Female drivers have motorsport’s inequality problem in their sights

At just 14, Luna Fluxa Cross is no stranger to breaking down barriers — in fact, she has already made history twice. The Spanish racing prodigy first turned heads at 11 years old when she became the first girl ever to win a IAME Euro Series title, one of karting’s most competitive championships.

Last year, she did it again when she won the senior category in the Champions of the Future Academy (Cotfa) programme — becoming only the second female driver to claim an international karting title from the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), Formula 1’s governing body.

Focused and fearless, Fluxa Cross, a junior driver for Mercedes-AMG, is leading a new generation of young women in motorsport. She says it was “very tough” when she first started out racing against predominantly male rivals but was “getting better” with more female drivers entering the sport.

“When I put my helmet on, I just think about going out and doing the best I can, and I am not thinking about the different genders,” she says. Her resilience paid off, as she dominated in winning the 2024 Cotfa title. “I just want to go out and beat everyone.”

Since its launch in 2020, the wider Champions of the Future (COF) international series, which runs several other karting competitions, has already established itself as a pipeline for success in Formula 4, the first step for young drivers transitioning from karting into single-seater racing.

Just under a third of drivers participating in COF are female. Last year, in a move to increase that proportion it formed a partnership with the F1 Academy female-only series. This includes the part-funding of nine Cotfa places annually reserved for girls aged between eight and 15 with the top three senior, female drivers invited to test for the F1 Academy.

The collaboration has already helped give a dramatic boost to the proportion of female drivers from 5 per cent in 2023 to 25 per cent in 2024, according to COF.

The wider programme is also aimed at breaking down the wealth barrier in motorsport to broaden karting’s reach beyond its traditional European stronghold. Its “arrive and drive” concept cuts the entry costs to Cotfa from more than €100,000 to €29,950 by supplying all drivers with a basic model kart fitted with the same engine and wheels, which are the most expensive parts. Each driver must provide their own engineer.

“If the costs were what they are today, 30 years ago when I started racing, I don’t think my family would’ve been able to afford it,” says James Geidel, president of motorsports events group RGMMC, which organises COF.

“I wanted to open the market so people from around the world could come and compete at a more cost-effective price, because the costs today are astronomical,” he adds. “Every time the tyres touch the asphalt, you would think it’s a world championship.”

Geidel credits the F1 Academy, set up in 2023 by former F1 test driver Susie Wolff, as a key reason for boosting female participation. Last year, for example, he says the gender split of the applicants for the senior Cotfa category, for ages 14 to 17, was 50:50, although ultimately only 30 per cent of the intake were female.

The talent is there, he adds, now it is a “numbers game” to see the next generation of girls progress. “The question used to be, will there ever be a woman in Formula 1? And now the question is, when will women be in Formula 1?”

The growth in opportunities for young women are not limited to the driving side of the sport. Girls on Track, the educational initiative run by the electric car world championship Formula E, has brought more than 4,500 women to the sport since 2019, according to FIA data.

The FIA’s Women in Motorsport project co-ordinator Susanna Coletta says it is vital to offer these experiences for young women to explore how race days work, from the fan zones around the paddock to behind the scenes in race control. All the programme’s events are free to attend. “We don’t want to make revenues out of girls’ experiences, we just want to give them the opportunity to come to the track.”

Burcu Çetinkaya, women in motorsport commission chair and a former rally driver, says these kinds of opportunities were rarely available to her when she started out. She advises girls who want to succeed in motorsport to forge long-term professional relationships at the start of their careers. She welcomes the fact the industry is more inclusive than in her day but is not convinced all the barriers women face in the sport will be broken down. “The challenges are always there. I don’t think this will ever be easy”.

Gwen Lagrue, who leads the Mercedes-AMG’s driver development programme, and counts George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli, among his mentees, is more optimistic about addressing the gender gap in the sport.

Cotfa “gives us the opportunity to look at talents we probably wouldn’t have seen in another context”, he says. “I don’t just want to have a female driver who is going to make it on to the grid . . . I want [her] to fight for good results.”