F1 Academy: Should Their Time in the Academy be Extended?

Maya Weug, F1 Academy

F1 Academy – single seater championship at Formula 4 level, meant to develop young girls, young women into the racing drivers you will see someday in Formula 3, 2 and what we hope for most of all, Formula One.

It is the rise of a new generation of women who now work to further integrate themselves into the Sport.

The Academy’s current managing director is former racing driver Susie Wolff, who drove in the Sport from 2014 to 2015 as a reserve and test driver for Williams racing. As well as that she drove for Formula Renault and the German DTM series before Formula One, from 2006 to 2012 she competed for Mercedes and under Mercedes AMG machinery. Whilst she was tenacious and ultimately showed grit, she decided to retire from driving at the end of 2015.

While she is the wife of Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff, she was decided to lead the series of the Academy and bring more women into motorsport. Evidently, she is passionate about what she does – managing so fervently, so adept in her work, leading the Formula One Academy so that these women can break past the barriers in Motorsport and prove this Sport should not remain male-dominated.

Even with how far our Sport has come, of course, many still don’t believe women have a place in Motorsports, that women do not have the opportunity nor possess the resolve or grit to get into Formula One or any form of Motorsport – but F1 Academy is here to prove just that wrong. To prove that women have carved out spaces for themselves before, they have built themselves up in other Sports, they will do it again - nothing should be different in Motorsport. It should always have been a Sport where people are treated fairly and kindly, coming into the Sport, certainly not less so because of age and certainly not because of gender.

How the Academy works is this.

There are ten Formula One teams, so ten teams sponsor these young women into F1 Academy, so ten girls are representing the esteemed F1 teams themselves. Thereafter, there are the five remaining, who are supported by miscellaneous and some of the biggest sponsors of Formula One itself. Were you aware that there is even a driver who races for Charlotte Tilbury? - a makeup brand! (With a dynamic livery surrounding beauty products, might I add.)

F1 Academy thereafter has 15 drivers competing throughout seven race weekends, after being reduced from the 2023 season. If we take last season 2024 as a prime example – two races per weekend, a 30-minute Qualifying where every minute is vital for your position that weekend - with your fastest lap in the qualifying before Race 1 determining your position for Race 1, and your second fastest Qualifying lap determining your starting grid spot for Race 2.

As well as this, this is a single-seater series, and not an open Formula, meaning each car, all components of each driver’s car are exactly the same. F1 Academy is arguably harder, because it is simply up to the girl in the car to prove their worth, to showcase their talent and the drivers don’t extract everything out of a car specifically built for them or suited to a certain team, the driver has to extract everything from themselves and put that into the car – it’s purely based on talent, concentration, and how badly you want that funding for next season.

F1 Academy is two years – if you perform well your first year, it’s more than likely you will remain racing under that team for the next year in F1 Academy, unless that team decides that they have a duty to another driver instead. However, if you don’t perform one year, they cannot give you a contract for the next.

Truly, the idea is that two years may not be enough for young emerging drivers to fully integrate themselves into the Sport, especially when there are instances where the driver does not come from experience in Formula karting.

Lia Block – she entered the academy in 2024 after being announced at the end of 2023, racing under ART Grand Prix for the Williams Formula One team. Block was a professional rally racer as well as off-road, a completely dissimilar style to Formula One. That is why last year, separate from her publicly becoming quickly agitated and irritable, Block did not understand how her driving style was so vastly distinct, why she was so uncomfortable and out of her zone driving in these cars. Rally is aggressive, and like all motorsports fast-paced, it is decidedly a sport where the car is weightier to throw around, heavier on turn exits and overall, bulky. So goes the driving, Block has had to massively attempt to adapt to the formula racing style rather than with the forceful nature she had grown used to.

This is just one instance, but there may be extenuating circumstances for any driver, not just surrounding previous driving experience, funding.

Funding can cause a huge rift between the girls fighting to enter the sport, whilst that may be out of the Academy’s hands, it should be taken into consideration situations such as Abby Pulling. She drove for Alpine last season – her greatest worry and driving factor that gave her that push to win the Academy Championship – if she didn’t win, she would be out of Motorsports.

Is it possibly a point of consideration, that whilst their time in the Sport may be fair enough to extract the best out of the driver, that funding should be considered for the two years as well – is that something else that should be brought to Susie Wolff?

This could certainly be a point of debate, that perhaps there should be talks looking into extending the driver’s time in the Academy – after all, Susie Wolff’s intention and ultimate goal is to “increase the pool of female talent in the Sport”, letting them rise to compete with the male drivers.

Whilst the reasoning behind drivers only being provided two years makes complete sense – to prevent unfair domination within the Sport if teams are only insisting on renewing contracts for specific drivers, and keeping this continuous fair flow of bringing in new drivers unlike other series where opportunities can often be slimmer and more difficult to find.

So, what is it?

What is the verdict?

Should there be an extension for the girls driving in F1 Academy?

Written by Kaysah Zarin Mahmood