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Formula 1 has a problem.<\/p>\n
The high-speed racing league has been described as \u201ca boys\u2019 club,\u201d Susie Wolff, the former driver and current F1 Academy<\/a> managing director told Fortune<\/em> in a recent interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll be honest, there\u2019s still some days when I think this feels like a boys\u2019 club,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Crowned the world\u2019s \u201cmost valuable sport empire\u201d by Forbes<\/em><\/a>, the global racing league and its parent company Liberty Media<\/a> are estimated to be worth a staggering $16 billion<\/a>. Its 20 drivers race at speeds around 200 mph from the outskirts of Milan to the lavish Yas Island of Abu Dhabi to the picturesque scenes of Monaco<\/a>. The 10 teams are rewarded handsomely for their victory laps\u2013Red Bull<\/a> reportedly<\/a> netted a $140 million payday from the 2023 championship\u2013and have received increasing media spotlight with Netflix\u2019s viral Formula 1: Drive to Survive <\/em>docuseries.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n One small issue: There are no women driving in the league.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of the more than 700 drivers who have raced in the series throughout F1\u2019s 74-year history, only five<\/a> have been women. No female driver has competed in a race since 1992, and there\u2019s only ever been one<\/a> female team principal. Liberty Media<\/a>\u2019s board of directors is also dominated by white men, save for one<\/a> woman.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s no surprise, then, that the sport\u2014now popular<\/a> with the likes of billionaires like Amazon<\/a> founder Jeff Bezos, Citadel founder Ken Griffin, and Tesla<\/a> CEO Elon Musk\u2014has been dubbed a \u201cboys\u2019 club.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s never been an explicit rule barring women from participating, and research published<\/a> by 13-time grand prix winner David Coulthard\u2019s nonprofit More than Equal found there are no physical or psychological barriers that could prevent women from competing in F1.<\/p>\n Some drivers \u201care very vocal in their support\u201d of getting more women on the racetrack, Wolff insists, pointing to seven-time World Championship winner Lewis Hamilton as the \u201coutstanding driver who is never scared to stand up and support those who maybe don\u2019t have the same chances and who are, let\u2019s say, not as commonly seen in a motorsport paddock.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamilton, the only Black driver in the series, has been an outspoken advocate for increasing diversity on the track. The Mercedes driver told<\/a> Spanish newspaper AS<\/em> in 2021 that \u201cwe live in a time where this sport has become a billionaire boys\u2019 club.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Hamilton, 36, whose acceptance into McLaren\u2019s Young Driver Programme<\/a> at age 13 helped to fund his early career, explained that breaking into the sport in today\u2019s world would have been difficult.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf I go back to where I started, growing up in a normal working class family, there\u2019s no way that I could be here,\u201d he said. \u201cAll the guys that you\u2019re fighting against just have that much more money.\u201d<\/p>\n With a high financial barrier to entry, ensuring a diverse playing field is a tough challenge for the sport. But Wolff, leader of F1\u2019s new racing category made entirely for women\u2013has a plan to change that.\u00a0<\/p>\n What is F1 Academy?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Wolff tells Fortune she\u2019s optimistic about the future of motorsports for young women, insisting \u201cslowly but surely, it\u2019s changing; the world has changed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t always that way.<\/p>\n Wolff, 41, started her racing career go-karting at the age of eight, and after decades of ripping through single-seater race tracks, she broke onto the F1 scene in 2012 after joining Williams\u2019 team as a development driver. At the 2014 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, she made history <\/a>as the first woman to take part in a F1 race weekend in 22 years.<\/p>\n But there were moments during her career where she became frustrated after \u201calways being asked about being a woman in motorsports.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI felt I was saying the same thing over and over again,\u201d she said. \u201cDiversity was something people loved to talk about, but very few people actually did anything about it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n No woman has participated in an F1 race weekend since Wolff.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere was so much noise around my gender, me being always the only one,\u201d she told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cBut actually, it doesn\u2019t matter in motorsport what your gender is because you\u2019re wearing a helmet.