ellie

I'm rather sleep deprived though, so this might not make any sense lol

working on a post for here & twitter with f1 drivers as shakespeare characters and curious if anyone has any ideas or contributions :)

we have lots of them so i'm just going to start keeping track here hehehe

dori (of course)

the pocket rocket

baby goat

pin au chocolate

the pin is mightier than the sword

for some context, f1 academy is a women-only racing series that is most similar to formula 4. drivers are eligible to compete for two years; after that, they are no longer eligible because the goal is to help advance women through the junior series. 

2023 was the first season of f1 academy. 2025 will be the first year where some drivers will no longer be eligible. this year, 2023 champion marta garcía & runner up léna bühler advanced to FRECA. 

abbi pulling, both al quabasi sisters, nerea marti, bianca bustamante, jess edgar, lola lovinfosse, emely de heus, and carrie schreiner will not be eligible to compete in f1a in 2025. as far as i’m aware, none of their seats for next year have been announced. 

essentially, 2025 is the first time we’ll see how successful f1 academy can be at promoting young female drivers. where should we be looking for them to be going? 

well, FRECA and formula 3 are the most sought-after spots, though it is likely some will remain in formula 4 for another season as they hope to make a big enough mark to secure the funding necessary to race in these expensive series. 

estimates place the cost of running a single f3 season at around 1.2 million dollars, and drivers who are associated with academies can expect to have an academy fund about half of that if they’re lucky. 

another option is formula e, the electric series; nerea martí and chloe chambers were announced today to be testing for andretti later this year. 

chloe chambers was the first f1 academy 2025 driver to be announced, and the haas-backed race-winner is joining red bull racing’s ford seat for 2025. it seems like more 2024 f1a rookies are likely to stay with the series for next year, but if other stand-outs like maya weug and doriane pin can secure seats in higher series, a move up isn’t out of the picture.

because f1 academy gets relatively little media coverage compared to other junior series, we don’t know a lot about who is expected to move into some of the seats opening up; nina gademan had one of the best wild card performances of the season and seems to be a favorite for one of them.

so why does this matter? i don’t think anyone reasonable should be expecting f1 academy to erase institutional bias against women in motorsport in a single season, but it’s important that f1a makes its mark on the media and their sponsors in order to secure its place going forward. 

these girls have worked so incredibly hard, and susie wolff described on the red flags podcast this week what is already being called the f1 academy efffect; more young girls are interested in karting bc they female role models to look up to.

that's all i have to say about this for now, but basically i just want to make f1a fans and f1 fans in general aware of how pivotal this silly season for f1a is going to be, even if it doesn't get the media coverage that it deserves.

doriane pin via instagram today