A GIRL IN F1: WHY IT IS POSSIBLE TODAY
Female participation in motorsport is growing, yet many careers still appear to stall in the middle of the ladder, before reaching the top categories. We look at how a generational shift and the growing number of girls entering karting are nevertheless making change increasingly inevitable…
Seeing far more women behind the wheel of racing cars than we did twenty or thirty years ago can send two very different messages to anyone looking at the sport: is it propaganda, or is it real change? The fact that motorsport has traditionally been a male-dominated sport is neither a problem nor a new development. It is simply a fact rooted in its history and in the numbers that history has produced, shaped by a society structured in a particular way. Until relatively recently, girls – with a few exceptions – were steered by their families towards sports considered more appropriate for their gender.
Then came a phase in which it was considered ‘right’ for women to have their place in motorsport as well, leading to a sort of controlled access based more on image than substance. The evolution of the sport and the widening of its base, particularly through karting, have brought us to the current situation, where there are simply drivers – women by birth certificate – who are fast and who deserve the same opportunity to develop as anyone born male.
In terms of numbers, how much have you seen female participation grow in our sport since you, at DAG, entered the industry?
From our point of view, the growth is clear, especially if we look beyond absolute numbers and consider the quality and continuity of female participation. When we first began working in a structured way in karting and motorsport, seeing a girl in certain categories was still relatively unusual. Today, particularly in the younger age groups, it is no longer something that raises eyebrows.
That is probably the most important sign. The more families see motorsport as a genuine option for a daughter, the more girls start at an early age and, above all, the more of them stay in the sport long enough to build experience and achieve results.
For us at DAG Management, this is not simply a phenomenon we observe from the outside. It is something we strongly believe in and have chosen to invest in. We currently represent five female drivers, a significant female presence within our portfolio, which allows us to experience the evolution of women’s motorsport every day, from the track and the teams to the development of their careers.
They are five very different young women, and that is precisely why they illustrate how misleading it is to talk about a single ‘female driver model’. Vanesa Silkunaite stands out for her determination and her ability to compete in extremely competitive international environments; Milla Sjöstrand is building her single-seater career with great seriousness and maturity; Julia Angelard combines speed, sensitivity and a strong desire to improve from one race to the next; Mia Zanki has already shown through her results that she can be competitive and win; Nefeli Kosmopoulou approaches her career with determination, commitment and a strong desire to progress in a very high-level environment.
Five personalities, five stories and five different paths. That is fundamental to us. We do not want to manage or promote ‘five girls’, but five athletes, each with their own qualities, needs and potential, exactly as we do with our male drivers.
The fact that DAG now has such a significant female presence is not the result of an image strategy. It comes from the belief that this talent exists and deserves to be developed with the same professionalism, time and expectations we give to any other young driver. That said, as an agency we are careful about claiming that the transformation is already complete. Female participation has grown, but there is still a significant gap between entering karting and being able to progress all the way to professional racing categories.
It is often in the middle of a career that the path becomes more difficult, for financial, sporting, structural and opportunity-related reasons. For us, the real measure of change will not simply be having more girls on the grid, but seeing increasing numbers of them reach the higher categories through programmes built around performance, continuity and proper career planning.
How do you work with a female driver? In what ways, if any, does the approach change, and where is it exactly the same as with male drivers?
Our basic approach does not change: first and foremost, we manage a driver, not a gender. The fundamentals are the same for everyone: talent, ability to learn, discipline, preparation, the quality of their work with the team, handling pressure, communication, budget and the construction of a realistic sporting pathway.
In our view, it would be a mistake to lower or alter the standards simply because the driver is a girl. A female driver must have the opportunity to be judged on what she does on the track in exactly the same way as a male colleague. There are, however, individual aspects that serious management needs to take into account. This applies to every athlete, but in some cases a young female driver may also have to deal with greater media exposure, particular external expectations or the feeling that she constantly has to prove she deserves her place.
Our job is to protect her from those pressures without creating a bubble around her. We therefore place a great deal of emphasis on confidence, communication with the family and team, mental preparation and the ability to separate sporting value from the narrative that can develop simply because she is a girl. The same applies physically: preparation has to be individualised, as it should be for any driver. The goal is not to create different treatment, but to put every athlete in the best possible position to fulfil their potential.
Karting currently seems to be the area where the gender gap matters least, especially in the younger categories. How do you think karting has played – and continues to play – such a key role in changing the mindset of the entire environment?
Karting has an enormous role because it is where children learn a very simple thing at a very early age: once the visor comes down, the stopwatch does not distinguish between a boy and a girl. In the junior categories, drivers grow up together. They share the track, briefings, preparation, victories and defeats. This makes normalisation far more natural than any communication campaign could ever achieve.
