Susie Wolff, the managing director of Formula One’s new all-female series, the F1 Academy, believes it could take as long as a decade for the championship’s aims to be realised and return a woman to the F1 grid. Wolff also revealed that an extensive and radical grassroots expansion plan backed by F1 and to be trialled in the UK is seen as essential to improving female participation in motor sport.
The F1 Academy has been welcomed as a positive step toward improving diversity but, in terms of propelling a woman on to the grid, Wolff cautioned against any presumption that it would occur in the immediate future.
Download the Guardian app from the iOS App Store on iPhone or the Google Play store on Android by searching for 'The Guardian'.
If you already have the Guardian app, make sure you’re on the most recent version.
In the Guardian app, tap the Profile settings button at the top right, then select Notifications.
Turn on sport notifications.
“I believe it’s eight to 10 years away from happening,” she told the Guardian. “That’s not just because we are lacking the female talent pool and lacking those who progress through the sport but also because of the realisation that getting to F1 is incredibly tough. It’s tough for all of the male drivers.
“There are only 20 spots on the grid and that’s why it is going to take time. I do believe in eight to 10 years, when we have had a continued growth of the talent pool and more females entering the sport, it will be much more realistic.”
F1 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.
The sport’s owners are attempting to address this directly by creating and backing the F1 Academy. The series will host its opening race this weekend at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, with 15 drivers competing for five experienced teams who already race in F3 and F2. It was the prospect of the Academy making a difference, despite the scale of how long it might take to do so, that inspired Wolff to take on the role leading the new championship.
“A woman in F1 is not going to happen overnight, I need to manage expectations,” she said. “But I think this foundation and everything we can achieve with the F1 Academy in the medium to long term can be the real driver for change in the sport and that was what compelled me to say: ‘Count me in.’”
Wolff has considerable experience in motor racing and has long been committed to improving diversity within the sport. In 2014 and 2015 she drove in F1 practice sessions as the Williams development driver, including setting a time at the Hockenheimring only two-tenths off that of Williams’s Felipe Massa.
She also competed in Formula Renault, British F3 and the German Touring Car championship.
On her retirement from racing she co-founded the Dare To Be Different campaign, aimed at encouraging more women into motorsport and which has since become part of the FIA’s Girls On Track initiative. Most recently, between 2018 and 2022 she was team principal of the Venturi Formula E team.
Having spent her life involved in the sport Wolff was unequivocal that there would be no quick fix in encouraging more women into racing. “It will be a very slow process and the numbers are not shifting with any great significance,” she said. “The first issue is the social perception and the lack of role models. If you are a young woman and you love F1, you switch on the TV and unfortunately a lot of the camera-facing roles are still dominated by men.
“That in turn leads to the fundamental problem that there are not enough women entering this sport. The talent pool is too small, so the best are not rising to the top. I very much have a vision that we need to get to the root of the problem.”
Wolff cites the statistics that she and F1 want to change, that 45,000 girls go to indoor karting tracks a year but only 4.7% of them go on to post a lap time or enter a race. The F1 Academy, with the backing of F1’s owners, intends to address this head on, setting up a programme aimed at the grassroots to both encourage girls to race and to create a definitive pathway enabling them to progress.
“We will have initiatives where we increase the participation from those who have already visited a kart track into racing,” she said. “Then with our global reach and the power of having the F1 name we really hope to inspire that next generation to get to an indoor karting track.
“We will create a ladder system from starting karting so the most talented will progress to karting championships, then to an arrive and drive series and then be supported in their progression up into national or club level racing. We want a system which allows from the very beginning a clear pathway, with F1 Academy being the destination.”
The programme will be funded by F1 and is expected to be supported by two UK motorsport partners. Wolff said that once the system has shown proof of concept successfully in the UK the intention was to expand it globally.
Wolff is married to the Mercedes principal, Toto Wolff, and insisted the Academy’s goals were backed by his F1 counterparts after meeting them at the Bahrain GP earlier this year, not least because they understand how it could further boost the sport’s burgeoning popularity.
“The decision makers who have the power in the F1 paddock understand how important this is,” she said. “I met with a lot of support from within the paddock, a willingness to be involved but everyone had the same message: ‘Let’s do this but we have to get it right’. That means it’s not a series where we can just put a plaster on the root of the problem.”
Wolff’s blunt assessment of the timescale involved stands in stark contrast to the optimism that pervaded the sport when the all-female W Series was established in 2019, when the perception grew that one of its drivers would make it to F1 sooner rather than later.
However, Jamie Chadwick, who comfortably won all three W Series championships, still struggled to find a drive in F3 and the series itself was forced to cancel the final three races of the 2022 season because of a financial shortfall. The Guardian understands it will not host a championship this year and is undertaking fundraising but its future remains in doubt and the W Series management has declined to comment on its current position.
Wolff maintained that the F1 Academy, alongside its grassroots commitments, would ensure there would be guaranteed opportunities for the winner of the championship.
“We already have a prize fund for the winner which means it will be a financial contribution,” she said. “We will make sure she is testing with the right teams and is given a seat in a team 100%. It is not even questionable that the winner won’t progress in the sport. There is such a passion from [the F1 CEO] Stefano Domenicali and the F1 group to see this be successful. It’s not just a box-ticking exercise which is what I have had in many other conversations on diversity.”
