Formula 1 has a problem.
The speed racing league has been called a “boys’ club,” said Susie Wolf, a former and current racer. F1 Academy Managing Director said Luck in a recent interview.
“I’ll be honest, there are days when I think it’s like a boys’ club,” she said.
Crowned ‘World’s Most Valuable Sports Empire’ ForbesThe global racing league and its parent company Liberty Media are estimated to be worth a staggering amount. $16 billion. Its 20 riders race at speeds of around 200mph from the outskirts of Milan to Abu Dhabi’s luxurious Yas Island and the picturesque landscapes of Monaco. Ten teams generously rewarded for their winning laps – Red Bull as reported earned $140 million from the 2023 championship and has received increasing media attention thanks to the viral Netflix series. Formula 1: strive to survive documentary series.
One small problem: There are no women driving in the league.
Of the more than 700 drivers who have competed in the series over the 74-year history of Formula 1, only five were women. No female driver has competed in the race since 1992. one leader of the women’s team. Liberty Media’s board of directors is also dominated by white men, with the exception of one woman.
So it’s no surprise that the sport, now popular among billionaires such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Citadel founder Ken Griffin and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has been dubbed a “boys’ club.”
There was never an explicit rule preventing women from participating, and the study published 13-time Grand Prix winner David Coulthard’s non-profit organization More Than Equal has found that there are no physical or psychological barriers that could prevent women from competing in Formula One.
Some drivers are “strongly supportive” of getting more women on the race track, insists Wolf, pointing to seven-time world championship winner Lewis Hamilton as “an outstanding driver who is never afraid to stand up and support those who might not make it.” I have the same chances, and which, let’s say, are not so often seen in the motorsport paddock.”
Hamilton, the series’ only black driver, has been a vocal advocate for increasing diversity on the circuit. Mercedes driver said Spanish newspaper HOW in 2021, “we live in a time where the sport has become a billionaire boys’ club.”
Hamilton, 36 years old, whose adoption in McLaren Young Driver Program at age 13 helped finance his early career, explaining that breaking into the sport in the modern world would be difficult.
“If I go back to where I started, growing up in a normal working-class family, I won’t be able to end up here,” he said. “All the guys you fight against just have a lot more money.”
Given the high financial barrier to entry, ensuring a diverse playing field is a challenge for the sport. But Wolff, the leader of a new Formula One racing category created exclusively for women, has a plan to change that.
What is F1 Academy?
Wolff told Fortune that she is optimistic about the future of motorsports for young women, insisting that “it is slowly but surely changing; the world has changed.”
But it was not always so.
Wolff, 41, began her racing career in karting at the age of eight, and after decades of racing on single-seater race tracks, she burst onto the Formula One scene in 2012, joining the Williams team as a development driver. At the 2014 British Grand Prix at Silverstone she went down in history as the first woman to compete in Formula One racing in 22 years.
But there were times in her career when she became frustrated because she was “always asked if she was a woman in motorsport.”
“I felt like I was saying the same thing over and over again,” she said. “People loved to talk about diversity, but very few people actually did anything about it.”
No woman has raced in Formula 1 since Wolff.
“There was so much fuss about my gender because I was always the only one,” she said. Luck. “But actually in motorsport it doesn’t matter what gender you are because you wear a helmet.”
In 2023 F1 announced that Wolff will serve as managing director of the Formula 1 Academy, an all-female driver category designed to develop young talent. The Junior Series is aimed at drivers between the ages of 16 and 25 and aims to develop athletes’ mental and physical abilities, as well as providing more time on the track. From Saudi Arabia to Miami and Singapore, the single-seater category hosts race weekends alongside the Formula One World Championship across seven rounds.
“When the opportunity to create the Formula 1 Academy came up and I saw that this was a once in a lifetime chance to really make a positive and impactful change in the sport, it really felt like a moment where we stopped talking and we actually took action,” she said. .
But F1 Academy is not the first all-female racing series of its kind. W Series debuted in 2019 with prize money $1.5 million. Its goals of finding Formula One’s next female driver were disrupted by funding issues, forcing organizers to cut the third season in 2022. Wolff says she is determined to learn from those who have “tried and failed in the past” and talks about supporting Formula One. and the existing fan base helped gain momentum.
“The Formula One Academy has received very great support from Formula One,” she said. “We are truly on the cusp of big and exciting changes in the sport.”
Each Formula One team nominates a driver and the remaining five Formula One Academy cars are assigned. sponsored from Puma, Tommy Hilfiger, American Express or Charlotte Tilbury. Namesake of a cosmetics brand that also said That Financial Times She karted as a child, described Formula 1 as “something otherworldly”, and when the partnership opportunity came her way, she said: “I had to do it.”
“The world is still not where it needs to be in terms of supporting women,” Tilbury told the publication. “Just because they’ve always been done a certain way, why should they be that way? Why can’t more women be represented in sports?”
Wolff agrees, noting that “Formula 1 is big business” and “partnerships are a huge part of motorsport because there is a very high financial barrier to entry.”
According to Wolff, the Formula 1 Academy subsidizes “almost all” of its drivers’ budgets, meaning that of the €600,000 needed to complete the season, the driver must contribute 100,000 euros for the 2024 season.
“We’re providing more support to female drivers in hopes that they can climb the career ladder,” says Wolf.
The future of Formula 1
Wolff estimates the world is five or six years away from its next female Formula One driver.
“I think a woman has a better chance of becoming a Formula One driver these days because there are simply more opportunities and more support,” she says. “But it’s still a very, very competitive sport, and being a rider to make the 20-strong grid, no matter your gender, is tough.”
She pointed to other women’s sports as other leagues are “gaining huge traction” and attracting more interest around the world.
“I want to make sure that the next generation racing at the Formula 1 Academy can learn from all my experiences, but avoid all the mistakes I have made in my career.”
The Formula 1 fan base is also changing. In 2022, Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said: Deadline that 40% of the world’s Formula 1 fans are women, up 8% from 2017.
Netflix Ride to survive also attracts more fans to Formula 1. According to Nielsen study For docuseries and Formula 1 racing, the number of American fans jumped from 44.9 million in 2019 (the year the series premiered) to 49.2 million in 2022.
Drivers like Lando Norris have noticed the change, too. McLaren driver told Today in November that “sometimes it seems like there are more girls than guys.”
“There’s a huge amount of girls getting into it and I think it’s not only good for the sport in general as it increases the number of people watching it, but it’s also good for girls getting into racing,” he said. .
But as the sport evolves, Wolff doesn’t see the need to create an all-female Formula One league.
“This sport is all about talent and I truly believe that with the right support, with the right opportunities, you can see women succeed on their way to Formula One without being segregated.”