Susie Wolff is certain that F1 Academy will one day stand on its own two feet as a symbol that motorsport is no longer exclusively a man’s world.
The 2025 calendar has now been announced as the female-only series continues to build, with a culminating race in Las Vegas set to become its jewel in the crown.
With rounds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi still to come, this year's championship will race on seven Formula 1 weekends spanning three continents.
This is in contrast to its inaugural season in 2023 when its races ran independently of the F1 calendar, apart from the Austin finale which was also the only race to be broadcast and the only time it ventured outside Europe.
Every race this year has been broadcast live, putting these talented female drivers onto the same screen as their counterparts in F1.
That growth will continue in 2025 after it was announced the season would begin in Shanghai and conclude in Las Vegas, with both venues joined on the calendar for the first time by Montreal – while Barcelona, Qatar and Abu Dhabi drop off.
This follows the announcement earlier this year that the 2024 F1 Academy Champion will receive a fully funded seat for 2025 in GB3 with Rodin Motorsport. It follows 2023 champion Marta Garcia earning a fully-funded drive in the Formula Regional European championship this season.
Prior to F1 Academy, the main all-female racing option was W Series, which also supported F1.
This was held between 2019 and 2022, with a season cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic. Having always struggled financially, it ultimately went into administration in 2023.
But F1 Academy has seen huge investment from many major companies and, unlike W Series, the F1 teams alike. Since the start of the 2024 season, drivers compete with the livery of their respective brand or team.
Championship leader Abbi Pulling's Rodin Motorsport machine carries the same livery as Alpine's F1 team, while fifth-placed Nerea Marti (Campos) has a prominent Tommy Hilfiger scheme.
F1 Academy has evidently benefitted hugely from the support, financial or otherwise, it has received from F1 and Liberty Media, as managing director Wolff explains.
“When I took on the role and arrived at a couple of races last year, to which I drove into an empty racetrack, it made me realise that if we are going to disrupt and have an impact with F1 Academy, we need to be seen,” she told Autosport.
“I think it's important to also show this wider and growing female fanbase that the sport they love; it's doing something. I never thought I would see in my lifetime in this sport such an incredible opportunity like F1 Academy.
“It is about the exposure, about being on the same platform, not having to build a fanbase and not having to fill a stadium like women's football does; tapping into that really wide Formula 1 fanbase of which 42% is now female and the fastest growing demographic is the 18-24-year-old female.
“This is real. We have the whole sport wanting to create this opportunity and make it more diverse in the long term. We're in a great position to succeed but we also have to overcome challenges along the way.”
Despite the close ties to F1, Wolff concedes that F1 Academy will eventually aim to stand on its own two feet as a motorsport category looking to continually promote female drivers.
“It's important to note that we've been given full support and investment from Formula 1 to do this, and to do it in the right way,” she added.
“I'm a great believer anyway that women's sport has to come, at some point, into an area where it will be self-sufficient, that it will create the return on investment.
“I absolutely believe that at some point we need to become self-sufficient and there needs to be a return on investment to F1 that warrants their investment in the series.
“In the end, what we're trying to do is not just create more opportunity for female drivers on track and female talent off track.
“We're trying to change perceptions of the sport and if we are racing in front of no audience, with nobody looking at us, we're not really going to have the impact.”
A large part of the journey to self-sufficiency is attracting the right sponsors and partners. It is an area where F1 Academy has flown out of the traps, with the likes of Charlotte Tilbury and Puma already signed on.
For Wolff, having the right partners is more important for the long-term health of the series over the need to purely bring in revenue.
“The partners that we've managed to bring on board are not just partners that are already in the sport, they're partners which have helped us reach a new audience,” she said.
“They're bold, they're disruptive, and they're allowing us to change the perceptions of the sport. That's where I feel very grateful that I'm not under huge financial pressure to take any partners.
“This is real and this is authentic. I wouldn't be running this if it was just a box-ticking exercise on diversity.
“We need to, commercially, still bring partners on board that can disrupt, that want to stand with us, that believe in the mission, because it's through our partners that we'll also be able to reach new audiences.
“We'll have some exciting announcements over the next months where you'll see partners come on board that, this time last year I could only have dreamed of, but that's the momentum we're already creating.”
Lessons have clearly been learned from F1’s own increase in popularity and income, with the Netflix series Drive to Survive bringing the world championship to a whole new audience.
It was announced in May that F1 Academy is getting its own show on Netflix, with Reece Witherspoon’s production company – Hello Sunshine – at the helm.
For drivers in F1 Academy, the chance to take part in the Netflix event – due to launch at some point in 2025 – was another bonus of racing in the series.
“The media aspect of F1 Academy is a big differentiating factor compared to any other series – F4, even F3 and F2,” Campos Racing’s Chloe Chambers told Autosport.
“That's why I've said I'll use both of these years that I have in the series, because of the gain that you get from all the media and all the attention, especially now this year, with the F1 teams coming in and the Netflix documentary.
“Next year and the following years will be just even bigger than the last. Not just for the drivers, but also for the series, and hopefully it'll even grab some more attention for F1 Academy and motorsport itself.
“I think that's definitely one of the big benefits of F1 Academy that you won't find anywhere else.”
Wolff does not want to set out to emulate Drive to Survive, but instead use the F1 Academy equivalent to show women that a career in racing is possible.
“I think it's hugely important, because in the end it's about educating people what F1 Academy is and what the opportunity is trying to enable, in a wider sense, in the sport,” she said.
“Anything that can break us away and get viewership from an audience that isn't already into motorsport is very valuable and you could see how Drive to Survive had that positive impact on F1.
“It will be something different, but I hope that it won't just be for Drive to Survive audiences, but also for the next generation of young women and girls to say, ‘Wow, these girls are racing drivers.’
“That is going to help massively in what I see is one of our biggest challenges, and that is changing the perceptions of the sport, that it's still a man's world.”
Wolff and everyone at F1 Academy are certainly driving home the memo that motorsport is not only for men. And with the business plans she has in place, that message is getting delivered more clearly than ever.