From an agency’s point of view, karting is also where we can observe development without the usual layers of expectation: how a young driver interprets the kart, how they respond to difficulties, how quickly they learn, how they work with their engineer and how consistent they are. If a girl grows up racing against boys from her earliest years, the people around her also become accustomed to judging her on performance. We believe the generational shift starts here. The children who today see it as completely normal to have a fast girl as a teammate or rival will tomorrow become engineers, team managers, professionals and parents.
Karting, therefore, is not only developing future female drivers. It is also shaping an environment in which female participation will increasingly be seen as the norm rather than the exception.
Let’s come to a key question: is there still a real ‘mindset’ problem when it comes to female drivers, or do you feel that phase is now behind us, at least in karting? Are gender prejudices still there, or have we left them behind? And what about car racing?
To say that the problem has been completely overcome would probably be too optimistic. But saying that nothing has changed would be equally unfair. In karting, especially among younger drivers, we see a much more open mindset. When a girl is competitive, in most cases she is quickly recognised as such. The track has a very practical ability to reduce prejudice: results are visible and difficult to argue with.
That does not mean stereotypes, comments or different expectations have disappeared. Sometimes a girl is celebrated too quickly simply because she is a girl. At other times, she has to produce more results before being given the same level of recognition. Both extremes can be damaging. As management, we try to avoid both discrimination and artificial overexposure. The situation becomes more complicated when drivers move into cars because the financial investment is much greater, while sponsors, manufacturers, junior programmes and media pressure all become more significant.
Here, being female can also have commercial value, and it is positive when that creates opportunities – provided that the opportunity then becomes a genuine sporting project. The challenge is to reach a system in which a girl can benefit from the interest surrounding women’s motorsport without being defined exclusively by it.
As a woman working professionally in this environment, I also experience this change from a different perspective. Today, as far as I know, I am the only woman directly running a driver management agency with an ongoing presence in international motorsport.
It is not something I normally emphasise, because I would rather our work be judged by the quality of our projects and what we are able to build together with our drivers. At the same time, this experience gives me a very clear understanding of some of the dynamics that young female drivers can encounter. Being a woman in an environment that is historically, and still predominantly, male-dominated sometimes means having to establish credibility before your work has even had the chance to speak for itself. But over the years I have also seen an important evolution: professionalism, competence and results can gradually break down many of those barriers.
That is precisely why the issue matters so much to us at DAG. We do not want to create ‘protected’ paths for girls or present them as exceptions. We want to help create the conditions in which they can build credibility, respect and opportunities through their sporting value, exactly like any other driver.
When people talk about women in karting, Sophie Kumpen – a karter from more than thirty years ago – is still better known, simply because she is Max’s mother, than many of the girls who are standing out on track today, sometimes winning high-level races. Why is that?
Sophie Kumpen is an interesting example precisely because she shows that competitive women in karting are not a recent phenomenon. The difference is that thirty years ago there was less media continuity, no social media, fewer structured programmes and, above all, no narrative capable of following a female driver throughout her career. The fact that the wider public now knows her mainly through Max Verstappen also says a great deal about the way motorsport history has been told. Today there are girls achieving significant results, but turning a sporting result into recognition takes time, continuity and visibility. We also need to be careful not to create a situation in which every achievement by a girl is presented as exceptional simply because of her gender.
From our perspective, communication should help these young athletes become recognisable for their journey, their personality and, above all, their performances. If we can build that continuity, in a few years we will no longer remember simply ‘the girl who won a race’, but specific names and careers. That is exactly the cultural shift we need.
Having worked with many girls over the years, where have you seen their strengths, and what areas do they still need to improve?
It is always difficult to generalise, because the differences between two drivers of the same gender can be far greater than the average differences between boys and girls.
In our experience, however, we have often encountered young female drivers who are extremely attentive, receptive to technical feedback, disciplined and able to analyse precisely what is happening on track.
In several cases we have also seen tremendous determination, probably because anyone who chooses a career in motorsport today while knowing they are still part of a minority often arrives with very strong motivation.
Working with five female drivers at the same time also gives us a particularly clear perspective. Every day we see five different personalities, five different ways of learning, dealing with pressure and building confidence.
That experience has made us even more convinced that the right way to develop female talent is to avoid labels and work with the individual athlete.
The areas for improvement, on the other hand, are individual. With some young athletes, we work on confidence and sporting aggression, in the positive sense of the term: the ability to take up space, defend a position, take the right risks and not feel obliged to be perfect all the time.
For others, the work is completely different.
