This week’s announcement that the 2024 F1 Academy champion will get a fully-funded season in the GB3 championship probably settles what Abbi Pulling’s main 2025 racing programme will be.
The 21-year-old Alpine junior goes into the final two F1 Academy double-headers on the Qatar and Abu Dhabi Formula 1 grands prix support bills with a 95-point championship lead over Doriane Pin having won seven of the season’s 10 races so far.
But alongside that likely GB3 season, will Formula E be part of Pulling’s 2025 diary?
Nissan had considered running her at last year’s Berlin rookie test before playing it safe with a driver it knew better, its sometime simulator driver Luca Ghiotto.
Eighteen months on, Pulling seems ripe for a Formula E development role of her own.
Her performance as she topped the all-female test for Nissan at Jarama on Friday went a reasonable way to proving that she could emulate her manager and mentor Alice Powell, who has long been part of Envision’s FE test and development roster.
Asked by The Race if the FE test had changed any of her aims or her opinions of getting involved in the series, Pulling’s reply suggested it had long been on her radar anyway.
“I wouldn't say my views changed because I think even before the test I already had my sights set on getting into the Formula E ecosystem anyway,” she replied.
“I've been saying for a while that it's something that's caught my eye, and obviously, working with Alice, who does a lot of development work with Envision, has taught me a lot.
“I've been able to pick her brains, and she's helped kind of prepare me as well for this test.”
Pulling impressed Nissan’s engineers with her clipped communication during her runs. But it’s something that she is naturally strong at anyway.
“I am quite vocal anyway, especially with my engineer in F1 Academy,” she said.
“We like to find that extra 1% every way possible, and with it being a single-make series I can make a really, really big difference.
“Here it's more procedural on the radio, but everything else regarding balance, mistakes or getting traffic, I will say it was about the same [radio comms] to be honest.”
She also settled well into the much larger Nissan FE operation - very different to what she’s been used to in single-make junior series.
"In comparing it to F1 Academy, the series that I've done all season this year, it's a huge operation,” said Pulling, who races for Rodin in F1 Academy.
“The team at Rodin Motorsport is a big team. But within F1 Academy there’s a personnel limit. So we only have eight people for three cars.
“There's about triple that for one car here and you have a lot of people.
“You can ask questions and learn from them a lot. Any question you ask, there's always an answer and that was really important for this test.
“Even when I didn't have questions, they tell me things anyway. They left no stone unturned and made sure I was best prepared as possible. They're an amazing bunch of people and it was a pleasure to work with them."
The chances of Pulling appearing in a Formula E car again appear pretty high.
She made several new fans at Nissan after her simulator session a few weeks ago and even more after her test.
The headline times from that test are nice but given Formula E’s vision for getting more female talent into the world championship, it’s what might be further down the line that might interest Pulling and perhaps others much more.
