‘If you’re second, you’re the first loser’: F1 Academy Champion Abbi Pulling on winning, filming with Netflix and what it will take for a woman to race in Formula 1

‘No one it watching this ngl’

‘Who cares?’

‘I’m not watching this new show because girls don’t belong in cars, they belong in the kitchen’

‘A woke piece of sh*t just to make women happy’

On April 23, the first poster for F1: The Academy, a docu-series streaming on Netflix from May 28, appeared on the F1 Academy’s official Instagram channel. The comments came thick and fast — a lot of them good, a lot, well, not so good. Misogyny has dogged motorsport for decades; recently, Red Bull engineer, Calum Nicholas revealed on a podcast that female employees from multiple Formula 1 (F1) teams have been fired or removed from their roles for dating male co-workers. The men, according to Nicholas, were not reprimanded. As of 2021, women make up about 30% of the F1 workforce, but more than 40% of its global viewership.

Grid girls — a genetically-blessed troop of motorsport cheerleaders — were dispatched of at the start of the 2018 F1 Championship; since then names including Naomi Schiff (driver and TV presenter), Laura Mueller (the first female race engineer in F1 history) and Susie Wolff (driver and Managing Director of F1 Academy) have been flying the flag for women in all areas of motorsport, bar the actual F1 grid.

And then there’s Abbi Pulling, F1 Academy’s 2024 Champion, current GB3 driver and former Country Life Frontispiece (below).

‘I’m not going to give my time over to reading anything like that [the comments],’ Abbi tells me over Zoom from her manager’s office. It’s my second time talking to her; the first was on a photoshoot at Rodin Motorsport’s offices in Farnham. ‘At the end of the day, I know what it’s [F1 Academy] about and how important it is and if people don’t want to watch it, you know, that’s down to them. But I think there’s going to be a lot of people that do watch it, and they either feel inspired or just entertained.’

F1 Academy (F1 A) is a female-only, single-seater Championship whose aim is to help prepare and develop new generations of female drivers to make the step up to higher levels of motorsport — including F1. ‘And we will,’ says Wolff emphatically in the first episode of F1: The Academy, which has been executive produced by actress Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine company. If anyone can do it, it is Wolff, who is the last woman to reach the world of F1 (in 2014) and driving force in getting all 10 F1 teams properly involved in the F1 A world.

F1: The Academy | Official Trailer | Netflix - YouTube

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The F1-affiliated series consists of 18 identical cars, including one wildcard entry, split across six teams. The women must be between the ages of 16 and 25 when participating in the first of seven rounds. Much like F1, there are free practice and qualifying sessions; unlike F1 there are two races, split across two days. Tracks include popular circuits such as Miami, Zandvoort in the Netherlands, and Singapore.

Last year, Abbi won nine out of a total 14 races. Footage of her speeding past the chequered flag, a finger raised in a number one salute, dominates multiple episodes. ‘For me, it’s like riding a bike,’ she says of driving competitively. ‘Even when the car is sideways, which it obviously isn’t supposed to be, and you’re having oversteer, the discomfort is really normal for me.’

‘You’re just intensely focused,’ she adds. ‘You’ll see some onboard footage of drivers who don’t blink. Nothing else in the world matters. It’s just you and the race track and your competitors.’

Off the track, real life and all of its complexities — chiefly funding — has a nasty habit of creeping back into the fold. Abbi ran out of money in 2021 and, early on F1: The Academy’s first episode, she reveals that she won’t be able to carry on racing beyond F1 A if she doesn’t come first due to the exorbitant costs that the sport demands of its participants. In an emotional moment in the second one, she explains that her ever-supportive father comes to fewer and fewer races in order to help keep costs down. These days, even karting, a common entry point into single seater motorsport, can cost up to £73,000 a year. Topping the leaderboard and winning a fully funded seat in mixed-gender GB3 means that Abbi’s worries have been assuaged for at least another year — and even though she doesn’t know what will happen next, she remains remarkably upbeat.

