Up Next
The third season of the all-female F1 Academy kicks off at this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix, boasting its biggest-ever grid and a brand new weekend format.
We’ve gathered together seven things you need to know ahead of the start of the 2025 season:
The title favourite
Picking out a championship favourite in a spec-series is always difficult but the smart money for the 2025 crown would be on Prema-run Mercedes junior Doriane Pin.
The sportscar racing ace made a high-profile dive into single-seaters last year, winning on her debut in F1 Academy at the Jeddah season-opener.
In fact she was only denied a double that weekend by not realising she’d already taken the chequered flag to win race two, earning a 20-second penalty that dropped her from first to ninth.
She’d add further wins later in the year at Zandvoort and Lusail and was the next-best driver after Abbi Pulling’s dominant run to the title.
It was from a smooth-sailing 2024 for Pin as broken ribs would rule her out of the Le Mans 24 Hours and disrupted her partial campaign in the Formula Regional European Championship - where she had a best finish of 14th across 15 races.
Given that it's Pin’s second season in the series - drivers can only race in two F1 Academy seasons - and also that she’s the highest-placed driver staying on and she set the pace in testing, the target is obvious.
Mercedes knows that, too.
“Considering the progress she has taken [in 2024] and the experience she now has, we are confident that Doriane can fight for the F1 Academy title in 2025,” head of the junior academy Gwen Lagrue said.
So who might stop her?
The other returnees
Including Pin, seven of the 17 full-time drivers have a season of F1 Academy action already under their belt.
The next highest-placed driver staying on is Ferrari junior Maya Weug - who finished third last year and won the season-ending race in Abu Dhabi.
She’s switched from Prema to MP Motorsport for 2025 and remained constantly at the top or near the top of the timesheets in testing.
Chloe Chambers has swapped from Haas colours to Red Bull backing. She finished sixth last year and was the only driver outside of the top three to win a race. She won’t be one of the Red Bull teams’ official drivers (more on them later) but is part of the driver academy and will race with Red Bull-Ford branding.
Aston Martin’s Tina Hausmann and Ferrari’s Aurelia Nobels (again not Ferrari’s official F1 Academy-backed driver but a part of Ferrari’s young driver academy) will be hoping they can improve on the 10th and 12th places they finished in last year’s championship.
Chloe Chong, who finished 14th of 15 drivers in 2023 albeit with a strong flourish to the end of the year, stays on for her second F1 Academy season this year, having raced in British F4 in 2024.
Williams's leftfield ace
Williams-backed Lia Block stays on for a second season, having made an impressively successful adaptation to single-seaters in 2024 after an unconventional route via rally and rallycross success.
Block, now the first-ever female Rockstar Energy Drink athlete, impressed despite the steep learning curve by qualifying seventh on debut, later scooping seven points finishes to end the year eighth in the championship.
“It’s a big jump. January [2024] was my first ever test in a Formula 4 car and jumping straight into the F1 Academy season, coming off of winning a rally championship, I just had to start from scratch completely,” Block told The Race after Rockstar’s announcement.
“Starting over mentally was a bit hard, having to do everything over again and starting from the back of the grid - but it’s been a lot of small marginal gains over the season.
“Thankfully Williams set me up with a great group of people around me, from my sports psychologist to physical trainer and driver coach, to smooth all those little bumps out.”
That group includes three-time W Series champion Jamie Chadwick, who advises Block, knowing full well what it’s like to race on an F1 weekend: “Anything I’m ever worried about I just drop her a message and it’s great to have experience because she’s also been in my shoes.”
Block also credits the “family dynamic” within Williams: “I come into the garage in the F1 paddock and the mechanics are congratulating me on the [F1 Academy] race.”
Her targets for 2025 are clear.
“I really want to be at the top, wins and go for the championship,” Block said.
"I think I have a really good chance of doing that, we have some very strong competitors this year, especially with Doriane. I know she wants a bit of revenge from last year.
“So it’s not going to be an easy season but besides F1 Academy, I want to keep doing a bit of rallying on the side and having a bit of fun, especially with Rockstar supporting me now we get to do some fun little projects this year as well, so it’s going to be a packed year again - but I hope sprinkled with some champagne.”
At 18 years of age, Block likely already has a very bright future career path in rallying and rallycross but if she can take a sizeable step in her second F1 Academy season, she can open the door to further single-seater avenues, too.
Block was seen as leftfield choice when Williams picked her to represent it back in November 2023 - now she’s looking like another smart investment of the new era of Williams.
The rookies
F1 Academy’s 2025 rookie crop is highly promising - and we’ve already had a glimpse of four of them via the wildcard entry last year.
The first standout is Alpine-backed Nina Gademan, who finished fourth on her F1 Academy debut on home soil at Zandvoort.
