What W Series must look like in 2020

The inaugural W Series season drew to a close at Brands Hatch earlier this month with Jamie Chadwick triumphant as the first champion and recipient of the $500,000 prize fund.

Overnight - if the plethora of international television and mainstream press appearances are anything to go by - Chadwick's starpower and notoriety has trebled, but so too has W Series' own.

And with that comes higher expectations and increased scrutiny as the series enters its second year, where the need to continue its positive, upward trajectory will be more important than ever.

Last week's announcement that the initial phase of W Series' second driver selection process for the new season will get under way at Almeria in just under a month's time shows it is clearly not just sitting back to bask in its early successes and is keen to keep building on the momentum it has created.

But so much of the series' first year has been a trial and error approach to running such a unique championship. So, what should W Series look like in 2020, a crucial year for its future?

There are things to change but also key elements that need protecting.

The format: Keep the reversed-grid race, but use it wisely

One of the biggest talking points of the first W Series season was the experimental full points-order reversed-grid race run at the championship's penultimate round at Assen and won in spectacular style by Megan Gilkes, a driver who had been running at the tail-end of the grid all season and had endured a particularly disappointing debut year in such a high-profile international single-seater championship.

The success of that race means its core concept is definitely something W Series should be keen to keep for the future. A form of reversed grid being used for a second race is something now customary in other junior single-seater championships, but W Series' reluctance to compromise on its lucrative international television deals by introducing a second race is understandable.

Keeping one reversed-grid race, but with points, would be a novel way of setting up a new jeopardy and a way to shake the championship up before heading to the finale

In the UK, the presence of W Series on terrestrial television has been imperative to its impact - and boosted its mission to inspire the next generation of young girls and women, some of which are casual viewers with just a passing motorsport interest at this stage.

So it would be foolish not to continue to capitalise on that or place it under threat by adding a second race per weekend and demanding that event also be covered live in the same way the first race has this season - or gamble on having just one live race and risk the better contest being the one that only gets highlights coverage or goes unseen.

But there is no denying that the Assen one-off was absolutely perfect for television.

It had an underdog to root for in Gilkes, an unlucky frontrunner scything her way through the field to try and take the win in Alice Powell, all while the two championship protagonists, Chadwick and Beitske Visser, proved their mettle in the midpack with nothing to lose and no points on offer.

Even if viewers weren't aware of those particular narratives, it still did an excellent job of showing just how thrilling motorsport can be and why it is something worth making the effort to watch - regardless of if it is men or women in the driving seat.

So, keep a reversed-grid race as part of the calendar, but keep it in its slot at the penultimate round of the season - and this time not as an experiment but with points awarded. That would be a novel way of setting up a new jeopardy and a way to shake the championship up before heading to the finale.

Doing it as a one-off means the entertainment of a reversed-grid event remains part of the W package without risking suggestions of its 'integrity' as 'pure motorsport' being compromised, which would surely follow a wholesale move to reversed grids for the entire calendar. And that wouldn't threaten the TV presence.

The calendar: Expand, but don't run before walking

With just six races in the space of three months this year, the 2019 W Series seems to have ended just as it was really getting going - and now there is a nine month off-season ahead.

That's a long time to wait and a long time to keep the momentum generated this year going, even if there is set to be a series of driver selection events upcoming to keep the championship on people's radar through the winter.

Still, an obvious area for improvement for 2020 would be to expand the calendar and for this there is one option that doesn't require too much change at all.

The most sensible - and most likely, in the spirit of not trying to run before you can walk - way of expanding is to stick with the DTM and appear at all of the rounds. That would take the total up to nine races a year, which might even go as far as to make the FIA more amenable and generous when it comes to deciding how many superlicence points will be awarded to W Series for next year.

Sticking with the DTM also presents the opportunity for W Series to look further afield, with the DTM x SUPER GT tie-up the perfect reason to take the championship to Asia.

America is on the cards too at some point and would be a particularly promising market to explore, but that is slightly trickier to navigate and would require a break from the DTM - not to mention being costly for a series that, for the moment, remains without a title sponsor.

W Series would do well to keep quietly plugging away at its domestic European success before making such a big leap and there a multitude of other reasons to stick with the DTM.

In a tumultuous time for the DTM, there are grounds to argue that the touring car series needs the attraction and attention that W Series brings with it - and that puts the all-female championship in a very strong position.

ITR chairman Gerhard Berger has also voiced his enthusiasm for the possibility of a W Series frontrunner earning a drive in the DTM - presenting another career avenue, as well as the possibility of factory opportunities, for W racers beyond trying to spend their prize money further up the ladder towards Formula 1.

The driver line-up: Don't give segregation critics ammunition

With the awarding of superlicence points in 2020 and the chance of another shot at a pretty helpful prize fund, it would not be surprising if all of 12 of the 2019 drivers guaranteed a drive in W Series in 2020 - including Chadwick - took up that option and returned for another year.

It can be argued that, by way of the short calendar and the bad luck experienced by Powell and Emma Kimilainen this year, we were denied an even closer four-way title fight in the inaugural season.

An even greater range of winners would prove the wealth of female talent that is out there

Even just those four drivers getting a season-long shot at a title fight would be perfect for that crucial television profile, but there was also a range of other less well-known drivers proving their skill in the second half of the season - and they could make 2020 even more open.

Drivers such as Fabienne Wohlwend and Miki Koyama will benefit from the second season, and they could perhaps join that battle at the front. An even greater range of winners would prove the wealth of female talent that is out there, which has just been denied the opportunity - primarily for financial reasons - before this point.

But there is a flipside to this. If W Series works as intended, there will be no reason for drivers to stick around in it for more than two or three seasons before moving onto bigger and better things. Their prize money winnings, the skills boost they've gained from W's development programmes and their heightened profile would vault them up in the racing world.

Yet for drivers at the lower end of that top 12, it would be a difficult decision to choose to walk away from a championship that is fully-funded and does offer so many unique benefits.

That could lead to some of the field remaining in W Series indefinitely, which in turn inches dangerously close to creating the 'segregated' championship that W Series has fought so hard to prove it is not.

For this reason it might be worthwhile establishing a limit on how many seasons can be contested by a driver, but again - as with most things in this brand new series - there is an element of needing to wait and see what happens before taking any drastic measures.

W Series' place in the world: Transcending the motorsport bubble

Being aware of its presence and potential in the 'wider world' has been one of W Series' biggest assets in 2019 and this is the most important area that it needs to keep building on going forwards.

At times, motorsport is guilty of being entirely absorbed in its own bubble - but W Series very quickly recognised its potential to transcend this and prove its worth in terms of the 'outside world'.

At Brands Hatch, the series invited 100 young girls and women from the London Youth group to attend as VIPs, giving them hospitality and grandstand access, as well as creating a mini-festival in the paddock and allowing an entire group of people a glimpse at a world it's very unlikely they'd have been privy to otherwise.

Irrespective of W Series' intrinsic success or whatever happens in 2020 and beyond, that it has been so committed to opening doors and doing all it can to inspire some change in an environment often totally entrenched in its old ways is both admirable and refreshing.

Formats, calendar and prize funds are ultimately minor priorities compared to keeping up the pressure and inventiveness on that front.