F1 Academy: Falling Backward Through The Field

What’s the point of inclusivity in any sport when it is done solely behind closed doors? I’m one of those weird people that enjoy watching women’s international football, and some of women’s rugby is interesting. I’ve said countless times that “sports entertainment” more commonly known as pro wrestling is most interesting when it is a women’s story, and so on. When it was announced, I was quite excited by F1 Academy, the all-female feeder series for formula racing that is seemingly replacing the Jamie Chadwick-dominated W-Series. I was excited about it and then the first race weekend happened.

Inclusivity doesn’t have to be done through a megaphone but if you’re going to conduct a major push in motorsport for inclusivity, one of the first steps is to let others know about it. The idea that is seemingly lost on a number of people, particularly those that comment on the addition of new races to the calendar from certain venues, is the fact that motorsport much like any other significant sport is dependent on commercial viability. Disco Elysium has a reductive piece about racing, noting it is a vapid mutual admiration society of a viewer’s bloodthirst for crashes and a business’s desire to sell products.

From the outside and from a casual perspective motor racing is just a bloodthirsty den of highspeed crashes that have and continue to kill drivers yearly. I won’t deny that. From a business perspective, to sponsor, say the championship-winning car or their closest rivals makes the most sense. So does sponsoring the track itself with tire walls (or Tecpro), billboards, and advertising hoardings all being premier spots to place your name and brand colors. Advertising is like knowing a tree that is falling in the forest: it only works when someone can see/hear it.

The interest in motorsport from a non-casual perspective does go deeper, and much like those trees or DHL billboards Lance Stroll will punt an Aston Martin into, it only works when you can observe it. To go a little further, a catchphrase I’ve heard recently notes “It is only live once.” Yeah, so why is it that F1 Academy in its first weekend – in the day of streaming and millions of channels you pay for and don’t watch – that Formula 1, Liberty Media, or whoever is to blame decided F1 Academy can’t be watched live?

We had Stefano Domenicali last month at the Australian GP telling Sky F1 UK that the commercial rights holders would like to see F1 Academy on the F1 circus alongside F2 and F3 in 2024. Great! How about we work out TV, streaming, and broadcasting rights for the season that has already begun this year before we look too far ahead? Or is that too much common sense? It goes without saying that the way F1 Academy was announced, the name itself, the appointments to lead it, the racers, the entire time frame, and W-Series pulling out of its final races last year all have to be taken into account.

From the outside, it looks like a thoughtless plan was put in place by Liberty Media or whoever made that call once the Catherine Bond Muir-led series folded prematurely last year. Bring it forward and the series was only announced back in December. In March, it was announced that Susie Wolff would head the series as managing director, and drivers began to be announced in February with the final spot filled by mid-March. The format was confirmed in February and so were the circuits for the calendar, testing in Barcelona happened in early April and the first race weekend happened on the last weekend of April.

W-Series was rumored in 2017, confirmed in 2018, and didn’t hit the track until May 2019. Similarly, Formula E was conceived by the FIA back in 2011 and didn’t hit the track and our screens until September 2014. Yes, the framework was already there to launch such a series quickly, though while the action taken to get it done so quickly looks as fast as the Tatuus monocoque on all four wheels, it is in reality as slow as Nikita Mazespin. To publically pull together an international sport in the space of five months is a massive effort logistically and economically. However, forgetting or forgoing broadcasting seems stupid.

They are sharing social media posts, the highlights, and there are live timings from the track, okay, that’s a start. Highlights would suggest there are cameras track-side and a skeleton production crew for the support series to NASCAR, Formula Regional, Tourenwagen, and World Endurance. There is seemingly the framework by all accounts to share all of this, so why isn’t it being broadcast? Biggin Hill already hosts F1/Liberty Media’s production house, which churns out hundreds of hours of TV a year. In theory, it shouldn’t be a problem. Then again, scheduling crossing over into the F1 and F2 weekend in Baku didn’t help.

Honestly, I don’t have the answers for why this was the chosen direction, to focus on social media posts and live timings instead of showing on-track action. As a prodigious watcher of F1, F2, and F3 over a given weekend with attempts to remember when and where WRC, Formula E, and W-Series air, I want to watch the on-track action, even live if possible. Timing screens are great tools for engineers and the extremely boring among us. Yet a timing screen doesn’t convey the wheel-to-wheel action, the drama, or the entire point of driving in silly circles while strapped to a rocket.

