Formula E has long since had big plans to establish a credible pathway for talented female racers to try and follow in the footsteps of Michaela Cerruti, Katherine Legge and Simon de Silvestro to race in the all-electric world championship in the future. Here, Jodie Saxon asks if a dedicated, initially standalone programme within the Formula E sporting framework could work?
Formula E is no stranger to giving opportunities to women, since 2024 they’ve featured an all-women section in their pre-season testing in order to give female drivers the chance to sample the all-electric machinery, and off track they frequently collaborate with the FIA Girls on Track programme to help inspire the next generation of girls.
As the championship develops, the power output of the cars has increased to the point that complete rookies may find it hard to adapt in a short period of time, and so to bridge this gap and help give more track time to the prospective women why not utilise something seen in the making of the recent F1 film.
While creating the film, F1 allowed the fictional ApexGP team to ‘join’ the championship at select races, with the pair of modified Dallara F2 chassis appearing in the final two grid slots while Brad Pitt and Damson Idris donned their race suits and mingled with the real-life drivers.
They could’ve saved themselves a lot of time and money by doing it on a soundstage and greenscreening the real grid in, but they chose not to in order to allow the actors in the film the really experience the atmosphere of an F1 grid, to immerse themselves into the world of motorsport and observe how the real-life drivers, engineers and mechanics conduct themselves during their preparations.
If Formula E were to take this concept and use it to run a female-only satellite team, it would give the drivers a chance to go beyond their usual testing routines and to truly experience the build up of a race weekend as an active driver.
The team could run two cars during the practice sessions, allowing the women to drive alongside the full-timers as well as compare their lap times to them, something that they are not able to do currently as their sessions are separate from the main field.
Formula E is quite unique in the fact that there’s no specialised junior championship or feeder series to help develop drivers before they make the leap to the top level, and the satellite team idea ties quite well into this. With no junior championship to speak of, drivers don’t have a chance to experience the specifics of electric single seaters outside of Formula E itself, which makes it harder to transition into.
Adding to that, the performance gap between Formula E and Formula 4/Regional – which is where most female drivers are currently racing – is even greater with the new GEN4 car, meaning that a full scale women’s test as seen previously may not be the best course of action.
The current F1 Academy cars take 3.6 seconds to go from 0-100km/h, while the GEN4 car does that in half the time and has a top speed only 100km/h faster than the F1 Academy cars. By having just one team providing regular outings in the current cars, Formula E would be able to handpick the highest performing women and push them to reach the necessary level to earn a full time race seat in Formula E without having to wait for them to progress through to Formula 3 or 2.
A satellite team could also provide more opportunities to collaborate with ‘Girls on Track’, with the ability to provide hands-on work experience in a more controlled environment that doesn’t have the added pressure of needing hard results in competitive sessions. It could become a whole system to introduce women to Formula E, be they drivers, engineers, mechanics or on the media side of things, and to help them develop their skills and make valuable connections as they begin their careers in motorsport.
Of course, there are downsides to this idea. One is that having women present in the championship in a ‘free practice only’ capacity could reinforce the erroneous trope that women are not be capable of handling the pressure of racing at a world championship level or the physicality needed to steer these heavy cars – something that has been alleviated to an extent by the addition of power steering to the GEN4 car.
It might also mean that the amount of women who are able to get behind the wheel of Formula E cars decreases. In the previous editions of women’s tests, teams have had to run only one car with the option to run a second if they wish, meaning that up to 22 women have been able to participate. Replacing it with one team would reduce that number to just two per weekend. Conversely, having a smaller pool of drivers getting more frequent outings is a positive in terms of the development of those specific drivers via the intensity of the sessions.
If Formula E was to go ahead with an idea like this, they would have to be careful about many things – from the choice of drivers to how it is marketed to the fans. It is unlike anything that any other championship has done but it would be guaranteed to grab headlines and put Formula E at the forefront of the conversation surrounding women in motorsport.
As Formula E Notebook detailed earlier this week, this has been looked at but was deemed impractical from a regulatory standpoint, yet perhaps a version of it, or certainly a competitive element of the test platform in the future, would add fresh impetus to help accelerate the opportunities for female participation in the world’s only all-electric world championship.
