F1 Academy is just into its second year and the all-female single-seater series has transformed itself since 2023, but what’s next? Motorsport Week spoke exclusively to F1 Academy Competition Manager Delphine Biscaye to find out.
In 2024, all 10 Formula 1 teams boarded the F1 Academy project, nominating a chosen female driver to represent them.
FIA Super License points will now be granted to the top five drivers in the championship and all seven rounds of the 2024 calendar feature on the F1 schedule.
Moving forward, Biscay wants to expand the grid beyond 15 cars and decrease the age limit for its drivers.
“I think to make [the series] sustainable, the end goal is to increase the number of cars to show we’re stronger,” Biscaye explained to Motorsport Week.
“20 cars would make sense, probably, in the next three, four, five years.
“Also, I would like to be able to lower the maximum age, because we are an F4 level series.
“The goal for us is to give [our drivers] a boost, to give those drivers a chance and an opportunity to get visibility, extra training, a proper boost in their career.
“But then it’s to go somewhere else, it’s to progress.
“We don’t want to keep them at F4.”
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Biscaye drew a comparison to the driving age range seen in the contemporary Formula 4 series, which remains a male-dominated space.
“If you compare to men, they start F4 private testing at 14, they do their first season in F4 at 15, and at 16, most of them are already going to Formula Regional,” Biscaye said.
“And then 17, they will go to F3, and 18 to F2, and then that would be the ideal path of a driver.”
The current age range in F1 Academy is 16 to 25 which Biscaye explained was decided out of necessity. “[Our current] drivers did not get the chance to progress earlier, and no one gave them the chance to be ready earlier, and they need track time, they need that boost, they need that performance training, and that driving that those junior teams can give them.
“So that’s very important. But in the future, if we work well, we should be able to scout the girls a lot earlier, so then their age starts matching the guys.
“If we do our job well, and if the teams here do the job well, and start working with younger girls, that means that they should arrive with us right at 16 and ready, and at the same level that we have now when they are 18 or 19.
“We’ve got a couple that are 16 and 17, but it’s just a couple. We should have all of them between probably 16 and 19 max.
“So I think lowering the age is an end goal, because that will mean that we’ve done a good job by finding them earlier, and that everyone is training them earlier, and is giving them the same chance at the same age as the men.
“I don’t say we’ll go to 20, but from 25 already, if we can start to go down to 22 [for maximum age], I think it would be a good step.
“It means that we need more and more female drivers.
“If we manage to get more young drivers, to train them earlier, then all of this will be achievable. That’s what would mean success for me. And that’s also how you will get [a female driver] in F1.”
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