F1 Academy has transformed the visibility of female junior drivers, but the first generation of graduates is beginning to expose a fundamental question: what happens when the two years are over?
Photo credits: F1 Academy Ltd
Maya Weug finishing the 2025 F1 Academy season as vice-champion should, under normal circumstances, have represented one of the clearest success stories the championship could have produced. She had spent two seasons at the front of a series specifically created to accelerate the careers of female drivers, had consistently demonstrated her competitiveness against a field that included several of the strongest young women in single-seaters, and had ultimately finished second only to Doriane Pin, a driver whose record over the past few years has established her as arguably one of the the benchmarks of the current generation. Yet when the 2026 season began, Weug found herself without a racing seat, with the opportunity that had been expected to take her forward having fallen away late in the process.
There is no suggestion that a driver who performs well is automatically entitled to another seat. Motorsport remains an intensely competitive and financially driven environment in which even successful drivers can lose seats, and teams at every level have always made decisions based on a combination of performance, budget, available opportunities and long-term strategic considerations.
The problem exposed by Weug’s situation is therefore not simply whether Ferrari should have continued supporting one particular driver, but whether the structure that F1 Academy has created is actually capable of delivering on the progression promise that sits at the heart of the championship’s identity.
That is a much broader question, and it is one that is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid as the first generation of F1 Academy graduates begins to move beyond the series. The fundamental issue is simple: what is supposed to happen after F1 Academy?
F1 Academy is now into its fourth season, which is still far too short a period from which to draw definitive conclusions about the long-term effectiveness of the project. Nevertheless, there is already enough data to begin examining what happens when drivers reach the end of their two-year eligibility, particularly because the championship was never intended to be a destination in itself. It was conceived as a development platform, positioned within the wider single-seater ladder and designed to help female drivers acquire the experience, visibility and support necessary to progress towards higher levels of professional motorsport.
The difficulty is that visibility and progression are not necessarily the same thing.
Photo credits: F1 Academy Ltd
Any serious discussion of F1 Academy has to begin by acknowledging what the championship has achieved, because its positive impact is neither theoretical nor insignificant. The series has given female drivers a level of visibility that would have been almost impossible to replicate through a conventional F4 championship, placing them directly on Formula 1 weekends, surrounding them with globally recognised manufacturers and commercial partners, and exposing a much wider audience to the existence and ambitions of young women attempting to build careers in motorsport.
More importantly, its influence can already be seen below the championship itself. The number of young women entering karting and national F4 series has massively increased, and the presence of female drivers in junior single-seater championships is becoming considerably less unusual than it was only a few years ago. That is perhaps F1 Academy’s most important achievement to date, because the long-term development of female motorsport cannot depend on finding a handful of exceptionally talented drivers; it requires a much larger and younger pool from which future professionals will emerge.
The decision to position F1 Academy at F4 level was therefore, in many respects, a logical response to the experience of W Series. Rather than attempting to create a female championship relatively high up the single-seater ladder, F1 Academy went back towards the entry point and attempted to increase participation where the foundation of the talent pyramid is built. If more girls are entering karting and F4 as a consequence, then the project is achieving something genuinely valuable.
The concern is that the championship may now be becoming more successful at creating the next generation of drivers than developing the current generation of drivers who have already reached a competitive level to attempt breaking the glass ceiling.
That distinction is important because participation alone is not necessarily progression, and visibility alone is not development. A driver can be given an extraordinary platform for two years without necessarily being given the resources or opportunities required to turn that platform into a sustainable professional career.
Part of the challenge is created by the very thing that makes the championship so commercially powerful: its brand. Calling the series F1 Academy immediately establishes an association with Formula 1, while the decision to place every race on the F1 support calendar reinforces that connection. Drivers are presented within an environment dominated by Formula 1 teams, Formula 1 branding and Formula 1 media, and the effect is particularly powerful for an audience that may not already understand the structure of the junior racing ladder.
