Image Credit: Talon-Kai Honeyman via Unsplash
The tide has turned on F1 academy. What was initially celebrated as a groundbreaking step to increase female participation in the single seater racing world, is now being regarded as a failure. Designed to progress women up the motorsport ladder and increase female representation across all championship series, there are currently no women racing in Formula 3, Formula 2, or Formula 1. While 2025 champion Doriane Pin is now a test driver for Mercedes, no woman has actually competed in any of these series since Sophia Flörsch drove in F3 in 2024.
At the lower end of the sport, we are seeing a bottleneck effect. Because F4 and F1 academy sit alongside each other – with F1 academy using modified F4 cars – there are double the number of drivers clamouring for entry into the league above, especially when F1 academy has a maximum of two years in the series: Maya Weug described trying to secure a racing seat the ‘toughest year’ of her career, despite coming second in the 2025 F1 Academy Championship.
But there is a problem for F1 Academy bigger than bottlenecking: its name. F1 Academy implies that it is a training programme to get women into F1. But no one, regardless of gender, can get into F1 straight from driving modified F4 cars. Max Verstappen – who knows a thing or two about skipping the junior leagues, having gone straight from F3 to F1 – said in 2024:
“Team bosses don’t look at whether someone is a boy or a girl. It’s about how fast they are. […] The cars they drive are way too slow. If you ever want to get them into Formula 1, it really has to go to a higher level. […] There is no next step for them now. For example, the gap to a Formula 4 car is already too big”.
Though the claim that there is no sexism at all in driver selection is arguably a naïve take from the four-time world champion, his point about the cars stands true. Susie Wolff, former Williams's development driver and current managing director of F1 Academy, has spoken with similar concern:
“And those with the knowledge in the sport, we are at F4 level; that means there is still F3 and F2, so this idea that F1 Academy is preparing you for F1 is also sometimes challenging."
So then, why is it named F1 Academy if it is not actually preparing drivers for F1? The marketing decision was perhaps made with the subsequent Netflix documentary in mind. Drive to Survive brought a whole new audience into F1 itself, possibly there was hope for a similar success in the women’s series. But hope is not a management tool, and such a name, given the difficulty of getting into F3, let alone F1, is now working against them.