A first in the history of a 75-year-old championship: the Haas Formula 1 team has appointed German Laura Müller as racing engineer. She is the first woman to reach this position and she will work with French driver Esteban Ocon, who is leaving Alpine to join the American team.
This internal appointment comes in the context of a restructuring of the workforce at Haas and as Formula 1 attempts each year to make itself more inclusive. The race engineer is in direct contact with the driver during races, particularly via radio, making it a position that is exposed and known to fans.
But Hass was not satisfied with the historic promotion of Laura Müller. The Frenchwoman Carine Cridelich becomes the new head of strategy for the American team. A position which is and has already been occupied by women, like Hanna Schmitz, engineer responsible for strategy at Red Bull since 2021, or Ruth Buscombe, former chief strategist of the Kick Sauber team, who joined the F1TV team during the 2024 season.
It's difficult not to note the concordance between Hanna Schmitz's taking up position at Red Bull and the succession of world champion titles for the team's star driver, the Dutchman Max Verstappen. But this is not the only example, and here is another which is part of the novelties of this 2025 season: Lewis Hamilton, who is starting his first season at Ferrari, will meet Angela Cullen there. The New Zealander was his physiotherapist from 2016 to 2023, during which time the British driver won four of his seven world championship titles in a row.
Since the departure of Claire Williams from her position as team director of the team in her name, Formula 1 managers and drivers have been exclusively men. Nevertheless, year after year, women are making a bigger and bigger place for themselves and are recognized as the architects of various victories. It seems that they are no less competent than their male counterparts.
-There is still one big step left for the premier category of motor racing to mark a real inclusive turning point: female drivers in single-seaters, on the starting grid. We have to go back to 1976 to find a woman at the start of a Grand Prix, with the Italian Leïla Lombardi.
In 2023, a new Formula 4 championship is created, the F1 Academy, to promote female drivers and facilitate their transition from karting to competition at a higher level. The idea is to allow these drivers to integrate the classic pattern of access to Formula 1, namely the Formula 3 championships, then Formula 2. The competition is managed by Susie Wolff, herself a former driver. She notably participated in several free test sessions in Formula 1 within the Williams team in 2014 and 2015.
For the 2024 season, each team entered in Formula 1 is required to sponsor one of the F1 Academy 1 drivers. Susie Wolff hopes “have a positive impact on [ce] long-term sport”. The races are now organized on the same weekends as the Formula 1 Grand Prix, a way of“increase awareness of the competition in general”according to Stefano Domenicali, president of Formula 1.
The 2024 edition of the F1 Academy was won by the British Abbi Pulling, but on the second step of the podium, the French Doriane Pin is holding on. At 21, she will race again, in Mercedes colors, from March 2025.
