Before I really get started – Allow me to check my privilege here. I am a cisgendered man, talking about a women-centric issue within Motorsport. I know that’s not ideal. In a perfect world, I’d pay for a woman in the game to write this article here, but being funemployed, it’s hard to justify that kind of outlay out of a small Patreon pot. This sucks, but I had feelings about the latest in the F1 Academy and I wanted to talk about it. Hope you can understand – Dre
It’s an interesting crossroads for the F1 Academy. Their third season enters its climax next weekend in Las Vegas and Doriane Pin enters those final two races with an 11-point lead over Maya Weug, the only two women who can take the crown.
On the face of it, it’s been a positive year for the series. It released a multi-episode Netflix series via Reese Witherspoon’s production company to a generally positive reception. The series had its first rookie test in September, giving more opportunities for women to impress and potentially break into the series. It had solid debuts in Shanghai and Montreal, and a Vegas finish will be a big deal as the major other series on F1’s support bill. Female participation in karting is way up as well, an excellent trickle down effect of the series popularity and proof that you can’t be what you can’t see1.
Thursday marked another seemingly positive update. It was announced that all 10 teams will remain committed to the series going forward, with Cadillac joining the grid in 2027. They’ve also added a new clause in the rules saying that at the Academy’s discretion, an athlete can be given a third season exemption over the standard two year maximum. Feeder Series on X reported that the reasoning behind it was: “granted exclusively to those whose performance indicates strong potential for continued growth”.
Like I said, on the face of it, positive. But scratch beneath the surface a little bit and it’s hard not to be a little concerned. Let me explain.
That third season rule. I had a feeling this would be addressed at some point. Two seasons in the Academy before having to move on felt like a little too quick for talent turnover. Some really big names are going to be forced out of the series at the end of next weekend – Doriane Pin, Maya Weug, Chloe Chambers, Tina Hausmann, Lia Block, Chloe Chong and Aurelia Nobels. Of the 17 full-timers on the grid, at least seven won’t be back. At bare minimum, that’s your two title contenders, 4th, 8th, 10th and 11th in points.
Citing “continued development” as a vague, not quantitative reason to potentially have a third season is a strange choice when you look at the greater scope of junior racing. By F1’s own published “Road to F1”, they value the F1 Academy as equal to an F4 series. The problem is, if we were judging talent on the basis of spending three years in F4, there’s no way in hell you’d think they would have a future at F3 or F2 level. You could easily go one further and claim that Susie Wolff is trapping talent within the series with the intention of making the series look better. The quote from her own press release backs that up:
“We continue to be impressed by the depth of female talent coming out of the world of karting and are encouraged by the growth and strength of the emerging talent pool. A sharpened focus on individualised talent development, including the opportunity for drivers with high potential to compete in up to three seasons, will give stand out drivers the support and platform needed to fully realise their potential, while ensuring that the F1 ACADEMY grid consistently features the very best female talent.”
If this was about getting women up the ladder, they’d be spending LESS time in F1 Academy, not more. And that speaks to one of the bigger issues with the overall direction of the Academy and what they want it to be. Are you giving these women the best possible chance at F1, or is it about… other intentions?
For instance, if I wanted to build a junior series as a rung below F3, I’d be basing the entire calendar in Europe, as the F3 calendar has 80% of its races within the continent. But the F1 Academy schedule is racing in none of F3’s regulars – Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Miami, Las Vegas, etc.
It’s hard not to spot a pattern with that race selection. They’re all highly lucrative locations that attract more than the common race fan. Saudi Arabia actively wants to sportswash, most educated race fans know that. They only allowed women to drive in 2018 and it was a literal condition for the country to lift their ban to allow Formula E to race there (while jailing the brave women who protested for it). So any opportunity to promote women racing in the country will be grabbed with both hands.
Miami signed a 10-year extension to stay on the F1 calendar this Spring and it attracts top end celebrities and journalists as part of the clientele. Same with Vegas, a race that F1 is the sole promoter for. And Singapore is now “Monaco 2” with a lot of big business and glamour drawn to the area. I don’t think these selections are a coincidence, I think they’re hand picked to maximise marketing opportunities. Again, don’t think it’s by chance you get Kendall Jenner plastered all over a broadcast, with an American Express car, or a VISA or a Puma car, for an F4 driver, something you’ll never see in another junior series.