It is one of the reasons F1 Academy has succeeded in reaching audiences that a conventional F4 championship would struggle to attract. The problem is that the naming can create an impression that the drivers are considerably closer to Formula 1 than they actually are, particularly when a new audience is unfamiliar with the significant number of steps separating an F4 car from F3, F2 and, ultimately, F1.
The front of the F1 Academy field is highly competitive, but the championship remains an F4-level entry category. That distinction becomes particularly important when drivers leave the series and move into Formula Regional, GB3 or another higher-level championship. Sporting progression can then appear to the outside observer as a loss of status, because the driver has moved from an F1 weekend into a championship that receives considerably less media coverage.
In reality, the opposite may be happening. A driver moving from F1 Academy into Formula Regional is moving into faster machinery, broader competition and a more advanced stage of the single-seater ladder, even though the public visibility surrounding her may decrease.
F1 Academy has therefore created an unusual paradox in which a driver can become more visible without necessarily becoming more advanced, and can subsequently advance while becoming less visible.
That is not necessarily a problem for the championship itself, but it becomes a problem if the visibility generated during those two years is presented as though it automatically creates long-term commercial value for the driver.
Exposure has become one of the most frequently cited benefits of F1 Academy, and there is no doubt that it is valuable. A driver racing on an F1 weekend has access to an audience, a media environment and a commercial platform that would otherwise be extraordinarily difficult to obtain, and that visibility can help build recognition among fans, potential partners and manufacturers.
The more difficult question is what happens to that exposure once the driver leaves.
Photo credits: Red Bull Content Pool
A significant proportion of the visibility surrounding an F1 Academy driver is attached to the championship itself, to its F1 team associations and to its commercial partners. The driver is therefore highly visible, but does not necessarily have control over the commercial value generated by that visibility. Her car is already carrying the branding of the associated F1 team and its partners, or the series’ own commercial partners, while the opportunities to build a personal commercial identity remain limited.
That becomes particularly problematic when the driver graduates. She moves into another championship, where the media exposure is lower and where the audience that followed her through F1 Academy may not necessarily follow her into the next category. The very moment at which she needs to demonstrate to potential sponsors that she is progressing professionally can therefore coincide with the moment at which the largest source of her visibility disappears.
This raises a question that deserves much more attention: if exposure cannot be converted into a sustainable career, what is its value? It is easy to point to social media followers and television coverage and describe that as success. But reality is that it’s proving difficult to secure sponsorship required to race in the next step through the exposure received – nor it resulted in a manufacturer relationship that continued beyond her F1 Academy years.
Ultimately, exposure only has lasting value if the driver can take it with her. The financial wall remains.
This is where the discussion has to be separated from the wider debate about women in motorsport, because the financial problem is not exclusive to female drivers.
The cost of progressing through the junior single-seater ladder is one of the defining problems of modern motorsport, and male drivers face the same reality. Moving from F4 into Formula Regional, then into FIA F3 and potentially F2, requires progressively larger budgets, and there is no guarantee that even a highly talented driver will be able to secure the funding required to continue. F1 Academy cannot be blamed for that problem.
But the reason the issue matters so much here is that F1 Academy explicitly exists to address a particular imbalance in motorsport, and therefore its success should ultimately be judged against what happens to its graduates. If a driver can spend two years in a subsidised and highly visible F4 programme but then reaches the end of those two years only to discover that the next step requires half a million euros that she cannot raise, then the barrier has not disappeared – it has simply been postponed.
The early graduate data provides some reason for concern. Of the 25 drivers that moved on from the first three-seasons, only three are currently continuing in single-seaters, all at Formula Regional-level in GB3 or Eurocup-3, while 11 have moved into GT, sportscar or endurance-related categories and 9 have stopped racing. One driver has changed career path into rallying and one headed to Kyojo Cup, the Japanese F4-level all-female championship.
