F1 Academy: Season ending, F1 liveries, TV broadcasting and support races
F1 Academy is set to finish its inaugural season at Circuit of the Americas alongside Formula One. Prema Racing driver, Marta Garcia currently leads the championship standings.
The weekend will mark the first F1 weekend that the all-female series will be a support race in, and this will continue throughout the 2024 season.
In a recent flurry of breaking news, it was announced that the liveries of the F1 teams will be used in the F1 Academy with each team promoting a driver, the series will be shown live on TV with further information set to be announced and the 2024 calendar will be entirely made up of F1 support races.
All this news was happily welcomed by Susie Wolff who is the Managing Director of the series. The 40-year-old announced most of this news on her social media accounts which were followed by confirmations on the official F1 Academy accounts.
F1 Drivers and Liveries
In July, it was announced that all 10 Formula 1 teams will represent one driver in the all-female racing series, with their livery on the nominated driver’s car.
This year the championship had five teams, ART Grand Prix, Campos Racing, MP Motorsport, PREMA Racing and Rodin Carlin, each of these teams have three drivers.
It is expected for these teams to stay the same in 2024 but have one of the five drivers left after one driver will be nominated by an F1 team and will drive under their name and livery.
Broadcasting
Starting in 2024, it is expected that all F1 Academy races will be shown live on TV.
Wolff announced that after the race in Austin all of the races will be shown live for fans to watch. However, a firm broadcast deal has not been announced but fans suspect that the deal will be similar to Formula 2 or Formula 3.
Support Series
When the series was first announced a clear succession was portrayed as the championship was placed in the same area as the support series regarding the progression into F1.
At the same time it was announced to be shown live it was also announced that the 2024 calendar will include F1 support races.
The Future
With all of these announcements it has excited fans for the future of F1 Academy, and they hope the series will help integrate more women into F1.
Susie Wolff was the last woman to participate in an F1 weekend in 2015 when she was a Williams reserve driver and drove in a couple of practice sessions and Giovanna Amati was the last woman to enter a formula 1 grand prix in 1992.
F1 Academy has given hope that the series could see a female F1 driver sooner rather than later and it hopes to encourage more young girls into motorsport.
Wolff said in an Instagram post: “Together, we will create a platform that propels the next generation of female talent.”
- by Lizzy Oxendale
