Susie Wolff turns the Formula 1 boys club on its head with an all-female racing empire

The high-speed racing league has been described as “a boys’ club,” said Susie Wolff, former driver and current managing director of the F1 Academy Assets in a recent interview.

“I’ll be honest, there are still days when I feel like I’m in a boys’ club here,” she said.

Voted “most valuable sports empire in the world” by Forbesthe global racing league and its parent company Liberty Media are valued at a staggering $16 billion. Its 20 drivers race at speeds of around 200 miles per hour from the outskirts of Milan to Abu Dhabi’s lavish Yas Island and the picturesque backdrops of Monaco. The 10 teams are handsomely rewarded for their victory laps – Red Bull reportedly earned $140 million from the 2023 championship – and are increasingly in the media spotlight with the viral Netflix series. Formula 1: Driving for survival Documentary series.

One small problem: there are no female drivers in the league.

Of the more than 700 drivers who have competed in the 74-year history of Formula 1, only five have been women. No female driver has taken part in a race since 1992 and there has only been one female team boss. The board of Liberty Media is also dominated by white men – with the exception of one woman.

It’s no surprise, then, that the sport – now popular with billionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Citadel founder Ken Griffin and Tesla CEO Elon Musk – has been dubbed a “boys’ club.”

There has never been an explicit rule barring women from participating, and a study published by 13-time Grand Prix winner David Coulthard’s non-profit organization More than Equal found that there are no physical or psychological barriers that could prevent women from participating in Formula One.

Some drivers are “very vocal in their calls” to bring more women onto the racetrack, Wolff stresses, pointing to seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton as “an outstanding driver who is never afraid to stand up and support those who perhaps don’t have the same opportunities and who, let’s say, you don’t see that often in the motorsport paddock.”

Hamilton, the only black driver in the series, is an outspoken advocate of diversity on the track. The Mercedes driver told the Spanish newspaper AS in 2021 that “we live in a time where this sport has become a club for billionaires.”

Hamilton, 36, whose inclusion in McLaren’s Young Driver Programme at the age of 13 secured funding for his early career, explained that it would have been difficult to break into the sport in today’s world.

“If I went back to where I started, growing up in a normal working-class family, there’s no way I could be here,” he said. “All the guys you’re fighting just have so much more money.”

With so many financial hurdles, it’s a huge challenge for the sport to create a diverse field of competitors. But Wolff, head of Formula 1’s new women-only racing category, has a plan to change that.

What is the F1 Academy?

Wolff tells Fortune she is optimistic about the future of motorsports for young women, stressing: “Slowly but surely it is changing; the world has changed.”

But it wasn’t always like this.

Wolff, 41, began her racing career at the age of eight driving go-karts. After decades of racing on single-seater circuits, she broke into the F1 scene in 2012 after joining the Williams team as a development driver. She made history at the 2014 British Grand Prix at Silverstone when she became the first woman to take part in an F1 race weekend in 22 years.

But there were moments throughout her career when she was frustrated because she was “constantly asked what it was like to be a woman in motorsport.”

“I felt like I was saying the same thing over and over again,” she said. “Diversity was a topic that people liked to talk about, but very few actually did anything about it.”

Since Wolff, no woman has taken part in an F1 race weekend.

“There was so much fuss about my gender because I was always the only one,” she said Assets“But actually, in motorsport, it doesn’t matter what gender you are, because you wear a helmet.”

In 2023, Formula 1 announced that Wolff would become managing director of the F1 Academy, an all-female driver category to develop young talent. The junior series is aimed at female drivers aged 16 to 25 and aims to train the mental and physical performance of the athletes and ensure more time on the racetrack. From Saudi Arabia to Miami to Singapore, the single-seater category hosts race weekends at seven events in parallel with the F1 World Championship.

“When the Formula One Academy opportunity arose and I realised 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 actually did something,” she said.

But the F1 Academy is not the first all-women racing series of its kind. The W Series debuted in 2019 with a $1.5 million purse. Its goals to find the next female F1 driver were thwarted due to funding issues, forcing organizers to prematurely cancel its third season in 2022. Wolff says she is determined to learn from those who “have tried and failed in the past,” and says F1’s support and existing fanbase have helped build momentum.

“There has been so much support for the F1 Academy from the Formula 1 community,” she said. “We are really on the verge of seeing big, impactful changes in the sport.”

Each F1 team nominates a driver, while the remaining five cars of the F1 Academy are sponsored by Puma, Tommy Hilfiger, American Express or Charlotte Tilbury. The namesake of the beauty brand, who is also the Financial Times As a child, she drove go-karts, described Formula 1 as “something otherworldly” and when the opportunity for a partnership came her way, she said: “I had to do it.”

“The world is not where it needs to be in terms of women’s empowerment,” Tilbury told the magazine. “Just because things have always been done a certain way, why do they have to be that way? Why can’t there be more women in sport?”

Wolff agrees, pointing out that “Formula 1 is big business” and that “partnerships are a big part of motorsport because the financial barriers to entry are very high.”

According to Wolff, the F1 Academy subsidizes “almost the entire” budget of its drivers. This means that of the 600,000 euros needed to complete a season, each driver must contribute 100,000 euros for the 2024 season.

“We are supporting female drivers more in the hope that they can move up the career ladder,” says Wolff.

The future of F1

According to Wolff’s estimates, it will be another five to six years before the next female F1 driver will be seen in the world.

“I think a woman has a better chance of becoming a Formula 1 driver these days because there are just more opportunities and more support,” she says. “But it’s still a very, very competitive sport and to make it into that field of 20 as a female driver is tough, regardless of gender.”

She pointed to other women’s sports as other leagues are “gaining tremendous momentum” and attracting more interest around the world.

“I want to make sure that the next generation driving in the Formula 1 Academy can learn from all my experiences, but also avoid all the mistakes I made in my career.”

The Formula 1 fan base is also changing. In 2022, Formula 1 boss Stefano Domenicali said Deadline that 40% of global F1 fans are women, an increase of 8% from 2017.

Netflix Drive to survive is also attracting more fans to F1. According to a Nielsen study on the docuseries and F1 races, the number of American fans rose from 44.9 million in 2019 – the year the series premiered – to 49.2 million in 2022.

Drivers like Lando Norris have also noticed the change. The McLaren racing driver said Today in November that “sometimes it seems as if there are more girls than boys.”

“There are a lot of girls who are interested in it and I think that’s a good thing, not only for the sport as a whole because it increases the diversity of the audience, but also because it gets girls excited about racing,” he said.

But as the sport grows, Wolff does not believe a women-only F1 league is necessary.

“It’s a sport where talent counts and I firmly believe that with the right support and opportunities, women can climb the career ladder to Formula 1 without facing discrimination.”