Those numbers must be treated cautiously because the sample is still small and the championship is only three years old, but they nevertheless illustrate the scale of the transition taking place. There is nothing inherently negative about moving into GT or endurance racing; in fact, those categories can offer extremely strong professional careers. The more significant concern is the number of drivers who have currently disappeared from competitive racing altogether.
If 9 of the first 25 graduates are no longer racing full time, the obvious question is not whether every one of those careers should have continued, but whether the system did enough to give those drivers a realistic opportunity to continue professionally somewhere.
There is a temptation to identify F1 Academy’s two-year limit as part of the problem, but that would be too simplistic. The two-year rule is important because the championship has to remain a development category rather than becoming a permanent destination for drivers who have already established themselves. The younger drivers entering F4 need opportunities, and allowing experienced competitors to remain indefinitely would ultimately undermine the purpose of the series.
The real issue is what happens afterwards. A development series can reasonably say that a driver has reached the end of its own cycle, but it cannot assure that every driver leaving will have the financial resources for the next opportunity. For the strongest performers, however, there should be a structured mechanism that helps bridge the gap between leaving F1 Academy and entering the next stage.
In other words, the two-year limit does not need to disappear; the cliff edge at the end of those two years does.
Photo credits: F1 Academy Ltd
As we analysed before, one of the most important aspects of the feeder series is racing mileage. F1 Academy provides F4-level experience, but following its incorporation on the F1 calendar, it has suffered from reduced driving time compared to national F4 championships. Collective test days have also been reduced from the first season.
A driver who intends to progress into Formula Regional-level, in order to return to a mixed-gender series where the frontrunners are often contesting multiple campaigns plus winter championships, would benefit enormously from additional mileage in a parallel campaign. A dual program, carefully designed around the driver’s experience and workload, could prove crucial.
F1 Academy has recognized the matter, with drivers now encouraged to do so. However the issue of funding remains: only drivers that can afford that will be able to race a dual programme, effectively reducing the inherent benefit of the championship’s core mission of providing a more cost-effective solution to regional F4 championships.
The progression prizes offered by F1 Academy provide another useful illustration of how the championship’s priorities have evolved. In its first season, the champion received a funded route into Formula Regional, while the rest of the top-three drivers also received access to a fourth car in FREC.
The following season, the principal reward was reduced to a GB3 seat for the champion, while the third season offered no equivalent funded racing season to any of the top drivers.
The champion eventually had the opportunity to test a Mercedes Formula 1 car from 2021, in a private test day organized by Mercedes.
An F1 test is undoubtedly an extraordinary opportunity and should not be dismissed as meaningless. It provides experience, prestige and enormous promotional value, and for a young driver it can be an unforgettable part of her career. But it does not answer the fundamental question facing a driver at the end of F1 Academy: where will she race next year?
For a development championship, a seat in the next category is arguably more directly connected to its core mission than an isolated experience. The distinction matters because one reward produces an impressive headline, while the other produces another season of professional development.
Photo credits: Red Bull Content Pool
The most difficult issue, however, concerns the relationship between F1 Academy and the F1 teams themselves. The involvement of the F1 teams is one of the championship’s greatest strengths. Their participation gives the series credibility, visibility and commercial power, while the presence of recognisable F1 brands creates an association that would otherwise be impossible to reproduce.
But it also creates a responsibility for the teams. The stated objective of connecting female drivers with F1 teams is meaningful only if those relationships have consequences beyond the F1 Academy participation.
The early evidence suggests that this continuity has been extremely limited. Only two drivers, Carrie Schreiner and Doriane Pin, remain formally connected to the F1 teams or manufacturers with which they were associated with, and that relationship exists only through an ambassadorial or driver development role rather than continued racing programmes. Léna Bühler was the only driver to retain support from the F1 team in her next step up to FRECA, before the relationship ended mid-season, ending her campaign.
This does not mean that every F1 team should be expected to keep every F1 Academy driver indefinitely. That would be unrealistic and not what is expected from a development programme.
