Full Disclosure: I was offered the chance via colleagues at the Motorsport Network to be at the premiere of the show in Leicester Square. So yeah, technically, this was gifted. Best lay my cards on the table there.
F1: The Academy is the latest sports docu-series that tries to pick up the slack that Drive To Survive embedded into the sporting media landscape. We’ve seen many other sports try it. Golf’s “Full Swing”, Cycling’s “Tour de France: Unchained”, Tennis’ “Break Point”, etc. None have lived up to the original’s cultural impact. So it’s time for the sport itself to double down with a series focusing on the F1 Academy, the all-female racing series driving in F4 cars around the world, and this series follows its 2024 season.
Episode 1 starts out at the Miami GP, oddly, the second weekend of that season. (This was announced after Saudi Arabia had already happened, alas.) The main framing of the episode revolves around Lia Block and Bianca Bustamante. Lia Block is a 17-year-old from Utah, whose dad Ken was a viral sensation Rallycross driver, who sadly died in 2023 in a Snowmobile accident. Lia wants to carve out her own legacy in single-seaters as opposed to her Dad in Rallying. She openly declares herself an introvert, she didn’t know what “Good Morning America” was before she was on it talking about the series, and she struggles talking on social media. Makes you wonder how keen she’d want to be involved in the show if she had more of a say in it.
She’s paired up with Bianca Bustamante, who’s immediately played off Lia as the opposite. Three million followers on social media, the face of racing in the Philippines and has genuine star power with fans recognising her in the paddock.
It’s worth pointing out to start off with that the show introduces the women in the series very well. The behind the scenes look into the women’s home lives is wholesome and endearing. It’s a little janky, it might be because there’s more to come in the series, so it’s a bit weird that Block gets a deep introduction into her history, her family, and the loss of her father very early on, while Bianca’s childhood is only glossed over to start off with. I’d have loved to have known what it was like karting in the Philippines1, a place where not very many drivers derive from, or his rise into the social following she has, rather than fast forwarding to crowd selfies.
The production as a whole is well done. The edits are tight, the shooting of the races is as world class as you’d expect an F1 production to be, and the show moves at a pretty fast pace to keep the story flowing. They cram all the context behind the women and a full race weekend into about 40 minutes, which is impressive. More than good enough for Netflix quality.
It also crosses into my biggest issue with F1: The Academy – The narrative direction of the series is a little on the predictable side. Now I admit, I’m cheating, I’m a journalist who actually followed the F1 Academy in 2024, so I know how the story goes. But when you hear predominantly from Warren, Bianca’s performance coach about not stalling the car, and focusing on her driving as opposed to her socials, and then she stalls the car in Race 1, it doesn’t hit as hard as it should, even when you see her burst into tears afterward.
It happens in Episode 2 as well, in which we’re introduced to Abbi Pulling, the eventual series Champion. We’re introduced to her background, the daughter of rich (Not financially) Lincolnshire farming and lineage. Her Dad put every penny of his name towards her racing. Abbi herself lives with her performance coach Alice Powell, gives her mate’s rates on the rent, and lets her sell her merch from her flat. Proper working class background.
They then immediately cut to Amna Al-Qubaisi getting off a jetski in the middle of a lake. Their Dad’s are compared too, with Abbi’s being the former biker who can’t afford to go to Abbi’s races and has to call from the track. Whereas the Al-Qubaisi twins get the “Soccer Dad” moniker. Of the twins, their dad Khaled, was a GT3 Driver in the 2010’s2, and now he’s in Barcelona, coaching them and expecting Top 3’s, given Amna’s first season of F1 Academy is glossed over (Where she won races). This shit isn’t exactly subtle3.
I get it. To a degree, they’re limited for material to help promote these women compared to their older brother DTS. With DTS, you’re buying a Goodfellas oven-ready pizza. All the hard work is already done for you, because you have history, rivalries already bedded in, politics from the paddock and the same opportunities to deep dive into their personal characters. It’s hard not to look at Daniel Ricciardo, arguably the show’s biggest internet darling. The next star driver of that team after he ran Sebastian Vettel out of town, only to leave himself because it was clear he felt isolated in his own backyard when Max Verstappen rolled up. Throw that in a blender with the Red Bull/Renault beef and it was a season-on-season storyline that kept you hooked in, even if you weren’t an F1 fan. Drama, gotta love it.
F1 Academy is like rolling out your dough from scratch. You don’t have those ingredients to fall back on, and you have to essentially start from zero to introduce these characters to us as an audience. I admit, that’s not an easy task, but it sometimes leads to dipping into the well of the obvious as lazy hooks to emotionally care about people.
That’s a little frustrating, because there’s one person they hit all the high notes with – Chloe Chambers. An adopted daughter, a competitive swimmer who transitioned into racing, and seeing the pride and love from her parents was beautiful. Barcelona features her first win in the series and seeing her Dad cry every chance he gets, beaming with pride, is what Motorsport is all about to me. The brightest point of the two episodes I got to watch.
If this sounds harsh, it’s a little harsh, as I said, I genuinely enjoyed the two episodes I got to watch. The stories are told well, the races are slick and well done (Even if they overegg the slow-mo a tad), and the show doesn’t overstay its welcome with how quick paced it is. The supporting cast so far have all been excellent too. The performance coaches and engineers, the parents of the drivers, they’re just as, if not more interesting than the drivers themselves, and they were some genuine laughs to be had by them.
The Verdict – 6.5/10 (Decent): Reminder – This is only based off the two episodes I’ve seen. Would I recommend it? If you’ve never watched F1 Academy, then yes, there’s enough here I think to keep you around for the whole series. There’s a bit more here for the hardcores who did watch too, but as someone who watched the racing already, I’d argue there’s less meat on the bone to really get stuck into. You can see they were swinging for the home run with F1: The Academy, like its Drive to Survive counterpart. It’s just a well hit single to left field. And honestly, that’s okay. The show is about by the time you’re reading this, via Netflix.
- Shoutout to Ciara, dear friend for pointing this one out, but we suspected the reason why this was likely glossed over was the fact her Dad works in Silicon Valley. Kinda dulls the “rags to riches” story if that got googled up. (This is what happens when you wrongly accuse Lance Stroll of autism on Twitter.) ↩︎
- Fun Fact: He raced in Formula Regional Asian as recently as 2022. At Age 47. He finished… 35th. ↩︎
- Another example of lack of subtlety – There’s a scene in Episode 1 where three of the women are at the beach in full team gear, at night. Adamant this wouldn’t happen if not for the camera. PS: Two of the girls are in full makeup gear, with Block and Aurelia Nobels both 17 at the time. As said before on this blog… am I the only one who thinks this is uncomfortable? (Especially with Charlotte Tilbury as a big sponsor?) ↩︎
