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‘The odds are stacked’: Aussie face of F1’s enduring woman problem
August 15 is the 50th anniversary of the last female to race in a Formula 1 race, the late Lella Lombardi at the Austrian Grand Prix in 1976.
The Italian qualified her RAM-entered Brabham BT44B in 24th position and finished 12th, last of those still running.
Joanne Ciconte has forged a path towards F1. Anni Graf
Lombardi, who died at the age of 50 in 1992, remains the only woman to have finished a grand prix in a scoring position - sixth in Spain in 1975 when half points were awarded.
We’ve now ticked past the decade mark of a woman being involved in a Formula 1 weekend, as the last female to participate in a grand prix weekend was Susie Wolff with Williams in 2024 and 2015.
The age-old question remains: why has it taken so long for fans to see another female in Formula 1?
And it’s a hard one to crack.
It’s true that motorsport is one of two sports in the world where men and women compete together.
Equestrian is the other one. Theoretically, that means that women are racing on an equal playing field with men. But clearly that’s not the case.
The rampant inequality in resources, knowledge and understanding for women in motorsport means men’s sport has had a century of mistakes to make, funds and sponsorship to find, while women have only been allowed small roles in the sport until recent time.
The F1 Academy conundrum
Though F1 Academy is a great initiative, it’s not a fix-all solution.
A seat for 1.5m euros ($2.5m by current conversions) is a huge barrier to overcome, and that’s approximately how much a seat in the junior categories of F1 start at.
That’s a whopping sum of cash to produce to race around the world in 14 races across seven rounds.
Jamie Chadwick, Britain’s leading female driver and a triple champion in the now-defunct W Series observes many more women are coming into the sport, but said it would still take time for the grassroots pathways to really produce results.
F1, with 22 drivers and only one rookie this year, remains an impossible dream for almost everyone, no matter the gender.
F1 Academy is touted as a stepping stone for females in motorsport. Getty
There’s an absolute necessity to be aligned with an F1 team and a junior program, gaining the experiences and FP1 outings that others don’t get.
“You look at the percentages of those that make it to the top, it’s very, very small,” said Chadwick of elite motorsport in general to Reuters.
“But when there’s already such a small percentage of female drivers at the beginning, the odds are already stacked against you.
“It’s going to take a long time probably to get anything close to 50-50. I don’t know what it is at the moment, but it’s probably about 80-20 at best.”
The Aussie reality of building your own ladder
Nowhere is this financial and geographical disconnect more apparent than in Australia.
With Europe acting as the epicentre of global motorsport, young Australian women are being forced to radically shift the landscape to suit them.
Australian driver Imogen Radburn, now 20, was sent over to test for F1 Academy in 2024 but lost out financially to Joanne Ciconte, 17, and Aiva Anagnostiadis, 19, for the 2025 season.
Supercars driver Cameron Hill coached Radburn through her junior days in Formula Ford and said Radburn had “strengths” that the boys couldn’t match.
“I try to give her advice that will help her in the future, and she’s got a wise head on her shoulders. It was always interesting when I was running the Formula 4 team; I had a few guys and obviously her,” he said exclusively to nine.com.au.
Aiva Anagnostiadis has left F1 Academy to try her hand in Italy. Getty
“You could just tell that she had some strengths that maybe the boys didn’t have. So for her, it was probably more about building that self-belief up.
“Maybe we’re our own worst critics, so you don’t give yourself enough tickets when you are doing good. But yeah, she’s doing great things.”
Instead of giving up, Radburn has radically shifted the Australian national motorsport landscape to suit her due to the lack of opportunity.
She now runs her own team in the 2026 Ford Mustang Cup series that is fully operated by women, from mechanics down to the truck drivers.
“It’s a big undertaking. If I had any advice for her, I’d be like, ‘Don’t underestimate how much work is in all that team stuff’,” Hill explained.
“When you’re just the race car driver, it’s very good - you can just focus on racing.
“When you’re the team boss, the truck driver, the tyre guy, paying bills… it teaches you a lot. You certainly probably have a better appreciation, and you’re more grateful for the opportunity. But yeah, it’s a challenge as well. You have to have many balls in the air and wear many hats.”
On the European circuit, Ciconte finished 14th in F1 Academy in 2024 championship and Anagnostiadis 17th, leading them without seats for the following season.
Ciconte now races in Japan’s all-female Kyojo Cup and has been finding success with a double podium on debut while Anagnostiadis races in Italian GT4, a step below F3.
The grassroots money problem
Chadwick said all-female initiatives such as F1 Academy had catered for those women already in the sport, including some who had quit after running out of resources but were then able to return.
But those that come through are promised no opportunity further down the paddock.
2025 runner-up Maya Weug, who has been present in paddocks across the world with Ferrari, posted recently about the harsh reality of losing any upcoming seats.
“Motorsport is a tough environment. I think I just expected that the results I put together over the past years would have counted for something,” wrote Weug on her Instagram.
Weug was given the opportunity to test a Ferrari GT3 with AF Corse, which was also funded by F1 Academy, but testing doesn’t hand anyone the keys to a drive.
The cost of the seat in F1 Academy is $163,620 AUD outright, then add coaches, travel, any financial backing if you don’t have sponsors etc.
In today’s landscape, it’s northward of $3m euros for a seat in Formula 2, the top echelon of junior driving before you move into F1.
We’ve seen countless times before that champions in the category have been shoved aside to different areas of the sport, lost to the reserve driver role before slowly shuffling out to different championships.
IndyCar, WEC, ELMS; the number of drivers that actually make it to the F1 grid is minuscule and swayed by priority financial backing.
A prime example in the main game is Franco Colapinto; a much more viable driver financially than Jack Doohan for Alpine.
Instead of sharing the national load of Aussie sponsorship with Oscar Piastri, most South American and Argentinian backing goes straight to Colapinto meaning that larger sums are going into Alpine’s account.
Susie Wolff was the last female to participate in a Formula 1 weekend. Chris Hopkins
Motorsport has always been an elite sport, but with the boom in interest due to Drive to Survive, it feels like drivers - both young men and women without significant financial backing - are being left behind.
There are multiple accounts of F1 drivers having to sacrifice huge amounts of money for seats.
Pierre Gasly being scammed by fake investors, Lewis Hamilton and Esteban Ocon’s family sacrifice to F1 and the Leclerc family having to decide which child, Charles or younger brother Arthur, continued karting.
The F1 academy faces even steeper challenges.
It’s a catch-22, there are minimal success stories from the F1 Academy championship; thus people are hesitant to back the female drivers.
But there is no way to find success in motorsport without funding, and the cycle continues.
There is no easy answer to why there hasn’t been a female driver since 1976, but it will likely take a rampant overhaul of national and international series to find a way through.