The 21-year-old finished 18th in British F4 last year and earlier this year was a regular top 10 finisher in the Formula Winter Series that races in Spain and Portugal.
She’ll make her full-time debut with Prema this year alongside Pin and Hausmann.
McLaren junior Ella Lloyd took four podiums on route to 11th in British F4 last year and should challenge Gademan and Red Bull-backed Alisha Palmowski for the top rookie honours.
Palmowski was fifth on debut in Qatar last year and finished second in GB4 (a cheaper alternative to British F4) last year.
Based on testing, her wildcard appearance in Jeddah last year and her lack of single-seater experience, Haas-backed Courtney Crone will likely be targeting points rather than podiums.
But it’s not out of the question that Gademan, Lloyd and Palmowski could all challenge for wins during their rookie season.
The same can be said for Sauber’s new junior Emma Felbermayr - who has the potential to be a breakout star, having impressed during testing at Shanghai earlier this month.
Rafaela Ferreira is another one-to-watch given she arrives in F1 Academy as a three-time race winner in Brazilian F4.
There’s also Kevin Magnussen’s protege Alba Larsen, the youngest driver on the grid 16-year-old Joanne Ciconte, Formula Regional Americas graduate Nicole Havrda and former Alpine karting junior Aiva Anagnostiadis.
The graduated champion
There will be plenty of eyes on how 2024 champion Pulling gets on with her prize drive in the GB3 championship, which kicks off at the end of April. While it is UK-based, four of the seven rounds take place abroad, at four F1 circuits Pulling has experience of.
Pulling is already a proven frontrunner in mixed-gender F4 championships but it would be a huge statement if Pulling can perform in what’s already looking like a stacked grid.
The last six BRDC F3 champions have graduated to Formula 3 the following season so there is a clear pathway should Pulling perform.
Inevitably how she performs this year will reflect on F1 Academy and the quality of the drivers there, especially if Pin turns her pre-season favourite tag into the title - given it was Pin who Pulling defeated to the 2024 crown, albeit with the benefit of greater experience.
The inaugural F1 Academy champion Marta Garcia endured a tricky point-less campaign in the highly competitive Formula Regional European Championship last year.
Without the funding or results to progress, Garcia called time on her single-seater career last October.
Pulling will hope for much better - especially given her 2025 has started strongly as she was regularly in the top six during the first GB3 test of the year at Snetterton.
The new team
Hitech TGR joins its fellow junior single-seater giants Prema, Rodin, Campos, MP and ART as F1 Academy’s new sixth team for 2025. Just like the other five teams. Hitech already races in Formula 2 and Formula 3 on the F1 support bill.
It will field two full-time Formula 4-spec cars, with its third car reserved for a wildcard entrant - in 2024 Prema ran a one-off wildcard driver in six of the seven rounds in a fourth car.
That will mean the grid will rise from 16 to 18 cars this year, the highest in the series’ short history.
As before all 10 F1 teams will back one driver with the remaining drivers running in sponsor-themed colours such as those of TAG Heuer and Charlotte Tilbury.
The 2025 grid
Prema: Doriane Pin (Mercedes), Nina Gademan (Alpine), Tina Hausmann (Aston Martin)
Rodin: Emma Felbermayr (Sauber), Ella Lloyd (McLaren), Chloe Chong
Campos: Chloe Chambers, Rafaela Ferreira (Racing Bulls), Alisha Palmowski (Red Bull)
MP: Maya Weug (Ferrari), Alba Hurup Larsen, Joanne Ciconte,
ART: Courtney Crone (Haas), Aurelia Nobels, Lia Block (Williams)
The new format
As in 2024, F1 Academy will hold 14 races across seven F1 weekends this year - with Shanghai, Montreal and Las Vegas joining the returning Jeddah, Miami, Zandvoort and Singapore circuits.
The biggest format change is the return of reverse-grid races. During its inaugural 2023 season one of F1 Academy’s three races per weekend was a reverse-grid race.
Now the first of its two races every weekend will feature a reversed grid, with the top eight drivers reversed in qualifying to form the grid for race one.
Race two’s grid will be set by qualifying and award more points, in line with F2.
Race 1 (top eight in qualy reversed to set grid)
1st - 10
2nd - 8
3rd - 6
4th - 5
5th - 4
6th - 3
7th - 2
8th - 1
Race 2 (grid set by qualifying)
1st - 25
2nd - 18
3rd - 15
4th - 12
5th - 10
6th - 8
7th - 6
8th - 4
9th - 2
10th - 1
“I think it will be really cool, it’s how F2 and F3 do it with the feature and sprint race so I think it’s just going to add a bit more excitement and some better racing,” was Block’s view on reverse grids.
“It will maybe mix up the field a little bit - so to be honest I think I’ll enjoy it as long as I’m in the top eight, I think it will be fun.”
