On this day 50 years ago, a woman last drove a Formula 1 race. Initiatives like More Than Equal and the F1 Academy are investing huge efforts to change that, but the road to the top remains arduous.
It has been exactly half a century since a female driver last sat behind the wheel of a car on the starting grid of a Formula 1 World Championship race. The speed at which the sport evolves has failed to change this stubborn statistic, and optimism at the top of the competition is cautious. Stefano Domenicali, CEO of Formula 1, stated back in 2024 that he does not see it happening within the next five years.
Yet hope flickers in the junior categories, where more and more girls dream of breaking into the "greatest circus on Earth." One of them is 17-year-old Swede Alexia Danielsson, who currently competes in the Central European F4 series and is one of the few selected drivers supported by the More Than Equal initiative. Her path is a family tradition: her father, Alx Danielsson, won the World Series by Renault in 2006. Alexia began her journey at age six in karting, and at 13 she moved to cars. She first drove a Formula 1 car, a modified 2007 Williams, at just 14 years old.
"I don't think anything is impossible; you just have to really go for it. How long? I have no idea," Danielsson told Reuters. Her reality, however, is harsh. She currently sits 26th in a field of 49 drivers, and among her competitors is 15-year-old Ella Hakkinen, daughter of retired two-time F1 champion Mika Hakkinen, who enjoys support from McLaren's junior program.
A key player in the effort to finally break male dominance is the non-profit global initiative More Than Equal. It was founded in 2022 by former F1 driver David Coulthard and Czech billionaire Karel Komarek with the ambitious goal of identifying, developing, and supporting the first female Formula 1 World Champion.
The program does not focus on creating a racing team or series but solely on building drivers. "We are not a racing team; we don't have shiny cars with shiny stickers; we are not a racing series. What we do is build drivers, and that's how we fit into the ecosystem," explained Tom Stanton, CEO of More Than Equal. Interest in the program is enormous: the first group of six drivers was selected from 1,000 applications, and the second group of eight was chosen from as many as 1,500 candidates.
One of the issues Stanton highlights is the visibility of female drivers in the lower categories. To change this, More Than Equal has developed FutureLap, a platform that analyzes data from karting and junior competitions to identify talent regardless of gender. In collaboration with the University of Portsmouth, a study on female ergonomics in Formula 4 has also been launched.
"What we see is that more and more female drivers are coming. And it's not that they weren't there. It's just that we couldn't see them because results aren't gender-tagged. Andrea in the UK is a female name. In Italy, it's a male name," Stanton explained, pointing out that many girls may have already been fast but went unnoticed due to administrative blind spots.
Momentum is also being provided by the F1 Academy, an all-female series under the direct patronage of Formula 1, which replaced the previous W Series and with which More Than Equal has a partnership. Its races are held during selected Grand Prix weekends. Britain's Abbi Pulling won the F1 Academy in 2024, also won a race in British F4, and this year triumphed in the GB3 championship. Last year's champion, Frenchwoman Doriane Pin, has already had the opportunity to test a Mercedes F1 car.
Stanton admits the path to the goal is extremely difficult but believes that even the first smaller steps will have enormous significance. "The ambition is still to see the first female driver win the F1 championship, but I think we also need to acknowledge that there are a series of firsts along the way that are equally important," he said.
I'm not saying that the first female F1 champion wouldn't be an absolutely meteoric event, but actually the first woman to sit on the grid in some ways will be equally important because it legitimizes the idea that this can be a mixed sport.
Stanton is aware that achieving this goal will require cooperation from the entire motorsport community. "I think what we're doing is unique. I also think it's going to take a village to raise this child. It will be a combination of us and teams and other support systems, and we're all going to have to work in harmony for it to succeed," he concluded.
While hope is placed in the generations to come, the fact that 50 years have passed without a single woman on the starting grid of an F1 race serves as a powerful reminder of how steep and uncertain the road to the top of this sport remains for women.
