockenheim, one of the main criticisms was that the similar liveries on each of the cars made it difficult to distinguish which driver was who, but by the time the grid lined up at the next round in Zolder - the livery had been tweaked to make the drivers names, numbers and flags more visible.

Much more of an experiment was the non-championship reversed grid race at the last outing at Assen, which was won by a margin of 0.003 seconds by Megan Gilkes from Alice Powell in a photo-finish.

That Assen trial was a resounding success, both in terms of the exciting racing it generated and the further attention it attracted, with suggestions from some on social media that it presented evidence for how even F1 could shake things up.

"The reversed-grid was an experiment to see how it works out and what it would look like. We want to be innovative and look at all the possibilities for our racing going forward. It would be wrong of us to make a fundamental format change until we see that it works," says Bond Muir.

But despite the popularity of the reversed-grid experiment, there's no word on if it's a format the series will adopt moving forward.

The television factor is key here. W Series has stressed the importance of its terrestrial TV audiences - and for a large part, it's the Channel 4 deal that has played such a key role in the series' success and enabled it to reach demographics that it would have otherwise not encountered.

Bond Muir intimates that two races per weekend would not be ideal on the TV front. That means W Series would not have the option of a 'traditional' qualifying order grid for one and then a separate reversed-grid race. If it's going to go radical with its format, that radicalism might have to become its standard shape.

"We have some concerns about two races a weekend because we believe that the audience can get confused about two different races - which one is more important?" she says.

"If you have two races on two different days, you're not going to get the TV for both. What happens when your first race is a cracking race, but [broadcast of] that gets delayed and then you have a second race, which isn't so good?

"Instinctively, I think we would prefer to stick with one race but that final decision hasn't been made.

That's not to say there are not risks to experimentation. W Series' trial and error approach to its debut year does bring the possibility for accusations of a 'gimmicky' nature to be thrown its way

"We want to produce exciting racing to engage an audience. W Series is W Series, Formula 1 is Formula 1. We would never be so arrogant as to compare ourselves to Formula 1 - but what we do want to do, and something that Formula E has been successful at, is finding a different audience.

"We give them a different offering, which is exciting races in a defined time on terrestrial television wherever we can get it."

The five races so far this year have fulfilled all of that criteria and W Series has been good at creating other narratives throughout the season to raise the stakes further and keep things interesting - including a kind of 'jeopardy' approach mid-season with only the top 12 drivers in the championship guaranteed to advance to 2020.

This emphasised personalities in the midfield, rather than just focusing on the front and shows another way in which W Series is comfortable with changing things around to keep the season fresh and exciting.

That's not to say that there are no risks to such experimentation. W Series' trial and error approach to its debut year does bring the possibility for more accusations of a 'gimmicky' nature to be thrown its way.

At the Norisring round, reserve driver Vivien Keszthelyi beat fellow reserve Sarah Bovy and last-placed championship-sitter Gilkes to a seat for the race, as part of a mini-qualifying in the free practice sessions where she was the fastest of the three drivers.

The decision to demote Gilkes for that round was met with some backlash when it was announced on social media, although W Series has stated from the start that driver performance was to be continually evaluated throughout the season.

Even so, the confusion this method created for the outside viewer was far from ideal and did cause some dormant Twitter critics to rear their heads again.

But overall the change and experimentation that W Series has proved itself capable of in 2019 is not a bad thing and the success of the Assen race has made that emphatically clear.

W Series' constant adaption and self-assessment of what works for it and what doesn't can only mean positive things moving forward to next year, which is when it's time for the series to prove it can climb the real mountain range.