For the inaugural season, race, and sessions, this was a disaster to get F1 Academy bounding out of the gate to a great start. It was nothing more than a step back from the promise of progress which F1 Academy is supposed to be. Progress to bring young female drivers into the eyes of teams, sponsors, and other motorsports. Unless F1 expands beyond 10 teams, you only have 20 seats, in F2 it is 22, in F3 it is 30, and F1 Academy isn’t going to send 15 women through that entire system and into F1.

In an interview with The Guardian, Susie Wolff said on getting a woman into F1 through F1 Academy, “I believe it’s eight to 10 years away from happening.” The goal is to progress and to expand the definition of an F1 driver to many people, to bring eyes that may otherwise not be interested in motorsport because “it isn’t for little girls.” We see it with male drivers and nationality, the diversity between drivers creates interest for better or worse. Believe it or not, the same will happen for young women when they break into the upper echelons of motorsport regularly.

To casual or non-motorsport fans like my editor, it might be surprising to know that every driver needs to bring in their own funding. Commercially, each driver needs to be seen just as much as the team’s sponsors need to be. Drivers for the series had to bring €150,000 in funding to join F1 Academy, a budget that is tiny in comparison to “the pinnacle of motorsport.” Motorsport will never be entirely accessible in my or our lifetimes, but this is one path to equity in such a field leveled towards young male drivers.

The problem is, for these young women to progress in single-seater racing they need sponsorships (funding), and to get that they need to be on track and be seen by the money people to be worth said money. The first half has been achieved, but the second half is what is the sticking point. If MP, Carlin, Prema, Campos, and ART want and need sponsors, and if F1 needs F1 Academy to be commercially viable, it only makes sense to broadcast the action. Even if it is through online services like F1TV.

Fans of motorsport want to see the on-track drama, and the teams want the money so they can make even for doing the work. The commercial rights holders want to be closer to profit than millions in losses, and businesses want to be seen. The simple answer is that teams, drivers, and commercial rights holders make money from racing with sponsorships. Sponsorships only work when you see brand names, colors, and logos, or hear their names or jingles. For sponsorships to be seen you put it in front of the eyes of people. It sounds really simple because that is what it is.

Arguments can absolutely be made that the whole thing shouldn’t happen: economically, logistically, and even for proper equity. We saw the statements and I even agree with some of them that for true fairness across motorsport, we’d take the money for an entire season of F1 Academy or W-Series and fund a single driver into a seat. Sure, but how do you pick that female driver when so few make it to the readily viewable likes of F3 and F2 in the first place? French F4, Formula Reginal, or any of the subcategories towards single-seater racing, all have very few female drivers. In fact, I only found Maya Weug in a quick search.

Logistically and economically the question has to be how much it takes to hire people for TV, the teams, and so on. In a quick search about Biggin Hill, F1TV’s production compound, there is a lot of talk about heavy workloads and long hours with slim compensation. Teams will need to hire or shift staff to maintain a “normal” workload at tracks, especially when F2 and F3 also have race weekends. Within the first three races, there are two F2 and F3 weekends: Biggin Hill does the TV production for both. Every team has five cars between the two before F1 Academy’s 3 per team.

Unlike the navel-gazing that is the Pitstop Podcast, I care about what is done on the track. I want to see young women make it in motorsport. I want to see them succeed on the track and I want to be able to watch someone through their journey. This single by The Desert Rose Band of “One Step Forward” (and two steps back) has gotten us nowhere towards equity. The entirety of W-Series’ first and second seasons are viewable on Youtube. W-series and Formula E would/continue to show live practice and qualifying in markets where TV deals haven’t been made.

To maintain interest, especially when fighting with algorithms on Instagram, YouTube, or other social platforms, highlights shown on TV channels five days later or two days later online aren’t the way to go. Unsurprisingly, interest drops in something if it can’t be had right now, in full, and with no restrictions before spoilers. We all have object permanence issues now. Social media is a great tool for motorsport, but when starting a series and only running coverage through it, you need more engagement than is possible to keep it in people’s feeds. Even then, excitement isn’t there when it is spoiled by official sources before we get to see it.