It’s night, but the dazzling lights sparkling above Qatar's Formula 1 racetrack shine down on Abbi Pulling as she completes her final lap to secure victory in the 2024 F1 Academy Drivers' Championship.
Because of her high point total, the British racing driver only needs to place second in this race to win the championship.
Pulling has been racing for what seems like her whole life. She’s already made waves in the public eye by accomplishing great feats by the age of 21, including becoming one of the first women to drive an F1 car in Saudi Arabia and the first woman to win a British F4 race.
On her last lap, Pulling can smell the win coming. It will taste all the sweeter after experiencing losses and financial setbacks in 2021, when she had a promising British F4 season but had to drop out when her father, who was fully backing her season, ran out of cash.
Pulling catches glimpses of her team beyond the barrier, cheering her on. The urge to hug them is strong, but finishing the race is her mission.
Donning a gold helmet and her usual black-and-pink racing suit, she crosses the finish line. Camera flashes light up the dark sky as she exits her car and climbs atop it, trying to soak everything in with her arms by her side.
That was the night Pulling reached the mountaintop of the F1 Academy and won the Drivers' Championship.
Upon reflection, Pulling wishes she planned a “better celebration” for the cameras, but she was too swept up in the moment to focus on what it would look like to others.
“I really took in that (last) lap and really appreciated what I’ve had to overcome, what it’s taken to get there and where I’m going to be racing next year,” she tells TODAY.com when thinking about that night. “That’s the first thing I thought about.”
After her win, Pulling received a fully-funded seat in GB3 Championship, the U.K.’s co-ed series. It's a step toward making a dream she's had since she was eight years old come true: having a full-time seat in Formula 1.
There are 20 seats on the F1 grid. Despite there being no gender limitations, it's been nearly 50 years since a woman held one of those seats.
The last woman on the F1 grid was Italian driver Lella Lombardi, who raced from 1974-1976. She was the second woman to race in a F1 Grand Prix and the only one to ever score points, after Italian driver Maria Teresa de Filippis who raced in F1 in 1958.
As the F1 Academy kicks off its third season, an untitled Netflix docuseries produced by Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon's production company, is set to debut this summer. But in order to see where the sport is headed, it's important to reverse into the past and understand how and why the F1 Academy is here today.
A step in the right direction with the F1 Academy
The F1 Academy was created in 2023 to get more women involved in all levels of motorsport. Under the leadership of its managing director, former racer Susie Wolff, the racing series aims to train female drivers to further their motorsport careers with hopes of getting onto the F1 racetrack.
“It has always been a man’s world, but we’re breaking that down now,” Wolff tells TODAY.com. “We’re showing young women (that) we’re creating role models, we’re inspiring the next generation, it’s no longer a man’s world.”
Since its inception, the average female participation during an F1 Grand Prix has jumped from 3-5% to 25%, and there was a 265% increase in female karting cadets who qualified for the British Indoor Karting Championship in 2023 compared to 2022, according to the F1 Academy’s website.
“It’s something that doesn’t happen overnight,” Pulling says. “But we’re seeing more young girls get into go-karting.”
Pulling remembers being the only girl when she was karting, and she says to see that change now is “really nice.” She believes a lot of the barriers women face in entering racing are “being eradicated,” adding, “It’s such a positive time to be a female within the sport.”
Why aren’t women on the F1 grid?
Wolff says that 42% of the F1 fan base is female. Despite making up almost half the fans, she believes the largest barrier preventing women from making it to Formula 1 is the lack of female role models in the sport.
“There are no women racing at the highest level that can inspire others,” Wolff tells TODAY.com. “And sometimes in life, you have to see it to believe it.”
This lack of female representation compounds the second problem: participation, which Wolff says there isn't enough of.
“The talent pool of women in the sport is so small, it’s never gone above 5%, which means we don’t have enough competing for the best to rise to the top,” she says.
There are monetary issues that can impact participation, too, which Pulling calls a “very privileged sport.”
“You have to have finances to enter it,” she shares. “I do think it’s getting more and more expensive, and it’s becoming more and more unobtainable for talent to come through, which is really sad. I think it’s something that definitely needs to be improved.”
She refers to seven-time World Drivers' Champion Lewis Hamilton, who famously called F1 a “billionaire boys club," and says she agrees with his sentiment.
Pulling credits her F1 Academy win for helping her to stay in the sport, as she received a fully funded, full-time race seat in the GB3 Championship, 20 days of testing in the GB3 car and a financial contribution towards the seat provided by Pirelli, an Italian tire manufacturer.
Wolff says there are assumptions that women aren't strong enough to compete against men in the sport, but that there are no physical barriers preventing women from facing men on the track.