‘Even racing in GB3 — I never thought I'd be able to get there because of financial restraints — so this is even a dream and I'm just taking it year by year. I'm gonna, you know, put everything into this year and, and hope it shows, and then performance on track is everything so as long as I perform, hopefully I'll continue going up the ladder. The next step in the ladder, I would say, is FIA F3, and then F2 or Super Formula, and then F1.’

In the seven-part series, these concerns get lost somewhat amongst the seemingly never-ending medley of pop songs sung by women that form the series’ soundtrack. Incidentally, the first song sung by a man only hits the airwaves during a dramatic overtaking scene. Where it succeeds more is in painting women as multi-dimensional beings — with different interests, upbringings, likes and dislikes — who don’t necessarily conform to society’s limiting and pervasive stereotypes. ‘I’m a driver, but I like to be feminine,’ says Lola Lovinfosse, one of Abbi’s 2024 competitors. They are all unapologetically competitive. ‘I’m a girl, but I can still beat you,’ says Lia Block, who was crowned the youngest ever American Rally Association Champion in 2023. They swear in frustration over their team radios and speak openly to one another about the fact that although there is plenty of respect they are there to triumph over one another. ‘If you’re second, you’re the first loser,’ concludes Abbi.

In an episode titled ‘The One to Beat’, Abbi introduces viewers to her home and to her family — about whom she wrestled for some time over whether to expose to the cameras or not. ‘It was really intense,’ she says of the filming process which began back in 2023. ‘I'm an extrovert, of course, but I like my private life, and it was quite invasive in that sense.’ She came to the conclusion that it was ‘super necessary’ to show ‘what goes on behind the scenes and what it takes to be a racing driver.’

Elite level motorsport is odd in that drivers rarely spend any time in the car outside of official race weekends and pre-season testing. Practise predominantly takes place in the gym and in a simulator that can be programmed to a different racetrack in a matter of mere minutes. ‘I think people think racing drivers in general [male or female]... just go to wherever we're competing and turn up and push some pedals and turn a wheel, and then that's us done,’ says Abbi, ‘but that's about 10% of our lives and the 90%, is where all the performance comes from.’

In home videos dotted throughout F1: The Academy several of the women, then girls, state that one day they want to race in F1, but in previous interviews, both Abbi and Wolff have estimated that it is likely to take between five and ten years. So, putting funding and sexism to one side, what is it that’s currently holding women back? Issue one is down to participation at a grassroots level. Last year, Zak Brown, the CEO of McLaren Racing, told the BBC that there needed to be at least 10,000 female participants competing in simulator and karting races to likely produce one or two who could compete at the highest level. And since its 2023 launch, F1 A has helped to fuel a 265% increase in females participating in the British Indoor Karting Championships. Issue two is strength. ‘I believe that a female can get to F3 and be competing at the front and not be physically limited. I haven’t driven a Formula 2 car, but even the lads struggle quite a bit and it’s just a fact that a woman’s peak strength isn’t as much as a man’s, so it probably is up for discussion that Formula 2 needs power steering, but again, that’s not in my hands. I let the powers above make that decision.’

Power steering is a complex, hydraulic system which reduces the amount of sometimes extremely high lateral force endured by drivers during high-speed corners. It also allows for greater control of the car. At present, F2 and 3 cars, which are all built to the same specifications, do not come with power steering, whereas F1 cars, which are manufactured separately by the individual teams, do. There is something deeply bizarre about the fact that one of the biggest things holding women back from competing at the pinnacle of motorsport isn’t even present in the highest class of racing. ‘I wouldn’t be as frustrated by the situation if F1 didn’t have power steering,’ Wolff told Autosport back in March.

For now, Abbi is ‘so appreciative’ of the opportunities that have, so far, come her way. ‘I don’t want to waste it,’ she says of the chance to race in a GB3 car which is on average 10 seconds quicker than the F1 A vehicle. During our conversation she repeatedly brings up how lucky she is and whilst yes, she is, she’s also undeniably talented, motivated, articulate and funny. All of this comes across in F1: The Academy. ‘I think they’ve done an absolutely brilliant job. By the looks of it [when we spoke in early May she’d only seen the first episode] there’s going to be a bit of drama and quite a lot of emotions, whether good or bad. And viewers will see how pressure can affect people and how driven people can be.’