With success at home and abroad, Annabel Kennedy is part of a growing number of Australian women and girls making their mark in motorsport.
The Queenslander is enjoying a breakout year in 2025, having won one of Australia’s most prestigious karting crowns, represented her country in Europe, and made her debut in the F4 Indian Championship.
The 16-year-old is now aiming to follow in the footsteps of other young Australian females who are lighting up race tracks around the world.
More girls are go-karting and have peers ‘spinning off the track’
Joanne Ciconte and Aiva Anagnostiadis are already flying the flag this season in the F1 Academy series, with both achieving multiple points-scoring finishes.
Meanwhile, Imogen Radburn also participated in F1 Academy’s maiden Rookie Test in September.Â
Kennedy is another talented teen who is impressing on the race track.
She won the prestigious Australian Pink Plate in the KA3 Senior Light class in January in Albury-Wodonga, just like Ciconte two years earlier.
Kennedy then followed in Anagnostiadis’s footsteps and joined the Indian championship, which yielded a historic result.
The Queenslander became the first female to stand on the podium in the series, placing third in the first of four races during the second round of the championship in August.
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The achievement continued a terrific 2025 for Kennedy, which also included representing Australia in the FIA Karting Academy Trophy in Europe.
Now she is setting her sights on being another Australian involved in the F1 Academy in the coming years.
“My main goal is to try and get into F1 Academy,” she told ABC Sport.
“That’s definitely what I’m aiming for in the next couple of years.”
Kennedy was also part of the most recent round of the Indian series, placing eighth, 11th, and a pair of 12ths across the four races.
While results are important, the experience and learning she is getting from being part of the international series is paying dividend for the teenager’s development in and out of the driver’s seat.
“Going into it, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect,” she said.
“But when I got there, all the people that were helping out, the mechanics, they were so nice, and that set me up to be like, ‘OK, I can get more comfortable here now.'”
Kennedy has been racing karts for several years, but said it took a while to find her groove out on track.
But when she found confidence behind the wheel two years ago, she has not looked back.
“When I first started actually racing, I wasn’t very quick, but I think a lot of people can say the same,” she said.
“About two years ago, it sort of just clicked in my head, and I was not really afraid anymore.
“That’s when I started to get results and started to be much quicker.”
Australia is enjoying a boon period in female motorsport, with women and girls now making up 15 per cent of all motorsport licence holders across the country, according to Motorsport Australia.
Kennedy said an uptick in female participation was showing that motorsport was for everyone.
“I think it’s definitely starting to break away from that idea that it’s only for boys, because it’s not only for boys,” she said.
“Physically, females have to put in more effort, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be as good.
“You work harder, and it makes you want to do better. At the end of the day, you put a helmet on and everybody looks the same.”
The fourth round, of five, in this year’s F4 Indian Championship will be held in November.