The more reasonable expectation however is that a driver who has performed at a high level should be given a genuine opportunity to demonstrate what she can do at the next stage before the relationship is ended.
A driver can be dropped because she has not performed sufficiently well; that is part of sport. A driver can also be dropped because the team no longer sees her as part of its long-term plans. What becomes more difficult to justify is a system in which the F1 team signs up to F1 Academy, provides branding and social media exposure within F1 Academy but very little meaningful assistance in finding the next racing opportunity once the two-year programme ends.
Photo credits: F1 Academy Ltd
This is perhaps the central contradiction of F1 Academy’s relationship with the F1 teams. Supporting the championship is extremely visible. It creates commercial opportunities, media coverage and a public association with the development of women in motorsport. Supporting a driver beyond the championship however is potentially less visible and requires an investment.
distinction therefore matters: there is a difference between using the F1 Academy programme to demonstrate a commitment to women in motorsport and using that programme to support women to reach a professional racing career. The first benefits the brand, the second benefits the drivers. Ideally, the two should be inseparable.
Maya Weug’s case is particularly relevant because her relationship with Ferrari predated F1 Academy. She had already competed in F4 and FRECA, meaning that her move into F1 Academy was not the beginning of her single-seater career; in sporting terms, it represented a move into a lower category, yet it gave Ferrari the chance to battle at the front of a very visible series. That makes the question of what happened afterwards even more important.
The issue is not whether Ferrari should have guaranteed her a Formula 3 seat or another top-level programme, but rather whether the relationship that existed before F1 Academy was capable of surviving when the budget for the next step was too big for the driver to fund.
When a late opportunity disappeared before the season for circumstances outside of her control, a development programme should ideally have contingency mechanisms. Otherwise, the driver can go from being one of the most visible young women in the world of motorsport to being left without a professional seat within a matter of months.
Maya’s trajectory also illustrates a wider structural contradiction within the first few years of the championship, which is however getting less frequent as the series targets increasingly younger prospects. F1 Academy is positioned as part of the entry level single-seater ladder, yet some of its drivers arrived – pushed by the teams and manufacturers they were associated with – after already competing at higher level. For those drivers, even while being a considerable step forwards in terms of media exposure, it will be inherently tougher to step up if they couldn’t at the same time put together a dual campaign, even at a higher level like FREC, simultaneously.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that trade-off if everyone involved understands it and if there is a clear plan for the subsequent return to the higher category. However the difficulty arises when the visibility gained during those two years is not translated into further sponsorship opportunities away from F1 Academy.
Photo credits: F1 Academy Ltd
The championship has succeeded in attracting a level of corporate interest that is still unusual for junior single-seater racing, with major international companies becoming involved as series partners, supporting individual cars and helping subsidise the cost of competing. For the drivers themselves, this has a significant practical value, as an F1 Academy season remains remarkably cheaper compared to most national mixed-gender F4 series. The problem is that much of that support is inherently short-term.
Even if the contribution made by the championship, its partners and the participating F1 teams brings the cost down, drivers are still required to contribute around €100,000 for a season, so personal sponsors are also an important topic to address. The commercial structure surrounding the car’s branding can therefore limit her ability to use the championship as a platform from which to build her own long-term sponsorship portfolio that could remain with her after she leaves F1 Academy.
In other words, the championship can make it significantly cheaper for a driver to race for two seasons, while not necessarily making it easier for that same driver to finance a step up. That distinction is important because sponsorship in motorsport is rarely built overnight.
And the scale of the commercial interest surrounding F1 Academy makes the question even more relevant. Formula 1 teams are only part of the equation, as the championship itself has attracted major international brands from sectors that traditionally have very little presence in junior single-seater racing. Companies such as Charlotte Tilbury, American Express, Tommy Hilfiger, PUMA, TAG Heuer, Wella, Gatorade, LEGO and Sephora have all been involved through sponsorship of individual cars. Other major companies, including TeamViewer, Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered and Unilever, have also supported wild-card entries for individual events.