By direct comparison, most funding at junior level is coming directly off of family and friends and not a big name will be in sight. It’s only gotten worse after a global pandemic and subsequent financial crisis. I saw on Companies House, the parents’ business of an up and coming junior driver. Made five million pounds in profit last year. It was terrifying looking at that and thinking: “That may not be enough.”. I promise you, Tommy Hilfiger isn’t walking through that door for F3, and junior teams can’t afford to be taking part in the Road to F1 ladder without taking seven-figure cheques from its talent.
F1’s built a platform in direct attachment from themselves, and it shows. This is now the most high profile racing series for women in all of Motorsport, despite it being the fourth (arguably fifth) rung on the ladder, and once they leave, Champion or not, they’re on their own to sink or swim like anyone else.
Marta Garcia’s now with the Iron Dames as a GT3 driver. Abbi Pulling was the dominant 2024 Champion plastered all over Netflix, but had a downgraded top prize of going from FRECA to GB3 instead (Which is likely where she was going to race next anyway). And even then, she was 10th with just one podium finish.
Doriane Pin has a great shot at the title, but her junior single-seater career already looks over after flaming out in FRECA, scoreless in 24 starts and dropped by Prema midway through her second year. What happens if she wins the title? Or Weug, who already did a full year of FRECA in 23’? The progression path is fuzzy, and that’s just for the elite in the series.
But Dre, the F1 teams are all backing the drivers, that’s cool, right? Yeah, it’s a token gesture. When Sophia Floresch, who’s generally done the junior ladder “the conventional way”, calls it “pinkwashing”, she may have had a point. They can share a simulator every once in a while, sport the team’s gear and feature on social media clips, but the teams are doing very little, if anything, to actually help the women climb the ladder. For the teams, again, it feels like a marketing opportunity for content’s sake.
By comparison, it’s a very different looking landscape for Women’s Sport. The Lionesses are now a huge part of English sporting culture after two European Championships and a World Cup Final. Beth Mead and Mary Earps have won UK Sports Personality of the Year, with Chloe Kelly and Hannah Hampton two of the favourites for the award in 2025. If Kelly wins, it would make her the fifth woman in a row to take the honour. England’s Red Roses just won the Rugby World Cup in front of 81,000 at Twickenham, with Ellie Kildunne another likely contender.
Across the pond, the WNBA has exploded via Caitlin Clark, A’ja Wilson, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers to name a few. So much so they’re about to lock horns with the owners over a potential lockout as they can’t agree on a collective bargaining agreement. And I’d have to mention Ilona Maher, the most followed woman in all of Rugby on social media, who has used the platform and her creativity to carve out her own side career as an influencer on top of her sporting accolades.
For F1 and its teams, it’s an easy play to use its women from within as marketing tools, but the evidence above shows they’re not willing to truly put in the hard yards to get a woman up the ranks. The last time I truly saw that was when Jamie Chadwick was a part of the Williams academy when the W-Series was around, but it never amounted to much as others passed her by in the food chain when she tried to get into F3.
I wanted to like the W-Series, it did many things right. A free-to-air TV deal, virtually an all-female cast (At least at the start), Superlicense support, and a small but viable cash prize pool that on any level would be useful to get women jobs in other series. But it too had the same problem – Encouragement to stick around. Chadwick earned $1,000,000 from two of her three title wins (She didn’t get the third due to the liquidation of the series), but there was nothing stopping her from coming back for a relatively easy 500k every year as long as she gave the 15 Superlicense points back. That alongside the relatively ambitious plan of hoping outside investment was going to prop up an F3-level feeder and the bad luck of the pandemic’s timing meant the series was ultimately doomed to fail.
The F1 Academy won’t go that way as long as Formula One Management, who are making over two billion dollars a year, can justify taking the financial penalty on the balance sheets in exchange for the marketing value the platform provides. But it’s hard to ignore the missteps. The F1 Academy feels like it’s in limbo, and doesn’t know what it wants to be. Giving it the big one claiming that it wants to put a woman in F1, but also wanting to promote itself as the platform series for women in Motorsport, even if it means compromising the talent’s own actual career progression to do it. I like Susie Wolff and I think she’s generally done a good job with the series, but I think the mask of what the Academy was supposed to be is starting to slip.
- Props to Dharmesh Sheth from Sky Sports News for that one. Did you know he runs a media networking and workshop event year in collab with Kick It Out as he wants more people of colour in football? I was there this week, great guy. ↩︎
