There is a number that has been haunting motorsport for fifty years. 1976. That was the last time a woman stood on the Formula One grid. Lella Lombardi, racing in the Australian Grand Prix – and in the decades that followed, F1 changed almost everything: the cars, the circuits, the money and the culture.
The one thing it couldn’t crack was getting women back to the front of the grid.
F1 ACADEMY explained in its simplest terms: it is F1’s own all-female single seater series, built to develop female talent and create a genuine pipeline from karting to the top of motorsport. But the story of why it exists, and how it works, is worth knowing in full.
Before the ACADEMY: The W Series Collapse
To understand why F1 ACADEMY was created, one needs to know about the W Series.
In 2019, Catherine Bond Muir founded the W Series with the goal of creating a series to help women progress up the racing ladder. Williams academy driver Jamie Chadwick won the championship in each of its three seasons, although the 2022 campaign was cut short when the series encountered financial difficulties.
W Series relied heavily on sponsorship and investor funding. When the financial backing stumbled during 2022, the calendar didn’t just shrink. It stopped. Mid-season cancellations, sponsors vanishing and the momentum dying.
The championship posted net liabilities of around $8.3 million in 2021 and owed money to its contractors. By mid-2023, W Series entered administration with all staff made redundant.
The sport had lost its only dedicated female sing-seater series. On 18 November 2022, F1 announced the creation of F1 ACADEMY, a racing series for women aiming to focus on developing and preparing young drivers to progress to higher levels of competition.
The goal was to help smooth the transition from karting to the single-seater ladder. This time, it would be backed by the most powerful brand in motorsport.
The Woman running it
On 1 March 2023, Susie Wolff became the managing director for the series. It was certainly the right call.
Wolff started in karting, before graduating to Formula Renault and Formula Three, then moving to the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) to compete for Mercedes-Benz.
In 2012, Williams signed her to work as a development driver. The last female driver to take part in an F1 weekend was F1 ACADEMY managing director Susie Wolff herself, for Williams at the 2014 British Grand Prix, when she took part in Free Practice Session One.
She knew the ladder from the inside. She knew where the gaps were. And she was clear-eyed from the start. “I think it was always clear we had one shot to get it right,” Wolff has said. “We knew we had to get it right and build a strong foundation.”
Her vision was deliberately broader than producing one F1 driver. “It simplifies it so much to think that all we can do is get a woman into F1,” Wolff says. “If we do our job, getting a woman in Formula 1 will be inevitable. But our responsibility is broader than that – it’s about creating structural change.”
F1 ACADEMY explained: How the Series works
The car
F1 ACADEMY cars are built on the Tatuus F4-T421 chassis used in Formula 4 championships globally since 2022, although modified front and rear wings make the aero package unique.
The tyres are provided by F1 partner Pirelli. Autotecnica Motori, a Tatuus subsidiary, supplies the engine which consists of a 1.4-litre turbocharged 4-cylinder, capable of delivering 174 horsepower at 5,500 rpm.
Top speed sits at 240kph. They’re genuine single-seaters – open wheels, halos, Pirelli slicks – just positioned at Formula 4 level. It’s a spec series, meaning every car is identical. Budget and machinery are eliminated as variables. Only the driver makes the difference.
The Teams and F1 Involvement
All six teams also race in Formula 3 and Formula 2 and have pedigree for bringing through young talent: Lewis Hamilton and George Russell are ART alumni, Lando Norris was given his F2 debut by Campos before racing for Carlin, Charles Leclerc and Mick Schumacher both won the F2 title with Prema, while MP Motorsport had 2022 F2 champion Felipe Drugovich.
These are not experimental outfits. They’re organisations that have developed world champions, now applying that infrastructure to young female talent. The 2026 grid features six teams – ART Grand Prix, Campos Racing, Rodin Carlin, MP Motorsport, Prema Racing and Hitech Grand Prix – each fielding three cars for 18 drivers in total.
All ten F1 teams support one driver each who carries their team’s livery. This demonstrates F1’s commitment to increasing female representation in motorsport. Many of those drivers are formally embedded in their F1 team’s academy programmes – giving them access to technical and mental coaching that was previously out of rach for most female racers.
The Weekend Format and Points
F1 ACADEMY runs exclusively as a support series on F1 Grand Prix weekends, on the same bill as F2 and F3. A typical event includes one qualifying session and two or three 30-minute races.
The reverse-grid format – where the qualifying order is flipped for one race – creates additional overtaking opportunities and keeps weekends unpredictable.
The top five drivers in the championship ear points towards an FIA Super License, with 10 for the champion, 7 for the runner-up, 5 for third-place, 3 for fourth and 1 for fifth. Those Super License points are the formal link to the broader racing ladder – the same currency used in F2 and F3 to qualify a driver for an F1 seat.
F1 ACADEMY drivers must be between the ages of 16 and 25, and cannot race for more than two seasons in the series. That two-season cap forces progression. Drivers come, develop and move on.
Where do they go after?
A series is only as meaningful as where it leads. After winning the 2025 title, Doriane Pin stepped up from the Mercedes Junior Programme to becoming a Development Driver with the team.
Runner-up Maya Weug earned a GT test funded by F1 ACADEMY with AF Corse, the official factory-supported Ferrari squad in the FIA World Endurance Championship. 2024 champion Abbi Pulling progressed to GB3 with a fully funded seat, and 2023 champion Marta García moved to the Formula Regional European Championship.
FRECA. GB3. Mercedes Development Driver. Legitimate steps on a ladder that ends at an F1 car.
F1 ACADEMT has also been credited with increasing female participation in kart racing, supporting 27 drivers across national and international competition for 2026 – up from nine the year prior.
This pipeline is being built from the bottom up.
Four Seasons in
Three champions in three seasons: García, Pulling and Pin. The 2026 season – the fourth – runs across seven rounds supporting F1 Grands Prix, including Silverstone’s F1 ACADEMY debut.
Eight of the confirmed full-time drivers are 18 or younger. The talent entering the series is getting younger and more competitive with each passing year.
“It’s still early. We’re only in year four, but the scale of F1 ACADEMY’s progress in such a short space of time shows what’s possible when the intent is clear,” Wolff says.
Lombardi raced her last Grand Prix in 1976. Fifty years on, the sport is finally building something that might change that number.
Featured Image Credit: F1Academy
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