She explains that the 20 drivers currently sitting in F1 seats aren’t “huge, muscular men," but are there because of their agility and hand-eye coordination. According to the 2025 driver lineup, which shows the range of height and weight of participants in the sport, the tallest driver is 6-foot-1 while the shortest is 5-foot-2, and the heaviest is 171 pounds while the lightest is 119 pounds.
“I know what it takes, and I know that (women) can do it," Wolff says of women occupying F1 seats. "There’s no physical reason why I think it’s not possible. I had a great career in motorsport, which I’m very proud of and very thankful for all the opportunities I got."
“For me, it makes me immensely proud to think of helping to create that opportunity for the next generation, because I think that’s what life’s about," she continues. "You take, but you also have to give back.”
To push it forward, Wolff has worked hard to get all 10 F1 teams to sponsor female junior drivers through the F1 Academy, a milestone for women in the sport.
Pulling praises these efforts by Wolff in the F1 Academy.
“As a businesswoman, what she’s done to get 10 F1 teams to agree to something is very impressive.” Pulling says, adding that it’s incredible the top players have invested to “have a car linked in F1 Academy to their respective F1 teams.”
“I want to continue to be bold, to disrupt and to show the next generation... that the sport you love is a place where women cannot just be involved but also thrive.”
SUSIE WOLFF,
MANAGING DIRECTOR OF THE F1 ACADEMY AND FORMER DRIVER
The future of the F1 Academy, with the help of a docuseries
Wolff calls the F1 Academy a “once in a lifetime chance” to create change in the sport, and she has “big ambitions” for its future.
“I want to continue to be bold, to disrupt and to show the next generation, and all those who are fans of the sport, that the sport you love is a place where women cannot just be involved but also thrive,” she says.
She wants to achieve this through creating more partnerships to “empower” the F1 Academy to do more, and already has a major collaboration in the works.
Last May, the F1 Academy and Witherspoon's production company Hello Sunshine announced they would be creating a Netflix docuseries that followed the 2024 championship.
“The multi-part, adrenaline-fueled series will give fans exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to the all-women driving category, highlighting the drama of the races, as well as the personal stories and high stakes for the drivers, their teams, sponsors, and families involved, as they break barriers in one of the most demanding sports in the world,” the press release said at the time.
The production company aims to highlight women to "help them chart a new path forward,” per its website. Sara Rea, head of unscripted at Hello Sunshine, tells TODAY.com that there isn't another topic for a docuseries that “better encapsulates" that mission than the F1 Academy.
Rea, who says the project was something Witherspoon was excited about "from the jump," is hopeful that the docuseries will reach new viewers and inspire people to do what they want in life.
Rea says the docuseries was filmed without a plot in mind in order for an organic story to unfold.
“We really are following the drivers’ journey so what’s pivotal presents itself to us, and then we react to it and make sure we tell the story appropriately,” Rea says. “Highs and lows and everything in between.”
Rea explains some of the stars, who have yet to be revealed, were “more open and vulnerable than others.”
Pulling says she welcomed Hello Sunshine into her home, to her day-to-day training and even inside her parents' home, although it was a "big obstacle" for her to share her "private life."
“I knew it was so important for people watching to see what goes on behind the scenes and how intense it can be,” she says.
Pulling hopes the docuseries does the F1 Academy season “justice,” showing the realities of being a woman in racing.
For Wolff, she wants the docuseries to be as powerful as “Drive to Survive,” which both she and her husband, Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff, are regulars in.
“The idea of, ‘You can do anything,’ is what I hope would be the universal message for girls everywhere”
SARA REA, HEAD OF UNSCRIPTED AT HELLO SUNSHINE
“Obviously, ‘Drive to Survive’ had such a positive impact in the world of Formula 1, and we want our docuseries to be just as powerful,” she says, with her goal being “to show the individuality of our drivers.”
Rea, however, hesitates to compare the docuseries to Netflix's hit show “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” which released its seventh seasonthis March. She wants people to find Hello Sunshine's docuseries “entertaining and fun to watch” and also to get inspired by it.
“The idea of, ‘You can do anything,’ is what I hope would be the universal message for girls everywhere,” she says.
Pulling hopes it inspires girls to not only want to become drivers, but get involved in the sport in other ways, too — like all the women surrounding her when she proudly lifted her F1 Academy Drivers' Championship trophy into the air.
“There’s so many different roles within motorsport,” she says. “You can be an engineer or a mechanic. You can be in a financial sector and still work within a Formula 1 team. So, I think, give it a go. And if you really want to be involved in motorsport, there’s definitely a place for you.”
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