All-women F1 Academy gives young female drivers a head start

The road to success in motorsport can be a long haul. Young women often take a back seat, with fewer opportunities to attract sponsors and compete on the track. 

In 2023, Formula 1 launched the F1 Academy, an all-female series, under the leadership of Susie Wolff, to encourage young female drivers to train and compete at a professional level. The Academy offers equal opportunities for female drivers and added financial backing.

Nineteen-year-old Jess Edgar comes from a family passionate about motorsport, allowing her to take up go-karting when she was just four years old. Now she is one of three young women training as part of the F1 Academy at Rodin Motorsport in Surrey. 

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"I think F1 Academy is doing a really good job of opening doors for women coming into motorsport from karting, even mechanics and engineers and stuff, there's more opportunities for them too," she told CGTN. "There's definitely been a change and hopefully in years to come there'll be a lot more women in the sport."

Rodin is one of five teams taking part in the F1 Academy. It already has a long history of all-round motor racing wins, with over 450 trophies on display across various categories. 

Abbi Pulling is one of the most successful Academy drivers, winning three out of four recent races. Last month, she made history as the first woman to beat male rivals in a mixed F4 (Formula 4) race. 

"My dream is to one day hopefully be a Formula 1 champion. But if not just being a professional driver, keep racing, year on year. I've run out of funding a time or two, so every year I'm back in a car is a good year," she said. 

"It was just a great opportunity, the seat time the F1 Academy were providing, as well as the tracks we're going to this year, being on the main stage following Formula 1, it was a no brainer to go there."

There are fifteen full-time female drivers in the Academy, competing in seven races across three continents in 2024. The Rodin team is currently just two points off the top of the team leaderboard and is hoping its young female drivers can help edge the team title by the season finale in Abu Dhabi in December.

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