If Formula 1 and the FIA, motorsport’s governing body, are going about getting women into the sport in a more integrated way this time, that comes with a public expectation, rather than a hope, that there will be results.
Initiatives include the new F1 Academy Discover Your Drive: a grassroots programme to encourage female participation from ages as young as eight. Last week a formal diversity and inclusion charter, external was introduced too.
“I like to be optimistic, but I’m also a realist,” says Wolff. “We have some big emerging talents coming through and I would definitely like to say within 10 years you’ll see a woman starting a Formula 1 race.”
McLaren chief executive Zak Brown concurs. “If you look at the trajectory and journey any driver has to go on, for every driver that wants to be Oscar [Piastri] or Lando [Norris], you need about 10,000 of them to try simulators or karting until you get that volume of participation,” he says.
“Just like in every other sport, just like in football, there are 10,000 that want to be Messi, so that’s why we spend our time in esports and F1 Academy and grassroots.”
McLaren have their own F1 Academy driver in Bianca Bustamante, and next year with Ella Lloyd.
“We need a much greater volume of participants at grassroots,” adds Brown. “I think it’s going to take time, the journey from karting to Formula 4 to Formula regional to Formula 3 to Formula 2… it’s about a 10-year journey and we’re kind of just getting started.”
Other figures in the F1 paddock are optimistic of a breakthrough in the next decade too. Stefano Domenicali, the sport’s chief executive, will not predict a timeframe, but says “it will happen”.
But perhaps the most important voice in all this currently is Abbi Pulling, who won this year’s F1 Academy title during the Qatar Grand Prix weekend after dominating many of the races this season.
“We’ll never know specifically [when it will be],” says Pulling. “If not in the next five to 10 years, then we hope that it’s soon.”
Following her title win, the 21-year-old will take a fully funded seat in the British GB3 championship to continue on the long road to proving her worth on track.
“F1 Academy has been really good for us getting track time and inspiring the next generation,” she says. “If it’s not me or the others in this championship, hopefully it’s the 10-year-old watching us.
“Two or three years ago, I couldn’t finish a season because there was nothing left in the pot [because of the sponsorship money required]. If it wasn’t for [my team] Alpine and F1 Academy I wouldn’t be racing, simple as that – the support I’ve been getting is huge.”
France’s Doriane Pin, who came second, is another who has put in a number of impressive performances, including in sports car racing, where she out-drove several highly experienced male competitors in Portugal in heavy rain in a Ferrari 488 GTE in 2022.
For this new generation, the motorsport successes are already happening.
