Chloe Chambers, currently sitting in fourth place in the 2025 F1 Academy series topped both Women’s test day session yesterday, completing an eye-catching performance at Valencia.
The American tested a Formula E car for the first time last November at Jarama with the Andretti team, but this year switched to Mahindra, very much the form team of the previous four days of testing for the regular race drivers.
Chambers stopped the clocks with a 1m23.584s lap on Friday morning before improving by almost 1.2s in the afternoon running on a best of 1m22.767s, 0.064s ahead of Abbi Pulling’s Nissan.
That peak lap of the day was just 0.4s off the 1m22.318s set by Joel Eriksson’s Envision Jaguar, the slowest of the regular test laps from earlier in the week. The overall pace of the women in Valencia was much closer compared to last season’s Jarama test where Pulling’s time then was 3.4 seconds off.
This year Formula E expanded the test to give more track time, and the session was competitive with a less than a second covering the top six of Chambers, Pulling, Bianca Bustamante, Alice Powell, Ella Lloyd and Jamie Chadwick.
Chambers was happy with her test, telling Formula E Notebook that “the team and I have worked really well together, both in the sim and also here in Valencia.
“I think Nyck (de Vries) helped and that was really nice to have. He definitely gave me some good tips, so to be immediately one of the quickest in the morning already from the start, it’s definitely a good sign.”
Chambers also said she would “love to be back in the paddock. I think we learned a lot and I’m confident that I even have some places where I for sure could have gone quicker, even on my fastest lap.
“It was, for me, mostly about just getting more seat time in the car, getting more comfortable with it. Just kind of feeling my way through the day, really. Never really, like, kind of going too crazy, going over the limits or anything. I kept it pretty calm and just gradually built up throughout the day.
“I think a lot of it was just the sim prep that we did. That was definitely, probably the biggest help in the preparations for this week. I think that kind of gave me the right idea on how to approach the driving style of this car, because it’s quite different to anything else I’ve ever driven.”
Chambers’ Test Programme Explained
Like all the teams Chambers’ test was no marketing or filming heavy initiative. With the Formula E race cars being freighted to Sao Paulo next week it was a final chance to accrue some data and there were some crucial elements to exploring more on software upgrades and also getting valuable extra tyre and vehicle dynamics data too.
“We did a lot of performance running and did some race starts as well, which was very fun,” said Chambers.
“And then it was just about maximising my time in the car and maximising our one-lap race.
“I did quite a few laps in the 350kW mark running, so I was really surprised at just how much you could push everything, to be honest. I was really surprised at how the four-wheel drive reacted to the throttle inputs.”
Chambers also gave her opinion on the steering of the Formula E Gen3Evo cars, something which has been a talking point as the upcoming Gen4 cars are set to have a system applied for the first time.
“The steering weight is heavy, but I’m used to driving cars with no power steering,” added Chambers.
“I think maybe for some of the other drivers, who come more from a sports car background, they probably struggled a bit more than I.
“But I’ve been training for heavy steering weight anyway, so this shows me kind of the level that I need to be at in terms of physical performance.”
