American Chloe Chambers Blazing Trails in W Series with Caitlyn Jenner

Chloe Chambers has a lot going on these days.

The 17-year-old senior from Hudson Valley, New York, has finals coming up and will be graduating from high school next month. After that, its on to Arizona State University's online program and the school's business management program.

But this week, Chambers will put the books aside for a few days and take in a little racing in Miami.

Check that.

Chambers won't just be checking in on the action, she'll be in the middle of it—racing in the W Series on the Formula 1 circuit in Miami against some of the world's top female open-wheel racers. She is the lone American on the grid. It's pretty heady stuff, even for a young racer who already owns a Guinness World Record for driving prowess and who's already gone head-to-head with Simon Cowell on America's Got Talent: Extreme.

The W series is an open-wheel racing series for women. The three-year-old series began in 2019 (skipped 2020 due to the pandemic) and is back for an ambitious 2022 campaign of 10 races in support of Formula 1. This week, the W Series races twice at Miami Gardens, Florida, ahead of Sunday's F1 Miami Grand Prix.

The cars used in the W Series are identically prepared Tatuus–Alfa Romeo F3 T-318 race cars. Chambers drives for Jenner Racing, which is owned by Caitlyn Jenner, and her teammate is two-time W Series champion Jamie Chadwick.

"I do realize how big the W Series is, and it definitely is the biggest series I’ve raced in," Chambers told Autoweek during a recent Zoom interview. "I think that makes me more excited, actually. It doesn’t seem to add more pressure to me. I kind of like having a lot of people watching me race. I think that I perform really well under pressure, and so I think just having everyone there, and having all the F1 teams looking on just makes me more excited to go to Miami."

Chambers started racing go-karts when she was 8 years old. She moved through the kart ranks, won a World Karting Association national championship, and last year competed the full season in the Formula 4 United States Championship, where she finished 26th in the points.

"I’m not from necessarily a racing family," Chambers said. "My dad did some autocross and track days. He was never a professional racer. He was just into cars. He watched Formula 1 and everything. I watched it with him. I would go to some of his track day events with my mom.

"I just fell in love with the sport from watching it with my dad and watching my dad, too. I saw some younger kids getting in some go-karts one day, and I was 7 at the time, and I asked my mom, ‘I want to drive like dad.’ But I was only 7, and I couldn't drive an actual car. My parents did some research and found a go-kart track near my house. I started racing go-karts when I was 8 years old. And I guess from there, it became something more than just a hobby, and now I’m here. It seems to have worked out."

This past winter, Chambers survived rigorous preseason tests and evaluations for prospective W Series drivers at Inde Motorsports Ranch in Arizona and at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain. The goal was to secure one of openings in the 18-driver field. Chambers made the cut, along with series rookies Tereza Babickova, 18, from the Czech Republic; Bianca Bustamante, 17, of the Phillippines; Emely De Heus, 19, of the Netherlands; and 16-year-old Juju Noda of Japan. The rest of the field consists of the top finishers from last year's points standings.

"I didn’t necessarily surprise myself," Chambers said of the W Series tryouts. "I was just going in there with no expectations. I wasn’t expecting to be the quickest. And I wasn’t expecting myself to just automatically be up to speed. I was just going in to learn, and I guess that’s what I did. It seemed to have gone really well.

"I think that I drove the best that could have. And then just I think with some more time in the car and especially here in Miami when nobody knows the track and it’s more even, I have a better chance at doing well because it’s the first time for everybody at this track."

This season, and as Miami, she'll be driving for team owner Caitlyn Jenner and Jenner Racing. When her high school classmates heard that, well, you can probably guess the rest.

"I went out to California to meet her," Chambers said. "Jamie (Chadwick) came along, as well. I got to meet both of them. I think Caitlyn is really cool. She just really likes racing and cars and everything. She has so much experience in the sports world that she can share with me. She genuinely has a passion for cars. A lot of people don’t know that, especially people my age. She’s a big pop celebrity."

That's what got her friends' attention, for sure.

"A lot of my friends are like, ‘Oh, yeah, you met Caitlyn Jenner!’ They were just amazed,"Chamber said. "That’s the Kardashian family and the Jenner family. I think obviously it’s cool and everything, but to me she’s not just a pop culture celebrity. Shes the owner of the team. She really likes race cars, She's an Olympian. She has so much knowledge she can share with me, and I can probably use all of that for the rest of my career."