As an agency, we try specifically not to turn individual observations into ‘female’ characteristics. The most important thing is to create an environment around the driver in which she can make mistakes, learn and grow with the same freedom given to any young talent.
Looking at the professional categories, what do you think is currently the biggest hurdle when moving into cars: technical, physical or sporting?
We do not believe there is a single obstacle. Moving into cars is difficult for everyone because so much changes: speed, weight, aerodynamics, tyre management, technical communication and the overall complexity of a race weekend.
From a physical standpoint, specific preparation now makes it possible to deal very effectively with the demands of single-seaters. So we do not consider physical strength, in itself, an insurmountable barrier. The biggest hurdle is probably the combination of sporting opportunity and economics.
To develop properly, a young driver needs mileage, testing, continuity with a competitive team and time to adapt. All of that requires significant investment. For a girl, there is often the additional challenge of choosing the right path. Dedicated programmes, mixed championships, opportunities offered by manufacturers or academies all need to be integrated into a single strategy rather than becoming isolated experiences.
That is precisely the role of management: not simply to chase the most visible opportunity at any given moment, but to build a career.
A good opportunity is valuable if it prepares the next step. Our goal is not for a female driver simply to ‘make it into cars’, but to arrive there with the technical, physical, financial and professional tools needed to stay there and progress.
There is a category dedicated to girls that provides a supporting act around the F1 show, and it is only natural that young drivers want to make it there. What is needed, in your view, for it to become a genuine platform rather than simply a sideshow?
A category such as F1 Academy has already achieved something important: it has created visibility, interest and a tangible goal for many girls.
From our perspective, that impact should not be underestimated. The connection with Formula 1, the teams and major brands gives female drivers a platform that simply did not exist until a few years ago.
For it to become increasingly effective as a genuine development platform, however, the key question is what happens afterwards.
A category like this becomes strategically important when it creates concrete opportunities to move up to the next level, and when the drivers who take part continue to be assessed, supported and developed after the programme ends.
That means testing, mileage, access to team facilities, physical and mental preparation, simulator work, opportunities in mixed championships and, above all, a multi-year perspective.
As an agency, we see F1 Academy not as a destination, but as a possible stage within a much longer career. Its strength will be greater the more effectively it can create a credible bridge towards the higher categories.
Visibility is essential, but it has to be accompanied by technical development and genuine sporting opportunities. The two are not contradictory. In fact, when they work together, they can accelerate change enormously.
How much could seeing a woman not just driving in F1, but actually winning there, help drive and promote motorsport among girls?
It would have an enormous impact, probably greater than any promotional campaign. In sport, representation matters most when it is linked to performance. Seeing a woman not simply taking part, but consistently competing at the highest level and winning, would immediately make the idea of motorsport as a possibility more tangible for millions of young girls.
But in our view, the most important effect would come even before Formula 1: more families would take their daughters to kart tracks, more sponsors would consider long-term female programmes, more teams would invest in scouting, and the talent pool from which drivers can be selected would grow. An F1 winner would therefore be both a symbol and the end result of a system that had learned how to create opportunities.
As management, however, we would like that day not to be described as the victory of a woman ‘despite’ being a woman. It would be the victory of a driver who reached the highest level through talent, hard work, opportunity and the right professional structure.
That would perhaps be the strongest sign that the sport had truly normalised female participation.
How far away do you think that moment is?
It is impossible to give a meaningful date, and we believe it would be wrong to create artificial expectations. Formula 1 is the top of an extremely tough selection process, even for the thousands of boys who start out in karting. The journey requires exceptional talent, results, resources, timing and opportunity.
What we can say is that the base is much broader today than it was ten or twenty years ago and, more importantly, there is now a structure that did not exist before: more girls in karting, dedicated programmes, greater manufacturer involvement, F1 Academy, increased sponsor interest and a culture that is slowly changing. All of this increases, both statistically and in practical terms, the chances of a female driver emerging who can go all the way to the top.
From our perspective, though, the more useful question is not simply ‘how far away is it?’, but ‘what do we need to do today to make it possible?’
We need to identify talent early, allow it to compete in the right conditions, provide financial and technical continuity and avoid artificially accelerating a career for media reasons. If the system does this properly, the moment will come naturally. And when it does, it will be important for there already to be a generation of girls behind that one driver, ready to follow her. For us, that will be the real measure of success.
I also see this evolution through my own role. Today, a woman can run a driver management agency and work every day, with full responsibility, in a paddock that is still predominantly male. The next step is for it to become just as normal to see a woman reach the top as a driver.
When we no longer need to point out that she is a woman, and instead simply talk about her talent, her results and her career, we will probably have achieved the most important change of all.