Photo credits: F1 Academy Ltd
The significance of that list is the scale of some of those businesses. It is obviously unusual to see such global companies committing commercial resources to a junior single-seater category, particularly one positioned at F4 level. F1 Academy has therefore demonstrated its marketing abilities and that there is clearly a commercial appetite for women in motorsport when the platform exists.
That should be celebrated, but it should also prompt a question about whether that support can become something more ambitious. If those kinds of companies are prepared to invest in the championship, then there might be an opportunity to build a mechanism through which a portion of that commercial ecosystem contributes directly to a long-term progression fund for the best alumni.
The current model largely solves the immediate problem of getting a driver onto the grid. What is still missing is a similarly structured solution for helping the strongest drivers get off the grid and into their next professional programme.
Rather than expecting every series’ partner to sponsor their individual drivers indefinitely, a portion of marketing income could be allocated to a fund supporting the most successful graduates, helping subsidize a move that could take different forms depending on the driver and her career direction.
Such a mechanism would also be commercially valuable for the sponsors themselves, as a brand that supports a driver through F1 Academy could then be associated with the best talents progressing, creating a much deeper relationship with the audience than simply sponsoring a car for one season. It creates a narrative and allows the sponsor to benefit from the progression for a number of years rather than simply from the visibility of the championship itself.
So far, however, there is no pattern of series partners continuing to support individual drivers after graduation. That does not mean that every partner should be expected to adopt a driver – it does, however, highlight the difference between an investment in the F1-brand and an investment in the athletes.
F1 Academy has already demonstrated that the money exists. The championship has attracted brands that could never have been realistically expected to appear on a conventional national F4 grid, and it has created a commercial environment in which global companies are prepared to invest in women’s junior motorsport. The question is therefore increasingly less about whether sufficient commercial resources are available and more about how those resources are distributed and what they are expected to achieve.
That does not mean the commercial model has failed, but it does suggest that the concept of exposure needs to be analysed much more carefully. If the championship’s commercial success does not translate into new opportunities for its strongest graduates, then the relationship between the two needs to be reconsidered.
Photo credits: F1 Academy Ltd
The early graduate group includes drivers who have continued into formulas, but a much larger proportion have moved into GT, sportscar and endurance racing, while a significant number are currently no longer competing. The professional motorsport industry is much larger than Formula 1, and GT and endurance racing offer some of the most prestigious and sustainable careers available to professional drivers. A driver who moves from F1 Academy into LMP3, GT or another high-level category may be making an extremely intelligent career decision rather than abandoning the pathway.
If a driver leaves single-seaters because she has identified a better professional opportunity elsewhere, then F1 Academy has still contributed to a successful racing career. However, if she leaves because she cannot afford to continue financing another programme, the situation is very different.
That is why not only the championship, but the wider audience itself needs to broaden its definition of success – and that also requires a cultural shift.
The name, the calendar and the involvement of the F1 teams naturally make Formula 1 the ultimate aspiration, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to see a female driver reach the F1 grid. It would be an extraordinary achievement and a powerful symbol for the sport.
But inspiring young women to find their own path in professional motorsport means acknowledging that there is a much broader motorsport industry available to these drivers, encompassing GT racing, endurance, hypercars, Formula E and other programmes that can ultimately lead to major events and professional factory contracts.
Fans should not necessarily be asking how many of the F1 Academy drivers eventually reach Formula 1, but how many of the drivers become professional racing drivers. That is arguably a much more meaningful measure of whether the series will work.
Doriane Pin’s return to prototype endurance racing is particularly relevant because it demonstrates that leaving the single-seater ladder does not necessarily represent a loss of career momentum.
For a driver who already had experience in endurance racing, an LMP2 programme can reignite a genuinely high-level professional opportunity, with a potential route towards the highest levels of the sport. Léna Bühler has also collected a LMP3 opportunity and proved to be extremely competitive.
