Formula One teams are to enter a direct partnership with the sport’s all-female feeder series, the F1 Academy, from next season, when they will each have one nominated driver competing under their team name and using their livery. The decision was described as a “landmark moment’ by the series’ managing director, Susie Wolff.
The F1 Academy was established this year by the sport to address the paucity of women drivers in motor racing and to help build a pathway for a woman to reach F1. The sport has not had a woman start a grand prix since Lella Lombardi raced in Austria in 1976. She and Maria Teresa de Filippis are the only two women to have raced in F1 since the championship began in 1950.
