The W Series, entering its third season, is set to kick off as part of the first-ever Formula One Miami Grand Prix on Saturday. The all-women driver series was launched in 2019 by CEO Catherine Bond Muir in response to disturbing data that showed the already dismal number of girls and women in single-seater* motorsports was declining instead of growing.

Lining up on the grid this weekend are purportedly the 18 fastest female drivers in the world, including the undefeated W Series champion Jamie Chadwick.

With the popularity of Netflix’s “Drive to Survive,” a behind-the-scenes docuseries about the world of Formula One, American interest in elite-level motorsports has skyrocketed. While all 10 of the W Series 2022 races will be held in conjunction with F1 Grand Prix events, it’s a mistake to think of it as simply the women’s version of F1. For starters, nobody in W Series is aiming for a “separate but equal” future for women in motorsports, and further, Bond Muir intentionally designed W Series to counteract some of F1’s faults.

“There are two strands of DNA in W Series. One is that a driver doesn’t have to come and pay for their seat. It’s incumbent on W Series to pay all of the driver’s expenses and the cost of the car,” Bond Muir said. “And second is that the cars will be identical. Because where we stand as a business is we’re looking for the fastest drivers.”

Due to the exorbitant expense of building and maintaining insanely fast vehicles, the traditional world of motorsports is infamous for favoring drivers whose parents or sponsors have well-lined pockets. A driver who may not be the fastest athlete available, but is nonetheless selected for a seat because of their financial resume, is what those in the industry refer to as a “paid driver.” On a recent episode of The Ringer’s F1 podcast, motorsport journalist Elizabeth Blackstock lamented the prevalence of “paid drivers” in F1, but also savvily quipped, “Paid drivers were the original drivers. They were the people who could afford to buy a car and go race.” The extent that financial access and backing now influence driver selection has prompted many to call for change.

For her part, Bond Muir is wholeheartedly committed to keeping money out of the equation when filling W Series driver seats and looking solely for the best raw talent.

“In my tenure, I certainly don’t believe that drivers will be paying for their seats, because that is a point of differentiation for W Series,” she said. “I never want that to change. I don’t want it to be about rich kids. I want it to be about kids.”

To Bond Muir, a large portion of this year’s W Series drivers are still just “kids.” Out of her 18 drivers, six of them are teenagers. But she’s also referring to the larger impact she envisions for W Series on junior levels of racing.

“There is money that goes into the young kids who are super-fast because they believe that either their child or the person that they’re choosing to sponsor can get into Formula One or into IndyCar,” she said. “When I started looking at motorsport in 2016 … women were not being thought of as a group of people who could do that. Maybe the next female driver in Formula One is [now] 7 or 8 years old, but because we have changed the environment of motorsport to demonstrate that women have a valid place in motorsport, that 8-year-old, when they are super-fast, money will go into them at that point.”

Along with her large-scale vision for how W Series can change the world of motorsports, Bond Muir is at base level a pure sports fan, and one of the things she’s most excited to see this season is, “Who’s going to challenge Jamie?”

Jamie Chadwick: The Champ

Jamie Chadwick didn’t start karting until she was 11, which in racing made her a bit of a late bloomer. But she caught up quickly, and what started as a fun family activity became a serious competitive endeavor, demonstrated by her becoming the youngest driver and first-ever woman to win a British GT Championship at age 17. Now, having won both the 2019 and 2021 W Series titles (the 2020 season was canceled due to the pandemic), Chadwick is entering her third season with an enormous target on her back.

“I think where I’ve been fortunate in the past two seasons is consistency,” she said. “In the championship with so few races, you need to be scoring in every race or otherwise. If you have even one bad result, it can really set you back in the championship.”

Just 23, Chadwick is now cast as the seasoned vet who will have to defend her crown against a new class of young speedsters.

“It’s getting more and more competitive,” she said. “There’s a lot of young girls, which is really exciting. Great for the sport. Harder work for me.”

Chadwick has been very direct about her long-term career objective to become a Formula One driver, as she told Kelley O’Hara on JWS’ The Players’ Pod last year. Of the current W Series drivers, she has the strongest resume, but a significant gap remains between W Series and F1. The traditional path for the minuscule percentage of drivers who eventually get to F1 is to progress from karting to F4, then F3, then F2, and finally F1. Currently, W Series falls somewhere next to or just behind F3 based on the car they race. Where Chadwick lands next will be a telling indication of how W Series fits into this leveled progression.

“There’s still quite a lot I need to achieve and different series that I need to go through before Formula One is an option,” she said. “But I made no secret of the fact that’s my ambition.”

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There are positive signs that F1 teams are interested in growing their pool of female drivers. Three W Series drivers have now signed on in some capacity with F1 teams. Chadwick, for one, has been a development driver for Williams since 2019.

Chadwick also isn’t shy about where her career would be if W Series didn’t exist.

“Honestly, I don’t think I’d be racing,” she said. “I think I probably would’ve had a year or two maximum of continuing to try and find something, and it definitely wouldn’t have been in single-seaters … W Series came about at the perfect time. It gave me this opportunity to continue racing with a huge platform. It’s been pretty career-changing.”