Photo credits: FocusPackMedia – Marcel Wulf
The same principle applies to the F1 Academy graduates now competing in GT categories around the world. The focus should be on whether they have been given the tools to make the most of their time in F1 Academy and, ultimately, make it easier to secure new backing for the next step in their careers, rather than simply having to rely on their own budget.
There are major opportunities in GT and endurance; a potential F1 Academy-linked GT or endurance programme could also provide a bridge, whether through partnerships with existing teams or through a dedicated all-female programme to create a new route.
A professional female GT or endurance team would be significantly less expensive for drivers who might not have the long-term backing to continue in single seaters, while still providing a realistic pathway beyond the two-year F1 Academy cycle, giving some drivers the opportunity to develop within a professional racing environment.
Ultimately, the responsibility does not belong only to the F1 teams; it would be convenient to place all responsibility on Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, Alpine, and all the other teams involved in F1 Academy, although arguably more can be done – for example by mandating them to fund or subsidize their driver in a dual campaign in a regional F4 series in parallel to their F1 Academy commitments.
F1 Academy however itself has demonstrated that it can attract significant commercial investment, and therefore has an opportunity to use that system in a more strategically focused way.
The objective is clearly not to fund every driver indefinitely – it would be to prevent the strongest drivers from reaching the end of their F1 Academy stint and simply falling into the same financial problem that existed before the championship itself.
Photo credits: Iron Dames
There is also a communication aspect to consider. F1 Academy has succeeded in bringing a new audience to junior racing, embracing a younger generation of fans also through a social media strategy specifically designed to engage them, and that is undoubtedly a positive development that can generate new interest in the sport.
However, with that increased reach also comes a responsibility to communicate the championship’s position within the single-seater ladder more transparently, while encouraging its audience to continue following the drivers once they move on, whether that is into higher levels of single-seater racing or into GT and endurance categories. The series has started to do this to some extent, with social media posts highlighting the achievements of some graduates, but there is certainly scope to develop this further.
The F1 weekend remains an extraordinarily powerful platform, and very few junior championships can offer comparable exposure, but the series and its partners could also do more to engage with motorsport media and broaden the coverage beyond the general-audience, lifestyle and fashion outlets that the series has mainly targeted and engaged with for its communication. While that wider media exposure is valuable, outlets less familiar with the structure of motorsport can sometimes present the drivers in a way that reinforces the perception of them as ‘almost female F1 drivers’. That can ultimately contribute to the same misconception the series should be trying to correct.
The temptation for any modern sports series is to measure success through numbers that are easy to communicate: social media reach, commercial partnerships and follower growth. Those numbers matter, particularly when sponsorship investments need tangible data in a short time.
But a developing female talent in the broader sense also needs another set of measurements.
How many graduates remain active in professional racing? How many progress and not only those who already had funding to do so in the first place? How many continue receiving assistance from the F1 teams that originally selected them? How many secure new sponsorship as a direct or indirect result of the exposure they received?
Photo credits: F1 Academy Ltd
Those figures would provide a much clearer indication of whether the championship is achieving its stated purpose. At present, the available three-season sample is too small to provide a definitive verdict, but it is enough to make these questions legitimate.
Data clearly show that F1 Academy remains one of the most important driving forces behind the surge of female participation in karting and single seaters, and saying it has failed its mission would be both unfair and counterproductive. There is a substantial positive trend over the last eight years, including the work started by W Series – and that should not be dismissed because breaking down barriers remains a difficult task.
But visibility and exposure were always supposed to be the beginning of the process, not its conclusion.
A championship can create an extraordinary platform, surround its drivers with major brands and give them exposure to millions of people, but if the strongest of those drivers subsequently find themselves unable to secure another professional opportunity, then the system simply has not yet completed its job.
The first phase was about getting women into the spotlight, the next phase has to be about making that spotlight useful.