‘I was pushing as hard as I could’ – Chambers reflects on losing out on Race 2 victory with Jeddah penalty

It could have been a weekend of firsts for Chloe Chambers’ 2025 season after she claimed pole position for Race 2, but the chance of a win fell away from her after she was penalised for forcing rival Maya Weug off the track.

The Red Bull Ford driver executed a strong getaway at lights out in Jeddah, leaving Weug to fight for P2 with Doriane Pin in her mirrors. However, the Dutch racer quickly caught up to Chambers and engaged in a thrilling wheel-to-wheel challenge for the race lead.

Weug managed to surge past the American at the opening corner on Lap 3, but only temporarily as she rattled over the kerbs later on and went wide, opening the door for both Chambers and Pin to pass by.

During their prolonged battle for first, Chambers was deemed to have forced Weug wide, resulting in a five-second time penalty that ultimately meant that the latter inherited victory.

“I mean I can still take a lot of positives from the race,” Chambers explained. “The pace was really strong at the end – to be able to pull a five-second gap to Doriane in third I think is something to still be proud about.

“Fastest lap at the end as well so I tried to make the most out of what I could. We were just lacking some pace at the beginning. The different aero set-ups that everybody had made the racing a bit difficult for me so it was a little bit more difficult than what I thought it would be yesterday.

“I struggled a bit and Maya was able to get around and really, Maya just made a mistake and I tried to capitalise on it where I could because I knew the chances of overtaking later in the race with our different aero configurations was going to be tough. I just tried to make a move where I could and unfortunately it ended up being a penalty – not really much that I could have done there.”

READ MORE: RACE 2: Weug inherits hard-fought win from penalised Chambers in thrilling Jeddah battle

Once she was informed of the penalty by her engineer, Chambers committed to building as large a gap as possible over her competitors. With Weug never more than just over a second behind, she focused on extending her lead over Pin, Alisha Palmowski and Alba Larsen to secure a podium finish.

Asked how tricky it was to keep Weug behind for so many laps, Chambers said: “Maya was staying pretty close to me the whole time. She was catching me for probably half of the race or so. In the last six laps or so I started to pull a bit of a gap.

“My engineer was really telling me to keep pushing and try to make up time because I was still kind of in the fight for third with the penalty so I was just pushing as hard as I could really.

“I wasn’t too worried about Maya because I know Maya’s smart – she’s not going to try to make a crazy move where she can’t when I have a penalty and she knows that. I was just trying to drive my own race and just try to push as much as I could.”

With a third podium of the season under her belt, the American can now look ahead to her home race as the series heads to Miami for Round 3, where she feels “the most confident” after she claimed her first top-three finish there in 2024.