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2023, F1 announced<\/a> that Wolff would serve as managing director for F1 Academy, an all-female driver category meant to develop young talent. The junior series targets drivers aged 16-25, and aims to coach athlete\u2019s mental and physical performance, plus ensure more track time. From Saudi Arabia to Miami to Singapore, the single-seater category hosts race weekends alongside the F1 World Championship at seven events.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the opportunity of Formula One Academy came up, and I could see that this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to actually drive positive, impactful change in the sport, it really felt like a moment where we stopped talking, and we\u2019re actually taking action,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But F1 Academy isn\u2019t the first all-female racing series of its kind. The W Series debuted in 2019 with a prize fund of $1.5 million<\/a>. Its aims to find the next female F1 driver were cut short due to funding issues, forcing organizers to cut its third season short in 2022.\u00a0 Wolff says she\u2019s determined to learn from those who \u201ctried and failed in the past,\u201d and says F1\u2019s backing and existing fanbase have helped build momentum.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s been so much support for F1 Academy from within the Formula One environment,\u201d she said. \u201cWe really are on the cusp of seeing big, impactful change in the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n Each F1 team nominates a driver, while the remaining five F1 Academy cars are sponsored<\/a> by Puma<\/a>, Tommy Hilfiger, American Express<\/a>, or Charlotte Tilbury<\/a>. The beauty brand\u2019s namesake, who also told<\/a> the Financial Times <\/em>she used to go-kart as a child, described F1 as \u201csomething otherworldly,\u201d and when presented with the partnership opportunity, said, \u201cI had to do it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe world still isn\u2019t where it should be in terms of supporting women,\u201d Tilbury told the publication. \u201cJust because things have been done a certain way forever, why do they have to be that way? Why can more women not be represented in sport?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Wolff agrees, noting that \u201cFormula 1 is a big business,\u201d and \u201cpartnerships are a huge part of motorsport because there\u2019s such a high financial barrier to entry.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Wolff, F1 Academy subsidizes \u201cnearly all\u201d of its drivers\u2019 budgets, meaning that of the \u20ac600,000 needed to complete a season, the driver must contribute<\/a> \u20ac100,000 for the 2024 season.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re giving more support to female drivers in the hope that they can progress up the ladder,\u201d Wolff says.<\/p>\n The future of F1\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The world is five or six years away from the next female F1 driver, according to Wolff\u2019s estimates.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a woman has a better chance of becoming a Formula One driver in this day and age because there\u2019s simply more opportunity and there\u2019s more support out there,\u201d she says. \u201cBut it\u2019s still a very, very competitive sport and to be a driver that makes it onto that grid of 20, regardless of your gender, is tough.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She pointed to other women\u2019s sports as other leagues \u201cbuild huge momentum\u201d and gain more interest around the world.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to make sure that the next generation, those racing in Formula One Academy, can learn from all my experiences, but also avoid all the mistakes that I made in my career.\u201d<\/p>\n F1\u2019s fan base is changing, too. In 2022, F1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali told Deadline<\/em><\/a> that 40% of F1\u2019s global fans were women, an increase of 8% from 2017.<\/p>\n Netflix\u2019s Drive to Survive<\/em> is driving more fans to F1, too. According to a Nielsen study<\/a> of the docuseries and F1 races, the number of American fans jumped from 44.9 million in 2019\u2013the year the series premiered\u2013to 49.2 million in 2022.<\/p>\n Drivers like Lando Norris have noticed the change, too. The McLaren racer told Today<\/em><\/a> in November that \u201cat times it feels like more girls than guys.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a huge amount of girls who are into it, and I think that\u2019s a good thing, not only for the sport as a whole to increase the variety of people that are watching, but also for girls to get into racing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But as the sport grows, Wolff doesn\u2019t think an all-female F1 league is necessary.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a sport where it comes down to talent, and I truly believe given the right support, given the right opportunity, you can see women excelling up the ladder towards Formula One without it being segregated.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n