Chloe Chambers: All-American Teenager

W Series is much more than a potential stepping stone to F1, but this encapsulation is what is most appealing to many of the youngest drivers. They see its potential to serve as an express lane, providing them with critical track experience and full-funded support to make up for the lack of opportunities for girls and women in the existing pathways.

“The younger drivers are much more fixated on getting into Formula One, because they’re young enough to be able to do that,” Bond Muir said. “Without putting our older drivers down, if you are in your late 20s, you’re not going to get into Formula One.”

It’s a harsh reality that exists in racing regardless of gender. But in the mind of 17-year-old Chloe Chambers, the sky’s the limit.

“My goal from when I first started racing was to get into Formula One. Obviously getting into Formula One is an accomplishment, but I want to be competitive in it. I want to be able to win and fight for race wins and just show to the world that I’m a good driver, not just a good female driver,” she said. “W series is definitely a stepping stone for that. It can definitely help me a lot in getting me up into F3, F2, and then F1.”

Adopted from China when she was 11 months old, Chambers lives in New York with her parents and two younger siblings, both also adopted internationally.

“I think it’s really cool for me to be able to have that kind of experience and that knowledge of other cultures,” she said of her family’s diverse heritage. “Especially in a sport like racing, where you have to experience a bunch of other countries and cultures.”

After quickly making her way through the karting ranks at the same track where Danica Patrick raced as a kid, Chambers spent last season in the F4 U.S. Championship before being selected for W Series this year. Despite the fast progression, Chambers says she feels very comfortable in the car heading into Miami this weekend.

“I think you get used to the speed. All the things that people would find scary, you get used to it really quickly, especially having grown up racing,” she said. “I am just going in with a fresh mind and willingness to learn.”

And she’ll be learning from the best. In her corner will be her Jenner Racing teammate, Jamie Chadwick, and team owner Caitlyn Jenner.

“Caitlin has just a wealth of knowledge in the sports world, and she loves racing too,” Chambers said of her new boss. “She has so much to say about racing and cars and just things that I love. I can just learn so much from her.”

Emma Kimilainen: Mother of the Grid

Besides the fact that her profession is to drive some of the fastest cars in the world at ridiculous speeds, Emma Kimilainen is just like most working mothers trying to find that delicate balance between career and family.

As a sports loving kid, Kimilainen pursued basketball, soccer and karate before deciding her primary passion was in racing. By the age of 12, she was winning almost every karting race she entered, and by 18 she was an Audi factory driver in a European junior single-seater series. Unfortunately for Kimilainen and many of her peers, the financial crisis of 2008 made sponsorship funding almost impossible to come by for the next few years, so she stepped away from the sport and eventually accepted it was a thing of her past.

Fast forward to 2014, Kimilainen and her husband were adjusting to life as new parents to their baby daughter when she received a very unexpected phone call.

“When she was 6 months old, I got that golden phone call that no one ever gets,” Kimilainen said.

The caller was the team manager of PWR Racing, a Swedish touring car team, offering her a driver seat, which she enthusiastically accepted. The physical challenge of getting back in shape and adjusting to being back in the car was easy compared with the emotional challenge of the accompanying “mom guilt.” On her daughter’s first birthday, Kimilainen was out of town, competing in her very first race back behind the wheel.

“Being away from home, from my daughter and family when she had the birthday was like a slap in the face,” she said.

It took a lot of self-examination and reevaluation of internal and external expectations for Kimilainen to feel secure in her work-life balance.

“With the first three years, I really worked hard mentally to balance what I thought that a good mother is, to what I actually am,” she said frankly.

Kimilainen found that her driving performance improved significantly when she got back on the track.

“I’m a lot better driver than I have ever been because of being a mother,” she said. “I realized that I’m a lot more than a racing driver. My identity is not the thing that I’m passionate about. I can be very passionate about it, I can be very ambitious about it, and it’s something that I really love to do, but it doesn’t define who I am as a person. Getting that right was the whole key to a completely new performance level.”

Having finished fifth overall and third overall in the previous two seasons, Kimilainen said she’s better prepared this time around and is optimistic she’ll be competing for the championship at the end of the year. She’s also more confident than ever that her decision to pursue her dreams will be invaluable for her daughter in the long run.

“Even though I’m away a lot, I hope that she understands why and then can appreciate it later,” she said. “I just want to show her that you can become whatever you want and there’s no barriers or limits, no boundaries of what she can become.”

W Series Miami Race 1 takes place Saturday at 2:30 p.m. ET, with Race 2 to follow on Sunday at 10:35 a.m. All qualifying sessions and races will be broadcast in the U.S. on ESPN. You can also follow W Series action on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

*The term single-seater, in motorsport, refers to racing cars with only one seat and wheels that are outside the body of the car. Single-seater race cars are seen to have a higher degree of technological sophistication than other types of racing vehicles.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony this afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

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The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.